Spinning harddrives obsolete?

[ZenOps]

So my five year old Hitachi is finally starting to make weird noises.

I've heard horror stories about Seagates 3GB, which seem to have a 33% failure rate.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20894...ve-makers.html

Should I just go all SSD from now on?

[V6-BoI]

I would replace with a SSD. Only thing is SSDs are still kinda expensive if you wanna go bigger. So I think a lot of people now do like a 250GB-500GB SSD for their main drive (with windows and all the programs) and they get a 3TB spinning HDD for their music, movies and other misc stuff.

[GQBalla]

I wouldn't say obsolete.

Like V6-BoI said, Keep your OS on the SSD and the bigger drives to store movies and etc

[firebane]

platter drives are far from obsolete. Platter drives are for storage.. ssd is for boot/os drives.

[eblend]

I don't think they will become obsolete anytime soon, the cost per GB is just too low. To buy 3TB of SSD you are looking at $1500 right about now....vs $120 for a spinning disk.

Assuming you are running at least Windows 8.1 and have the physical space for it, I would recommend you setup Storage Spaces, it's built right into Windows 8.1 and allows you to group multiple disks together, and then create virtual disks on top of that, with whatever redundancy you choose, and if you want to make it faster, you can add an SSD into the mix and it will automatically tier (doesn't have to be a dedicated disk too, can just be free space on existing SSD), keeping the most frequently used data on the SSD.

This is my setup, all backed by the same set of disks (10 x 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F5...owned by Seagate now )

Drive E: Raid 5 equivalent parity - handle 1 disk failure
Drive F: Mirror (actually on 2 disk enclosure..so separate set of disks)
Drive H: Raid 0 + SSD tiering - VM data, backed up nightly to Drive F Mirror...no redundancy, with dedupe (not sure if dedupe is available in Windows 8.1 or if its a Server 2012 R2 feature)
Drive I: Raid 6 equivalent - handle 2 disk failure

As you can see, I can run different set of redundancy configurations all on the same disks, which allows you to carve our the data how you see fit. I have been using this at home for the last year and it's been solid.

[spikerS]

Originally posted by firebane
platter drives are far from obsolete. Platter drives are for storage.. ssd is for boot/os drives.

only until SSD prices come down a bit more, then no one will by a RPM drive.

[eblend]

Originally posted by spikerS


only until SSD prices come down a bit more, then no one will by a RPM drive.

They said this about Tape medium as well, yet many companies still use it. I don't think SSD is going to get to the price level of spinning drives anytime soon.

[firebane]

Originally posted by spikerS


only until SSD prices come down a bit more, then no one will by a RPM drive.

SSDs do not do well in a RAID environment nor have any place in a large RAID array for storage or backup purposes.

Platter drives are still cheaper per gb than a SSD drive is.

I could put together a 6 drive RAID array for cheaper with platters than the equivalent in SSDs.

[Maxx Mazda]

The sheer speed of SSD's though absolutely makes them worthwhile for OS / program drives.

[Ven]

I've used SSHD's in three high end gaming builds this month. The customers seem to be quite pleased with the speed:storage:cost ratios. So in that regard I would say the spinner isnt dead quite yet. Though I did put together a budget "surf and email" build last month with one of those Sandisk 128GB SSD's on sale at MemEx, based around an overclocked G3258, and holy shit is that thing snappy for daily typical use.

[jacky4566]

Originally posted by eblend


They said this about Tape medium as well, yet many companies still use it. I don't think SSD is going to get to the price level of spinning drives anytime soon.

Yes but to be fair data tapes have an advantage because they have the longest shelf life. Its more of a niche product now.

[locust]

I would follow the others recommendation of having your main os on a ssd and your other files on an actual drive.

I would stay away from seagate as well as they have an extremely high fault rate.
I would look into the western digital red if possible but if that doesn't fit your price range go with the greens at least.

[firebane]

Originally posted by locust
I would follow the others recommendation of having your main os on a ssd and your other files on an actual drive.

I would stay away from seagate as well as they have an extremely high fault rate.
I would look into the western digital red if possible but if that doesn't fit your price range go with the greens at least.

Nothing wrong with Seagate drives at all. Its all I run exclusively and I've only had 1 failure and it was a used drive I found in a box that nobody knew about it. I've used everything from a 320gb to my current 3TB drive and they just keep on ticking.

Western Digital Greens have had horrid failure rates due to their head parking timeout as well. Reds are not meant for desktop use and are a storage/RAID drive. If you want to use a WD for a desktop either go blue or black.

Don't buy into all the hype out there.

[spikerS]

Originally posted by eblend


They said this about Tape medium as well, yet many companies still use it. I don't think SSD is going to get to the price level of spinning drives anytime soon.

Oh, I know there is still tape being used, but that is because of a couple factors like incompatible programs and infrastructure, or cost, or the mentality of "that's how we have always done it". Doesn't mean that is still current technology.

SSD prices are making their downward march in cost for a long time now. I can remember a 16gb SSD on MemX for $349 like 2 years ago...NOw, I just went and found a 512GB SSD on there for $299. That is a drop from $21.81/GB to $1.71/GB representing a 82% drop in price per GB!

[V6-BoI]

I think the only other drawback from an SSD is that it's not as robust. I'm sure the technology has improved a lot since it first came out, but I heard when SSDs first came out, it can get corrupted a lot quicker with too many memory writes.

Guess on that note, has anyone had issues with corrupt SSDs within a short period of time?

[schocker]

I still use them. My gaming drive is a 2tb WD Black and I use them in my NAS, just ordered 4x 5tb WD Reds. I am going to phase out my other mechanical drives though with SSDS. I have a 480gb I need to shift my OS then I kind of want a 1tb when I refresh my PC. Still can't beat the cheap mechanical storage. 1tb ssd off sale is still $500

[revelations]

Originally posted by V6-BoI
I think the only other drawback from an SSD is that it's not as robust. I'm sure the technology has improved a lot since it first came out, but I heard when SSDs first came out, it can get corrupted a lot quicker with too many memory writes.

Guess on that note, has anyone had issues with corrupt SSDs within a short period of time?

We used early model SSDs from an Israeli company (16Gb drives, back in 2008) and we started to have read/write errors soon after purchase. I carried around a clone HDD as a backup since I never trusted them (new technology at the time).

You wont see the same issues anymore, the technology has vastly improved.

[ipeefreely]

Originally posted by spikerS
Oh, I know there is still tape being used, but that is because of a couple factors like incompatible programs and infrastructure, or cost, or the mentality of "that's how we have always done it". Doesn't mean that is still current technology.

Tape still wins because the massive amount it can backup for the price... and tape is still a current technology.

[timdog]

Originally posted by ipeefreely


Tape still wins because the massive amount it can backup for the price... and tape is still a current technology.

can confirm. source: I'm an IT manager in charge of data center storage and backups for a large enterprise.

[SmAcKpOo]

I can see the relevance for tape in large cloud deployments for fortune 500 companies but tape libraries can cost hundreds of thousands.

Has anyone ever had a successful restore from tape after a critical failure? I haven't.

I'll stick with spinning disk storage for my second tier and offsite storage needs.