SSD Prices Down 46% Since 2011

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SSD Prices Down 46% Since 2011

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 21, 2012 @07:06AM from the filthy-exploitative-capitalists-at-it-again dept.

crookedvulture writes "Hard drive prices have yet to return to normal after last year's Thailand flooding. There's good news on the solid-state front, though. The current generation of SSDs has steadily become much cheaper over the last year or so. SSD prices have dropped an average of 46% since early 2011. Intel has largely shied away from discounting its drives, but the aggressive competition between other players in the market seems to have forced its hand. There's no indication that competition is waning, suggesting the downward trend will continue. Right now, an impressive number of drives are available for less than a dollar per gigabyte."

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hard drive prices/GB are also dropping by alen · 2012-06-21 07:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

SSD prices just fell from completely ludicrous to ridiculous as part of the normal drop in prices per GB of storage
1. Re:hard drive prices/GB are also dropping by jaymz666 · 2012-06-21 07:20 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  They've gone to plaid
2. Re:hard drive prices/GB are also dropping by amicusNYCL · 2012-06-21 07:25 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Between my $500 video card, two 28" monitors, quad-core CPU, and 8GB of high-speed RAM, it was definitely my shiny new OCZ Agility 3 that made the biggest impression on my when I booted my computer for the first time to install the OS. Those things are so fast it truly is ridiculous.
  
  --
  "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
3. Re:hard drive prices/GB are also dropping by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-21 07:39 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Only if it's Win 7 32-bit. If he's using the 64-bit version (which is a good bet) he'll get the full 8.
4. Re:hard drive prices/GB are also dropping by Bengie · 2012-06-21 08:02 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Technically PEA is available for regular Windows, as DEP needs it, but Windows refuses to let you make use of PEA to extend the address range. I only semi-recently learned this myself. Not that it matters much with 64bit everywhere.
They speak the truth by MetalliQaZ · 2012-06-21 07:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

It seems to be the nature of things that prices go up and rarely come down. Interesting for manufacturers, in that they were all forced to raise prices at the same time. Now you have a situation where they can all keep prices high as long as none of the big players steps out. Almost like a natural price fixing scheme.
On the SSD front, the technology has finally matured so that reliability is good enough and cost is low enough for the mainstream. I think it is important for anyone in the market to make sure that they purchase the latest generation of drives. Speed doesn't matter that much (the rest of your computer is probably couldn't utilize it) but the newer firmwares are much less likely to corrupt your data. The parts are also more fault tolerant.
Really, the biggest issue is probably the difficulty of moving existing OS installs to a new drive. Too bad, because a completely solid state PC is so nice to use.

--
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
1. Re:They speak the truth by bluefoxlucid · 2012-06-21 07:35 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  SSDs also have OCZ and Crucial leveraging MLC and SandForce's controllers to deliver optimized and boosted performance and extended life for reduced cost. SandForce SF-2200 chipsets compress data as it goes out to the chips, reducing write volume and thus giving fractional write amplification. This improves performance and reduces storage wear, improving product lifetime--hence the use of MLC. Of course already compressed data doesn't have those benefits, hence why OCZ's Vertex line has better write speeds--they use synchronous chips that write as fast as they read (Agility drives use much cheaper chips that read faster than they write, so for compressible data they're FAST but for non-compressible data they're slow), and use compression just to extend drive lifetime.
  With all the manufacturers making good use of SandForce's better chips, and SandForce's strategic pricing (read: they're relatively cheap because they want to be a major consumer and enterprise supplier of SSD controllers, which would make them richer than charging a fistful of cash per chip), a lot of inexpensive SSDs have shown up. Essentially Intel tried to hold prices high, and SandForce stepped up and decided to help the whole market undercut them in order to gain market dominance (Intel uses SF chips in 2 models; they previously used Intel proprietary controllers, and have also used Marvell controllers).
  That's called "competition," son. It's what big businesses try to prevent with patents, lock-in, vertical integration (so you can't undercut their prices ever), supply chain control (so you can't get the raw materials to make a competing product without buying from them), etc.
  
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Hard drive prices down? by Anubis350 · 2012-06-21 07:19 · Score: 4, Interesting

Compared to Just post flood, spinning disk prices are down sure. But pre-flood prices were significantly lower than now, whereas SSDs have just been dropping like a stone recently.

