Storage Solutions "Two years later, HDD prices settle back to normal" & "HDD life"

PoBoy

PoBoy

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http://www.extremetech.com/computing/171700-two-years-later-hdd-prices-settle-back-to-normal

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actually-live-for

The two year return time isn’t particularly surprising if you consider that the drive manufacturers themselves had every reason to draw out higher prices and earn some profits in the process.
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There are three distinct failure phases — and, correspondingly, three distinct ways in which hard drives die. Failures in the first year are primarily caused by manufacturing defects. This describes the lemon effect — where, despite most of your drive live for years, some just die after a few months. Between 18 and 36 months, drive deaths are caused by random failures — small, random issues that only occur if you’re unlucky. Then, as the drive moves into its fourth year, failure rates skyrocket as drives start to wear out — the various components can only rotate, gyrate, and actuate so many times before something goes sprronngggg.

It’s worth noting that Backblaze uses normal, consumer-level drives — the kind of drives with 12- or 36-month warranties. Considering around 97.5% of these drives are still alive after one year, and about 90% are alive after three years, these warranties are probably spot-on.
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HDD prices are returning to normal but it will still take a few more years for much cheaper HDD storage. Primary reason is that the floods gave the two major companies an opportunity to fix the prices & control the supply chain.. Because of this artificial supply constraint prices are not falling as they should be. Now an artificial demand supply gap is created/manipulated to keep the prices high & make record profits...
 
This also depends on the number of players in the field. Today the number of manufacturers are less compared to what it was 3-4 yrs back. They have merged with bigger players to provide more consolidation into the market. This helps in proper control on the market as there are 3-4 major players in the HDD field today.
 
The floods in Thailand resulted in HDD prices to increase and also RAM and it will stabilise only when enough HDD's are in the market and the demand is less compared to the output or if SSD's become dead cheap.That is the only way.
 
bssunil said:
The floods in Thailand resulted in HDD prices to increase and also RAM and it will stabilise only when enough HDD's are in the market and the demand is less compared to the output or if SSD's become dead cheap.That is the only way.
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There already are enough hard drives, this is company strategy.
 
Floods were two years ago in 2011. And only Seagate was affected. This is the result of a duopoly with just two hdd manufacturers dominating the world market.
They can increase and decrease prices at their will.
The flood angle was debated here some time back imo with links to an article or two.
 
^... No they have plants in china as well but still Thailand Flood was an excuse for both companies to raise prices. Seagate has major production in China.

Before the floods the prices were low 'coz of competition & oversupply. Due to the flood the HDD industry consolidated & only two major companies now control the supply. They artificially keep the demand high hence higher prices. The prices also do not fall as much as they were earlier before this consolidation & floods...
 
http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/12/04/enterprise-drive-reliability/
“Ok, so the consumer drives don’t fail that often. But aren’t enterprise drives so much more reliable that they would be worth the extra cost?”
So, Are Enterprise Drives Worth The Cost?
From a pure reliability perspective, the data we have says the answer is clear: No.
Enterprise drives do have one advantage: longer warranties. That’s a benefit only if the higher price you pay for the longer warranty is less than what you expect to spend on replacing the drive.
This leads to an obvious conclusion: If you’re OK with buying the replacements yourself after the warranty is up, then buy the cheaper consumer drives.
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http://techreport.com/news/25730/data-suggests-consumer-drives-are-as-reliable-as-enterprise-models
 
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