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Hard Disk Sector Consolidates Amid Uncertain Future
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The WSJ reports that Western Digital will buy Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for about $4.3 billion in cash and stock, leaving only four key hard disk drive vendors — Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba and Samsung. The hard drive world has been seen as ripe for consolidation, particularly as the rise of tablet computers such as the Apple iPad — which don't use hard drives for data storage — is casting doubt on the future of hard disks. Compared to hard drives, solid-state drives promise greater power efficiency, performance, resistance to physical shock, and run more quietly since they contain no moving parts. But one area that solid-state drives do not improve on their spinning predecessors is in their inevitable movement towards failure. 'SSDs are going to fail just like hard drives will,' says Chris Bross, Senior Enterprise Recovery engineer at Drivesavers Data Recovery. 'Every storage device will have issues regardless of their underlying technology.'"
There will be no hard drives because we'll just store all our data in the cloud. (ducks)
For the end-user, it's great that the average lifespan of a drive is measured in years. For the manufacturers, not so good.
Since upgrading my power supplies I've had very few drive failures over the past five years. I've purchased drives to expand storage, but rarely to replace. Across 10 laptops I have replaced two failed drives in two years. On the desktops, with about twenty drives between 5 machines, I've replaced maybe two units in two years. These run continuously, are rarely rebooted, and have semi-annual reboots to replace fans and clean out the dust.
After it seems clear the rewrite count is going to hell - 5000/cell for 32 nm, 3000/cell for 25 nm, SSDs are going to have a helluva time catching up in cost/GB. People will still want huge storage disks, data centers still need storage, hard disks aren't going away. The SSDs do rock for speed and is making huge performance gains but that doesn't bring the cost down. The combination of a blazing fast 100GB SSD and huge, slow 2TB HDD seems to be the way forward.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The "hard disk sector" consolidates, hmm?
For a moment, I did a double take and thought of Stac.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
"...and to commemorate their latest acquisition, Western Digital announces a new line of ultra-green drives...a spokesman had this to say..."
"Yep, these drives are so power-conservative, they actually stop consuming power permanently 30% faster than our previous line. We're calling them 'Hitachies'"
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
The HDD death has been predicted a few too many times...
Its still the cheapest storage with easy access out there.
Consolidation is not only expected, but somewhat necessary.
I spent 15 years in the HDD industry, and some things to understand:
- It takes roughly 70 people and 6-9 months to design and develop a new disk drive.
- product lifetime has been as short as 2 months and as long as 1 year.
- typical product lifetime is 3-6 months.
- A company needs to have multiple design teams doing multiple product designs phased for phased product releases.
If the product is late, its already obolete, and will not sell.
If the product is slightly behind the times, it will not sell.
Because of the above NRE expenses are huge, so margins or volumes have got to be huge, to make any money.
Margins went to nothing many years back, so the volumes need to be huge. Thus fewer players are the results of all that.
Because of the above, dozens of companies that used to make disk drives are now long gone.
All of that said, the "death of the HDD has been greatly exaggerated"
- its cheap, high volume storage, and all in all "fairly" reliable.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
Raid is not a backup, FYI.
Parent said he was using RAID to mitigate failure, not to provide backup. One might use a RAID setup as part of a data backup system, but this was not described by the parent post.
And if you bought them all at the same time from the same place, chances are, when one finally dies from old age, more than one may perish simultaneously.
The likelihood of two devices failing at the same time due to old age is incredibly small, unless by "old age" you mean something like "a meteorite striking the storage system".
You can make a light bulb that never dies, never as described by lifespan of a human being. These can even be made from filament - just have it at a lower power so it glows dim red, instead of bright white. 10-9 tor vacuum would also help.
But if you want real white light "light bulb", you can make light bulb from plasma in a sealed container exited by external electromagnetic field. The light bulb itself is just gas in a hermetically sealed glass container. There is nothing to burn out. The lifespan of the device is the lifespan of the external electrical components, and these can be decades.
Or a LED light bulb. Lasts "forever" if properly designed.
But no one wants to buy a $500 light bulb. People would rather spend $1 every year and replace any broken ones.