--
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
1. Re:Hard drive prices down? by Anubis350 · 2012-06-21 08:38 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I got the 4 Samsung 2TB drives in my main tower in a semi regular newegg sale for $65/each back pre-flood, and even without the sale they were ~$80. Now they're ~$120, with sales to ~$100 :-/
  
  --
  "goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
2. Re:Hard drive prices down? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-21 15:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Paranoid much? I post that link because the guys at coding horror see no problem with plopping down a grand on a drive and like /. is full of geeks that know what they are doing so you can't blame it on noob mistakes.
  Yes you can. I've seen Jeff Atwood be very clueless and noobish indeed. He's a programmer, more of a web developer than anything else, not an internationally recognized authority on SSDs. He just likes them because they're fast, and he (and his buddies) had a bad string of luck with them. Every time you link to that one blogpost on codinghorror, you're linking to one guy's anecdote, nothing more. He doesn't give any technical reason to justify his opinion that SSDs are inherently failure prone. He just says he and his friend had a lot of failures, conflates that into a general problem, and uses a stupid sexist analogy to cement the idea that SSDs are fast but inherently unreliable into the skulls of idiots like you.
  
  i would also point out that article isn't even a year and a half old so if you can provide your OWN link showing this miracle breakthrough that has eliminated SSD failures I'm sure the guys here would be happy to read it.
  The 'miracle breakthrough' is neither a miracle nor a breakthrough, it's just hard work. SSD reliability depends a great deal on SSD firmware, because managing flash storage is complex. Lots of SSD firmware was written with more of an eye towards time-to-market (companies trying to carve out marketshare early) than wringing out all the bugs before they shipped.
  If you want a reliable SSD, stick with the vendors who have managed to sell drives to major OEMs. For instance, if you can get a drive closely related to any of the ones Apple OEMs for MacBooks, you're probably in good shape because Apple does extremely strict qualification (acceptance) testing on all storage devices they ship.
  
  If you go down to the comments you will see failure after failure, every major brand and model, and these guys again do NOT go cheap so you can use the CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) excuse either.
  Many of the failures reported in Atwood's initial blogpost (and lots of them from the comments) were brands like OCZ and other "enthusiast" overclocker kiddie brands. OCZ in particular is well known for its cavalier attitude about treating customers as SSD firmware beta testers.
  
  We are talking top o' the line drives by reputable companies like Intel crapping all over themselves.
  Just curious, did you mean the comments like this one?
  "Over at blekko, we've had 3 SSD failures after 1.5 years, out of 700 drives. These are Intel X-25M 160G2 drives." - Greg Lindahl
  That's an actual statistically significant sample, not just an anecdote! And it's a very low failure rate; HDD vendors would probably kill for 0.43% over 3 years.
  And then there's the comment with a link to Anandtech which gives some more real data, i.e. return rates recorded by a large French etailer for several major brands:
  http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/3
  (the worst is OCZ at almost 3% -- so even keeping in mind OCZ's questionable practices, the picture is quite a bit different from what you're trying to paint, eh?)
  And there's also a ton of anecdotal comments which say "I have a SSD and I never had a hint of trouble with it, shrug", which actually seem to outweigh the anecdotal problem reports by a fair amount, even in spite of the well known principle that usually complaints are overrepresented on message boards and comment threads (satisfied people don't care enough to post, pissed off people do).
  
  So unless you can provide data of your own I'm gonna call paranoia, since that link is one of the best I've found on the subject and the guys at CH are all pros, frankly I'd be more likely to listen to them than some random "Works4Me" Internet Post.
  The things
Re:SSD? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-21 07:24 · Score: 5, Informative

SSD means Solid State Disc, a faster permanent storage type than HDD, however lacking capacity-per-dollar of HDDs.
Solid State Drive *
really simple by slashmydots · 2012-06-21 07:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, WD and Seagate better still be price gouging to save up funds to buy out a flash chip manufacturer or they're screwed. At my repair and custom builds shop, it's down to a simple rule that if you don't need tons of storage, go with the much faster high lifetime SSD option and if you do need tons of storage, a 500GB-1TB drive is the way to go and they're around the same price. At this rate, I bet WD and Seagate have about 6 months to start making SSDs or they're bankrupt.
1. Re:really simple by Bengie · 2012-06-21 08:40 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Until you realize that ReRAM(memresistors) will have several times the storage of SSDs for the same amount of silicon, and it will start showing up next year. Once those prices come down, they will be near the price of current mechanical HD. Silicon shrinks are out-pacing HD storage density increases.
  
