Western Digital Magnetic Storage Breakthrough Going For 40TB HDDs

People: "HDD's will die in 5 years and be replaced by SSDs bla bla bla..."

Western Digital: "Hold my beer"

 

The one HDD you absolutely want your friends to destroy when you pass away.

Well the initial models will probably be aimed and priced squarely at data centers at major industries but it's a sign of the future of data storage I guess, whether it's a big game library or a library of other forms of media ha ha.

 

I've been feeling for a while that all truly new models are aimed at right there. Nothing much has really changed with consumer drives. I reckon the cost structure is such that below a certain TB limit (which is quite low), there simply isn't anything to do to lower the costs (manufacturing, profits) and thus the prices are stuck or only increased due to general inflation. They used to be lower years ago, but back then the industry wasn't exactly healthy, causing some players to drop out (like Samsung). Perhaps there's now some price competition/development in models starting from 8TB or something, but I don't see consumers buying those sizes and above too often.

Although that being said, for all I know the manufacturers actually do apply new tech to the smaller drives managing to lower their own manufacturing costs and thus increase profits, but consumer prices will hardly reflect this.

 

And the price ? There is simple fact that for every single cell of flash you need transistor (NAND),irrelevant of type (SLC,MLC,TLC,QLC....),and that cost.That is why you see for examplen today's market 1TB SSD is almost exactly 2x price of 512GB SSD. Of-course price of NAND cell will go down,but that ratio of 2x capacity equals 2 x price is not going away anytime in the close (or distant) future.HDD for mass storage is going to be with us for some time,just like you can still today buy magnetic tape,it is not going to be that relevant and influential as it was yesterday (it is not even today already)

 

Don't forget also the reliability and longevity of HDDs. It is just a much more mature technology than SSDs. SSDs are getting there and at a much faster pace than HDDs did, but IMHO it will still take 15 years or more before we see SSDs widely used for mass storage.

As a side note - when "tech visionaries" say some technology is going to die in X years, I always disregard it. Market moves too slowly, while technology moves too fast to make at least a somewhat accurate prediction.

 

For HDD's to be at the price/density level they are now, we had to wait decades.
As awesome SSD's are, and as much we need them for many productivity workloads, they'll be reserved exclusively for day to day usage wile HDD's will remain as archive drives.
Maybe in 15 years from today SSD's will be close to a HDD price wise.

You're a friends I wouldn't like to have.
Other media like what: porn?

Probably ya, but they'll cost allot more too.

 

The “spin torque oscillator” - this is what makes time-travel possible.

 

That's just marketing crap, it doesn't really cost double.

 

Ignorance is bliss... right?
Do you realize that 2 silicon dies are twice as expensive to produce than 1 identical silicon die ? Probably not.

One of those flash chips inside the SSD is a stack of sometime 4, 8, 12... 16, 24 or 32 silicon dies one on top of another.



3D Nand is somewhat reducing the need to package that many planar dies in the same chip, but it's not removing it.

1 TB still has twice the number of dies than 0.5 TB.

 

look at this guy thinking that the price to make something has anything to do with how much something costs.

 

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they were making more per sale with SSDs than regular drives.

 

Yeah,it does 2x number of transistors is still 2x number of transistors.And if you take in account that flash memory is produced more or less (it is defiantly easier to produce flash) like CPU's you can come to the same conclusion that it is not in the hand of manufactures ("marketing crap" that you mention ) to lover prices.2x number of transistor is still 2x number of transistors meaning 2x more time to manufacture and 2x area of the wafer.There is some wiggle room but not much.I am not saying it will not become cheaper to manufacture flash (economy of the scale,smaller and cheaper transistors...),but it is simple 2x number of transistor = 2x price.Of course i am not taking in the account technology of manufacturing and possible breakthrough and advancements in it.

 

I am not talking about how much something costs for you and me,but how much something costs to manufacture.Of course if something costs more to manufacture they are going to charge more you and me.If it is that 2x number of transistors costs 2x more they are going to charge double (and of course some littleeee bit more )

 

This looks like being based on maser technology instead of laser.

 

This is good tech for the current time. Just think of how much $ in electricity ($/TB) this will save a data center...yea, there's a market (but get it to market sooner than later as it will change.)

And I'd like to say HAMR just got HAMeRed!

 

@Vananovion
HDDs more reliable?!
so far i had a couple of hdds die in the 11y i used them,
but not one of the ssd's (9y) including some no name/lower quality ones.

i use them the for the same stuff (OS/programs/backup/external backup/trash drive for temp storage) and the same way and keep em for the same amount of time (depending for what its used)
maybe a HDDS if i had a NAS or similar.

 

@fry178
And I've had HDDs for 10+ years without a hitch, while an SSD died on me in 3 years. Anecdotal evidence vs. anecdotal evidence.

Then again, I may be wrong. Maybe we just learned to live with the unreliability and deal with it efficiently.

 

Tometo tomato.Same thing and same principle just laser has higher frequencies.

 

The market is artificial. We'll have far less. Whatever capacity they sell will always be just low enough so people have incentive to continue buying more.