When will Hard Disk Drives transition completely to Solid State Drives?

[Landon]

I find modern technology very fascinating. I built my custom-made build a few years ago, and my hard drive was a 1TB HDD.
It ran quite loudly with my lack of rubber for the casing, which is beside the point and crosses into a different realm of topic.

Regardless, my HDD performed and it was reasonably fast at the time. I had heard from friends that SSDs were the way to go, and of course being the cheap-skate that I am, I went for a cheap Kingston thinking it would be terrible. Well, I was wrong. I will never go back to HDDs as a primary drive - they're so incredibly slow compared to an SSD. The startup time is so much better, and you can get straight to work after you login and start applications, while on HDDs, you had to wait for a good 30 seconds or more to get the computer up to speed. That being said, my old primary drive, the HDD, is now a storage drive with a capacity of 1TB which was a lot cheaper to buy than the 225GB SSD I have.

The question is this: When do you think HDDs will move completely out of desktop towers, be cleared off the shelves like floppy disks, and be written in history

[scottish]

Not any time soon as the price point is still far off, especially when it comes to enterprise drives.

Also capacity still has a bit to go

[FlyingJesus]

Short answer: when it's financially prudent for everyone :P

Although the prices have come down a lot they're still much more than HDDs, which are still perfectly functional in most cases. Gonna be a little while before HDD becomes totally defunct

[Catchy]

Not anytime soon I'd imagine. Plus the option of having both SSD and HDD is a plus imo

[Landon]

Not anytime soon I'd imagine. Plus the option of having both SSD and HDD is a plus imo

Perhaps another factor would be to produce the SSDs in a much more reliable manner and ensure that they won't fail before be become dependent on them.
Not that they aren't reliable already - they just have a bit of a reputation for failure.

[AgnesIO]

Perhaps another factor would be to produce the SSDs in a much more reliable manner and ensure that they won't fail before be become dependent on them.
Not that they aren't reliable already - they just have a bit of a reputation for failure.

It's generally accepted SSDs are more reliable than HDDs....

[Landon]

It's generally accepted SSDs are more reliable than HDDs....

Under what studies and conclusion?
SSDs are a lot more likely to loose data than HDDs.

[RelliexHD]

I'd still rather have a 2tb hard drive that does 100 read and write. Me as a performance type of guy, yes I can see where your coming from, but not all people need this. Unless they are a Hard Core Sweaty Gamer :D

[Keenan]

I've slowly been transitioning out of HDD (except for my external drives) but I still think they'll have a purpose for time to come.

[Landon]

I'd still rather have a 2tb hard drive that does 100 read and write. Me as a performance type of guy, yes I can see where your coming from, but not all people need this. Unless they are a Hard Core Sweaty Gamer :D

Nah, I definitely wouldn't want to solely use my SSD. I have my HDD as a storage drive and also a backup area in case anything goes south with the SSD. :)

[AgnesIO]

Under what studies and conclusion?
SSDs are a lot more likely to loose data than HDDs.

Incredibly hard to judge, as manufacturers are very quiet about this. However, return rates are (at least used to be) higher for HDDs, but that could be for a number of reasons.

SSDs are also better in portable devices due to the lack of moving parts to break every time you go over a bump.

The issue is highly contentious, but either way, HDDs definitely aren't a lot less likely to lose data than SSDs...

[Landon]

The issue is highly contentious, but either way, HDDs definitely aren't a lot less likely to lose data than SSDs...

Agreed with this - It's very minuscule and unlikely. It just makes me curious in terms of those small levels which one actually performs better with data retention.

[AgnesIO]

Agreed with this - It's very minuscule and unlikely. It just makes me curious in terms of those small levels which one actually performs better with data retention.

Yup, I think the truth is that neither is exactly optimal (hello cloud!), which would explain why even after a good few years, there still isn't a clear answer.

[Landon]

Yup, I think the truth is that neither is exactly optimal (hello cloud!), which would explain why even after a good few years, there still isn't a clear answer.

Correct me if I'm wrong - Aren't most of the large cloud data servers, take for instance Google datacenters, running on HDDs?

[AgnesIO]

Correct me if I'm wrong - Aren't most of the large cloud data servers, take for instance Google datacenters, running on HDDs?

Oh I'm not debating that - but whatever they use, every is backed up on multiple storage devices. That's the difference there!

[scottish]

Correct me if I'm wrong - Aren't most of the large cloud data servers, take for instance Google datacenters, running on HDDs?

It depends on the purpose mostly, at an enterprise level disk failure is fairly meaningless, but I've seen a hell of a lot more HDDs fail than SSDs.

[Landon]

It depends on the purpose mostly, at an enterprise level disk failure is fairly meaningless, but I've seen a hell of a lot more HDDs fail than SSDs.

True, I think in this case though we are debating as if it were in good conditions and stable.

[AgnesIO]

True, I think in this case though we are debating as if it were in good conditions and stable.

Stable devices in good condition don't just 'lose' data, though?

[Shorty]

I finally made the move this week, got rid of my 10 year old 500GB HDD for a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB.
Now I've got my OS on my 500GB SSD and my 120GB SSD (which was my OS setup) is now my spare space/backup drive and binned my HDD.

The answer to your OP is when SSD's become cheaper than a HDD, which in some cases it already is, but for more capacity it's still more expensive. Newer SSD's are a lot more stable than the ones a few years ago, so it's one less thing to worry about.