SSD Prices Continue 3-Year Plunge

Lucas123 writes "After dropping 20% in the second quarter of 2012 alone, SSD prices fell another 10% in the second half of the year. The better deals for SSDs are now around 80- to 90-cents-per-gigabyte of capacity, though some sale prices have been even lower, according IHS and other research firms. For some models, the prices have dropped 300% over the past three years. At the same time, hard disk drive prices have remained "inflated" — about 47% higher than they were prior to the 2011 Thai floods, according to DRAMeXchange."

Comments

Re:WTF?!?!?!

[Hadlock]

OCZ Vertex drives have had a consistently 5% return rate (that's 1 in 20) since May 2012 now. I would stay the hell away from the Vertexes in particular, as they're closer to 7%, the company as a whole is closer to 5%. Granted, that's return rate, not confirmed failure, but a return rate that's been consistently ten times higher than the rest of their competition should give you pause when buying cheap hardware. Compare to 0.5% for manufacturers like Intel and Samsung.

Here's another WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary says that the prices on some models has dropped 300%. That's impossible, since the price cannot drop below zero, unless of course THEY are paying YOU to take the drive (as in soviet russia).

Re:Here's another WTF

[omnichad]

Assuming it's proper English to someone, I'd assume the logic goes like this.

The price was $12, now it's $3. The price dropped by 300%. That is, 300% of the final price has been subtracted from the first price. It's complete nonsense, and completely backwards really.

Hard drive prices remind me. . .

[smooth wombat]

of the extra fee or increase in prices that companies such as FedEx imposed when gas prices were around $4. They claimed it was in response to the increase in fuel prices.

Now that prices have fallen by 50-70 cents, I don't see those fees being revoked.

Same thing with hard drive prices. Initially, with limited supply, a price increase was justified. Now that production is back to normal, I don't see the prices coming down.

You'll be waiting a long time

[DidgetMaster]

At $.90 per GB, SSDs are still about 15 times more expensive than the same amount of hard disk space. Forget about trying to put your 2 TB of data on SSDs. I like the trend of reduced prices for SSDs. They are finally affordable enough to put my most active data on (e.g. boot files, applications), but if you think they will be a viable complete substitute for hard drives anytime soon, think again.

Re:You'll be waiting a long time

[tlhIngan]

At $.90 per GB, SSDs are still about 15 times more expensive than the same amount of hard disk space. Forget about trying to put your 2 TB of data on SSDs. I like the trend of reduced prices for SSDs. They are finally affordable enough to put my most active data on (e.g. boot files, applications), but if you think they will be a viable complete substitute for hard drives anytime soon, think again.

SSDs are an excellent example of Moore's Law in action - because doubling the transistors at a basic level doubles the storage.

Thing is, everything else doesn't have to follow Moore's Law - spinning rust has been growing faster than Moore's Law for a little while now. And in some formfactors, spinning rust has made an exit because it's not possible to cram all that mechanical stuff in there (see the 1.8" formfactor - exclusively SSD these days because the largest spinning rust is 160GB - while you can get 256GB SSDs for cheaper!).

But where space isn't a problem (2.5" and 3.5" drives), the SSD will always be more expensive unless someone comes up with a way of storing data more densely with the same access times.

However, SSDs are big and cheap enough to be the only hard drive in many computers these days. And given the pervasiveness of networking, having a few TB of spinning rust attached and accessible via one's "personal in-home cloud" will serve to handle most people's bulk storage needs.

Of course, there will be industries where the files are so large and sequentially accessed that an SSD benefits are basically nil - like movie editing, where they can stream through TB of data, sequentially accessed.

After all, SSDs excel at random I/O, but spinning rust excels at sequential continuous access - if all you're doing is accessing data in megabyte or larger chunks, the slowness of moving the head around is hidden by the sheer speed of pulling the data off the media.

Re:You'll be waiting a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the phrase "spinning rust" the first time was clever.