  I have a much bleaker future for mechanical HDs.
Re:SSD? by v1 · 2012-06-21 07:34 · Score: 5, Funny

Slashdotter who doesn't know what an SSD is.. Really?
Salsa Saturated Dorito

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I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Re:Even when they were expensive... by toejam13 · 2012-06-21 07:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

Recently we put some higher-end drives in our servers and we love the hell out of them.
There have been a couple of reports that just came out that suggest that SSDs can pay for themselves in many server environments. It isn't just the power savings (remember that non-residential customers often get charged more per kWh), but that many servers are often disk I/O bound. When you replace spinning platter drives with SSDs, you might be able to cut your server count in half. Admins have found that they can completely eliminate caching web servers because the app servers can crank out so much.
Re:SSD? by Orphaze · 2012-06-21 08:14 · Score: 4, Informative

Stick with Intel, and you'll be fine. Intel had some slight firmware issues a while back on one or two of their models, but otherwise every single one of their SSD offerings as been bulletproof. I've deployed hundreds now over the past 2-3 years, and I've yet to see one fail. I've seen loads of other brands (such as Kingston) have weird stuttering/hanging issues, bad write speeds, etc.
Going SSD is near life changing in terms of the apparent feel and speed gains. I've even got a number of cheapskate clients on 4-5 year old Core 2 Duo machines with SSDs that feel faster than modern 2nd gen i7 systems with traditional drives in terms of boot up time, application loading speed, etc.
Re:SSD? by Guspaz · 2012-06-21 08:25 · Score: 4, Informative

I've seen so many problems with other brands, that I don't really trust anything but Intel SSDs anymore. Even when using the same controller, Intel manages to avoid issues, like the BSOD problems with the sandforce controllers that only Intel bothered to fix.
I don't know why TFA says Intel isn't discounting things, though. They're constantly doing mail-in-rebates for their products. I bought an Intel 160GB X25-m G1 for $700 roughly three years ago. Today, you can buy from newegg an Intel 180GB 330 for $120 after rebate, and it's enormously faster to boot.
A good idea to put off a laptop purchase... by SuperKendall · 2012-06-21 08:30 · Score: 3, Informative

At the rates prices are falling, 512 GB SSD drives will be common in laptops soon, which I think is a very comfortable size for a laptop drive. 256GB (common base laptop SSD now) is OK but anemic.

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Memory-mapped I/O by tepples · 2012-06-21 08:38 · Score: 3, Informative

2^32 bytes = 4 294 967 296 bytes
how you get 3.2 gigabytes out of that is beyond me.
Some devices on the bus, especially the video card, reserve some address space for memory-mapped I/O.
Re:SSD? by msauve · 2012-06-21 09:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

But even that is a misnomer. It's not a drive at all. A hard disc drive, has a hard disk being driven (spun) by a motor. SSDs should really be called SSS (Solid State Storage), or similar.

--
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Updated Price Predictions by CopaceticOpus · 2012-06-21 16:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

I created some back-of-the-envelope predictions in July 2009 about the cost for 10TB of storage using either type of drive technology. Unfortunately, neither technology has kept pace with my predictions, but SSDs are making much better progress.
Actual July 2009 Prices for 10TB: Platter = $750, Flash = $28,125
Actual June 2012 Prices: Platter = $567, Flash = $8200
Previous Prediction for July 2010: Platter = $528, Flash = $9,868
Previous Prediction for July 2012: Platter = $262, Flash = $1,215
Previous Prediction for July 2014: Platter= $130, Flash = $150
Previous Prediction for July 2019: Platter= $23, Flash = $0.80
It's a shame to see that after three years, the prices are closer to where I hoped to see them in a single year. I think it's time to update my predictions based on what has happened over the previous 35 months. (Yes, I know this in unscientific and silly!)
New Prediction for July 2012: Platter = $562, Flash = $7916
New Prediction for July 2013: Platter = $511, Flash = $5188
New Prediction for July 2014: Platter = $464, Flash = $3400
New Prediction for July 2015: Platter = $422, Flash = $2228
New Prediction for July 2019: Platter = $287, Flash = $411
New Prediction for July 2024: Platter = $178, Flash = $50
These predictions seem much more achievable than last time. In fact, I expect that platter drives will exceed this pace as the industry recovers. I can't believe that platter drives will only see around a 50% price reduction per TB over the next seven years. However, that's been the pace of improvement from July 2009 until now.
The most interesting date will be when the technologies reach price equivalence. This would be August 2020 according to my model, at the price of $260 for 10 TB. My gut feeling is that equivalence will be reached a couple of years earlier than that, but who knows? We'll just have to watch and see!