Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SSD Prices Fall Dramatically In 2012 But Increase In Q4

Posted by Soulskill on from the more-cheaper-please dept.

crookedvulture writes "Solid-state drives became much more affordable in 2012. The median price for 240-256GB models fell by about 44% over the course of the year and now sits around 83 cents per gigabyte. Lower-capacity drives also got cheaper, albeit by smaller margins that kept median prices from dipping below the $1/GB threshold. Surprisingly, most drives actually got more expensive over the fourth quarter, despite Black Friday and other holiday sales. This upswing was driven largely by OCZ's decision to back off its strategy of aggressively discounting drives to gain market share, allowing its rivals to raise prices, as well. Although some new models arrived with next-generation 19- and 20-nm NAND that should be cheaper to produce, those drives didn't debut at lower prices. We may have to wait a while before SSD makers pass the savings along to consumers."

6 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. yea they fell by 44% by Osgeld · · Score: 5, Interesting

    they also started using 3 bit per cell storage, effectively making their lives 1/3 as long while decreasing speed, while still being expensive as jewel encrusted shit

    give me a modern SLC quarter gig drive for 150 bucks then I might start looking, otherwise I am not looking to replace my expensive drive every 2-7 years while counting every write, I have 3.5inch drives as early as 1986 damit, I expect more for the investment.

    1. Re:yea they fell by 44% by Anpheus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is just uninformed. Not all drives use TLC and most drives released in 2012 do not. Some drives did, like the Samsung 840, but the 840 Pro for example did not, nor did the OCZ Vector, etc.

      Anyway, the case has always been that if you're not sure about the reliability of your disks: don't just use one! Software RAID solves the issue of TRIM support and you shouldn't be using parity on SSD drives anyway (due to garbage collection issues) so throw it in a RAID1 or RAID10 and build an even more reliable disk.

      And if you're on a laptop that can only hold one internal disk and you still feel unsafe with just one disk: why aren't you using some sort of network based or "cloud" backed storage to ensure you have copies of your most valuable data? Why aren't you making backups?

      Seriously, these problems didn't just up and appear with the invention of SSDs. It's not like we had a 30 year golden age in which no hard drive ever failed or there weren't bad runs of drives (*cough*DeskStar*cough*) that caught users by surprise. The solution has been and always will be: use RAID for redundancy, make backups for recovery.

    2. Re:yea they fell by 44% by janisozaur · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's an interesting article on how do TLC drives compare to others on anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand

  2. Selection Bias? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did anyone read their methodology? They only looked at Amazon and Newegg. And only in the US. -1 Misleading.

    1. Re:Selection Bias? by GeekWithAKnife · · Score: 5, Interesting


      Why is this a surprise?
      This is how things roll on Slashdot. It's up to us to pick the article apart, dissect the argument, question the premise and finally formulate a succinct rebuttal.

      \o/

      --
      A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
  3. Re:Prediction by jonnat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You don't seem to know what price fixing is. Prices dropping steeply as more competitors enter a market are indicative of a price war, effectively the opposite of price fixing.

    But don't let this minor detail interfere with your rant about the government.