Using it the next four times was just pretentious and annoying. Just use the term "HDD" like everyone else if you want to refer to them more than once.

Re:You'll be waiting a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a dork writing "spinning rust" repeatedly.

Re:You'll be waiting a long time

[LordKronos]

You're obviously a copyright thefting pirate if you need more than 256 GB storage on an SSD.

Or a parent with a camera that records video.

Re:You'll be waiting a long time

[Guspaz]

Thing is, everything else doesn't have to follow Moore's Law - spinning rust has been growing faster than Moore's Law for a little while now.

Have they been? WD announced 2TB drives in early January 2009. WD announced 4TB drives in late November 2012. That's a period of 34.5 months to double capacity, and launch pricing was roughly $400 in both cases.

Moore's Law as it is currently accepted says we should see doublings every 18-24 months (18 months is for doubled performance, 24 months is for doubled transistor count), so it's clear that HDDs are improving at a rate much slower than Moore's Law, not faster as you claim.

SSDs, on the other hand... The Intel x25-m came out in late 2008 at an MSRP of $1,190 for the 160GB model. Today I've seen the Intel 330 180GB as low as $90. Per-gig, that's $7.4375/GB -> $0.50/GB, or 14.875x improvement in price.

That's 3.9 doublings over the course of 4 years. So SSDs are improving much faster than Moore's law, while HDDs are improving much slower than Moore's law.

Without significant changes in the improvement rates, SSDs will become cheaper per-gig than HDDs in less than four years.

Re:You'll be waiting a long time

[Adriax]

Turtles.
FET = Flying Electric Turtles.
That's why SSDs are so expensive still, they have to breed nano-scale turtles that are almost impossible to corral because they either fly over the tiny fence or conduct along it.

Re:300% drop?

[NixieBunny]

There's a large, smoking hole in the ground where the price fell through the Earth's crust.

Re:Can't wait

[codewarren]

I've never had an SSD, and had a very bad experience with a first gen one

So what was the bad experience you had with a first gen SSD besides not having one?

prices have dropped 300%....

[vincefn]

For some models, the prices have dropped 300% over the past three years

Great, so this means that in 2012, to get some SSD disk you will be paid twice the price you would have paid to get them in 2009 ?

Sounds interesting, just the kind of storage I need for my perpetual motion simulations !

Re:WTF?!?!?!

[Hadlock]

Here are the hard numbers for anyone who's curious:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

- Intel 0.45% (against 1.73%)

- Samsung 0.48% (N/A)

- Corsair 1.05% (against 2.93%)

- Crucial 1.11% (against 0.82%)

- OCZ 5.02% (against 7.03%)

Return rates specifically for OCZ models:

- 40.00% for the OCZ Petrol 64 GB

- 39.42% for the OCZ Petrol 128 GB

- 30.85% for the OCZ Octane 128 GB SATA II

- 29.46% for the OCZ Octane 64 GB SATA II

- 9.73% for the OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB 3.5"

- 9.59% for the OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB

- 6.73% for the OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB

- 5.43% for the OCZ Agility 3 240 GB

- 5.12% for the OCZ Vertex Plus 128 GB

Also if you have a Crucial M4 make sure you have the correct firmware as Crucial keeps releasing/shipping units with buggy firmware updates that can brick your drive.

Re:Kinda tiny

[omnichad]

Put your OS on it, and application binaries. You can have a second drive for everything else.

Re:Can't wait

[necro81]

If you are looking to build a system (I will assume a desktop), then don't worry about waiting for cost parity. There is really no reason to put most of your files on an SSD, unless you are building a server that requires lots of random I/O requests. Instead, go both ways: purchase a modestly-sized SSD for the OS and Apps (64 GB), and a conventional spinning disc for bulk storage (photos, video, etc., 500 - 4000 GB). Sized appropriately, you can configure a system that gives you the speed where you want it and capacity where you want it for a decent price.

Re:UK HDs seem to be down to 2011 prices

[1_brown_mouse]

I read that as "tranny" and it was much funnier.

