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SSDs Approaching Price Parity With HDDs (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: Hard disk drive per-gigabyte pricing has remained relatively stagnant over the past three years, and prices are expected to be completely flat over at least the next two, allowing SSDs to significantly close the cost gap, according to a new report. The report, from DRAMeXchange, stated that this marks the fourth straight quarter that the SSD price decline has exceeded 10%. Over the past three years, SSDs have dropped from 31 to 13 cents per gig annually. In contrast, from 2012 to 2015, per gigabyte pricing for HDDs dropped just one cent per year from 9 cents in 2012 to 6 cents this year. However, through 2017, the per-gigabyte price of HDDs is expected to remain flat: 6 cents per gigabyte. Consumer SSDs were on average were selling for 99 cents a gigabyte in 2012. From 2013 to 2015, the price dropped from 68 cents to 39 cents per gig, meaning the average 1TB SSD sells for about $390 today. Next year, SSD prices will decline to 24 cents per gig and in 2017, they're expected to drop to 17 cents per gig. That means a 1TB SSD on average would retail for $170, though online prices are often much lower than average vendor retail prices. DRAMeXchange also stated that SSDs are expected to be in 31% of new consumer laptops next year, and by 2017 they'll be in 41%.
Retail pricing for HDD's is already below $.03/GB, 8TB drives can be had for $230.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
1TB SSD $400.00
1TB HDD $89.00
Call me when a 1TB SSD is $98.00 a REAL one from a reputable brand not the remarked B stock crap from ADATA or Happy-Fun SSD
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
For the same size SSD and advertised bus speed, there is already a huge price performance variance. SSDs vary greatly in both IO operations per second and total IO operations (lifetime).
There are SSDs that have worse IOPS than a HDD, but in most cases HDDs cann't touch SSD IOPS specs.
On the other side: A great SSD might have a better lifetime (IO operation total) than a cheap HDD; however it is still to be proven that an SSD could match a quality HDD in lifetime.
Whenever these price comparisons come up, I get the feeling that there is a huge bias in favour of the statement that article wants to make. i.e. If its about the falling price of SSDs, then compare a low spec SSD with a high spec HDD. If you want to argue for HDD, do the reverse.
As things stands both have their place, and you should be careful about what you buy in both cases. e.g. WD-Green for laptop, but WD-Red for a NAS (yes there is a difference). For SSDs only my budget would force me to buy an EVO instaed of an EVO Pro. (I only mention WD and Samsung to be able to give concrete examples).
In my (humble) opinion neither SSD nor HDD will be able to replace the other, before some other storage technology comes along and blows them both away. Although that tech might be a descendant of one or the other (memristor? crystal/optical?).