Re:Can't wait

[jbolden]

Yes. Margins are much higher. Essentially what happened:

a) A situation of oversupply in the HDD market leading to thin and sometimes negative margins.
b) Huge drop in supply due to natural disaster
c) drop in supply causes sharp increase in price which leads remaining suppliers to experience high margins
d) as supply comes back on board margins remain high because there isn't oversupply

Re:WTF?!?!?!

[Hadlock]

I'm not sure you understand how percentages work.

Re:Can't wait

[neminem]

I've had bad experiences with busses before, but I've never owned a bus.

the article is worth what you pay for it

[jlv]

"The better deals for SSDs are now around 80- to 90-cents-per-gigabyte of capacity"? Where's this guy been?

The better deals for SSDs are now close to 50 cents a gigabyte. Two months ago I picked up four 128GB Samsung 830s for $70 each. This past month I've seen a PNY 120GB for $70, an Intel 160GB for $90, and the 128GB Samsung for $70 again. Better deals on larger SSDs (over 200GB) are now 70 cents and less - Newegg just had the a 500GB Samsung 840 for $330 (66 cents/GB).

Re:WTF?!?!?!

[Baloroth]

We've been over this at some point... OCZ has a greater volume of sales generating higher return rates, it's a rule of QC. Crucial (#1 lowest returns) has relatively minor sales in comparison so not as many are shipping out that can fail.

What? Higher sales generates higher returns in absolute quantity, not in terms of return rates. Return rates are a percentage, and are independent of the quantity shipped (although a larger shipped quantity means the rates will more accurately reflect actual failure percentages).

Re:UK HDs seem to be down to 2011 prices

[telchine]

LOL. Works both ways, I suppose.

That's what (s)he said!

Re:mSATA SSDs

[Digital Vomit]

Some HDD sizes are now cheaper than before the Flood.

Too bad Moses spent so much time trying to save squirrels and zebras that he couldn't be bothered to save some of that tech.

Re:Can't wait

[hairyfeet]

The problem is like in X86 there isn't any real competition and I'd say its worse than in X86 because at least AMD, which I've been building exclusively for the past 5+ years, the performance is "good enough" for the vast majority of users including the gamers but in the HDD arena the competition is making such piss poor products that I'd be afraid to buy them.

You see pre-flood we had 4 players in the game, Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, and WD, but now there is only WD and Seagate and ever since the Maxtor buyout Seagate quality has really gone down the shitter so there isn't really any choice but WD. Pre-flood I was buying Samsung EcoGreens at $35 a TB but since the buyouts I've found anything that Seagate makes over 500Gb to be Russian roulette with your data while the WDs have a MUCH lower failure rate, at least from what I've seen in the shop.

So I'd say what they are doing certainly isn't illegal, although why they allowed Seagate and WD to buy out the competition to make it a duopoly I'll never know, but since Seagate seems unable to fix the serious failure rate of their over 500Gb drives you have WD charging 40%+ over what Seagate is charging and they'll get it as nobody wants to risk losing their data. Just go look at any of the BF and Xmas sales and you'll see what I mean, the Seagates are selling for $60-$70 for 1Tb, $70-$80 for a TB and a half, while WD is selling for $100 a Tb, $150 for a 2TB and they can't seem to keep them in stock whereas the Seagates have been on sale for weeks and they appear to have plenty of stock left.

Its not the market itself keeping the prices high, its the fact you really only have one supplier worth buying. Like I said you can take an AMD quad or Hexa and even the gamers will be happy with the performance but NOBODY is happy when they buy that cheapo Seagate 1.5TB and it craps itself in 3 months and takes their data with it. WD knows this so they keep their prices high, knowing that all it takes is getting burned by Seagate for a time or two for the customers to see its better to spend the money than lose their stuff. This is just a perfect example of "you get what you pay for" where someone who makes a better product charges more than the guy making cheap shit and this is why the prices remain high on the WD side of the aisle, they know their competition just can't seem to make a good product ATM.