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AI has caught the attention of many investors. NVIDIA's returns in recent years have been spectacular—it's market cap is now over $4T! Who knew that companies marketing ordinary hard drives would catch fire? Chart courtesy of Spencer Jakab via his Markets A.M. newsletter.
Yes, it's interesting that "old fashioned" mechanical/electronic drives are preferred to "all electronic memory (memory chip)" drives. Personally I still use all mechanical/electronic drives, They are inexpensive, easy to back up, and completely independent of any outside entities for access or support.
Yessir! I exclusively use WD Black HDD for speed/reliability. And will occasionally use Red/Blue for storage/reliability. I have several in use right now. I only use SSD for boot drives and to load games - some games require SSD for their access speeds.
My current gaming/desktop has a 1TB WD M2 SSD boot drive, a 2 TB WD SSD M2 gaming drive, a 4TB WD Blue storage HDD, and a 16 TB backup external HDD. Everything on the other 3 drives is backed up on the external drive.
My older system is similarly configured. Of course, the problem with SSD is that high capacity drives are hella expensive and high capacity HDD are very inexpensive. Since everything has to be backed up anyhow, RAID or otherwise, their mechanical nature is not an issue. Apparently access speeds are not that critical in certain applications, once cost is taken into account. Though power requirements are still much higher.
I must admit, as far as stock performance, I should have anticipated this.
Both STX and WDC have small but rapidly growing solid-state drive (SSD) businesses. But most drives are still hard disk drives (HDD) because they are cheaper to make (but incredibly complex in how they operate).
I didn't realize that Western Digital spun off its SSD division into SanDisk earlier this year. They are now focusing on HDDs.
"Meanwhile, Western Digital is focusing on the evolving opportunities in the HDD market. 'As AI accelerates and impacts industries around the world, and as companies generate and store more data, HDD exabyte shipments are expected to increase,' CEO Irving Tan said. He also points out that much of the data stored by cloud service providers, such as native cloud application data, AI data lakes, media, and machine learning data, runs on HDDs."
To add to the conversation, I just threw in 2 WD Blue spinners for my desktop RAID / video server the other week.
SSDs in everything else (desktop, laptops, tablet)
Same here, I use HDD mainly for video. In anything that runs on battery and where weight is an issue, I have SSDs. I even have an SSD installed in place of the original HDD, in my ancient mid-2009 MacBook Pro. Which I mainly hang onto because it has history, and a DVD drive.
I always used HDD. Several years ago I changed everything to SSD other than my 1TB HDD for backups. My laptop recently started spewing SSD messages that it may be failing. I never knew SSD has limited use, apparently there are only so many read/write operations SSD can do before wearing out. I know HDD can fail but I've never had one fail in 30+ years. SSD's don't last forever , who knew!
I always used HDD. Several years ago I changed everything to SSD other than my 1TB HDD for backups. My laptop recently started spewing SSD messages that it may be failing. I never knew SSD has limited use, apparently there are only so many read/write operations SSD can do before wearing out. I know HDD can fail but I've never had one fail in 30+ years. SSD's don't last forever , who knew!
Yeah. For routine/casual use, SSDs are great ... but if you really pound them they will fail quicker simply by nature of the electronic way they read/write/store things. So for long term storage, backups, or archives, HDDs ('spinners') are best. Sure, they can fail too, but at least you stand a better chance of recovering data from a classic drive than a SSD.
True, true but even though it may go into sleep or hibernation I'd imagine there are always a few read/writes happening from time to time in/out of ssd memory or it wouldn't know to wake, auto update etc...
I always used HDD. Several years ago I changed everything to SSD other than my 1TB HDD for backups. My laptop recently started spewing SSD messages that it may be failing. I never knew SSD has limited use, apparently there are only so many read/write operations SSD can do before wearing out. I know HDD can fail but I've never had one fail in 30+ years. SSD's don't last forever , who knew!
SSDs can fail over time after numerous read/write operations. For general consumer use (and possibly commercial use?), SSDs tend to have lower failure rates than HDDs according to many sources. On my PC, I use an SSD (Intel 520 Series¹) as the primary drive where the operating system and applications are installed. This PC is 12 or 13 years old and is usually powered on 24x7 and used daily. I've had no issues with the Intel SSD. The optional Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox utility was installed to check/maintain SSD health. The Drive Summary indicates that the estimated life remaining is ~95% A Quick Diagnostic Scan was just executed. The Read Scan and Data Integrity operations both completed successfully. Over an approximately 28 year period, I've experienced several HDD failures. I still have a few dead IBM Deskstar (aka Deathstar²) HDDs that need to be disposed.
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My current gaming/desktop has a 1TB WD M2 SSD boot drive, a 2 TB WD SSD M2 gaming drive, a 4TB WD Blue storage HDD, and a 16 TB backup external HDD. Everything on the other 3 drives is backed up on the external drive.
My older system is similarly configured. Of course, the problem with SSD is that high capacity drives are hella expensive and high capacity HDD are very inexpensive. Since everything has to be backed up anyhow, RAID or otherwise, their mechanical nature is not an issue. Apparently access speeds are not that critical in certain applications, once cost is taken into account. Though power requirements are still much higher.
I must admit, as far as stock performance, I should have anticipated this.
WDC in fact offers combo HDD & SSD packages.
SSDs in everything else (desktop, laptops, tablet)
They are now focusing on HDDs.
"Meanwhile, Western Digital is focusing on the evolving opportunities in the HDD market.
'As AI accelerates and impacts industries around the world, and as companies generate and store more data,
HDD exabyte shipments are expected to increase,' CEO Irving Tan said.
He also points out that much of the data stored by cloud service providers,
such as native cloud application data, AI data lakes, media, and machine learning data, runs on HDDs."
https://www.techspot.com/news/107039-western-digital-exits-ssd-market-shifts-focus-hard.html
One problems with older PCs is that they don't always wakeup from sleep & require Shutdown & Restarts.
For general consumer use (and possibly commercial use?),
SSDs tend to have lower failure rates than HDDs according to many sources.
On my PC, I use an SSD (Intel 520 Series¹) as the primary drive
where the operating system and applications are installed.
This PC is 12 or 13 years old and is usually powered on 24x7 and used daily.
I've had no issues with the Intel SSD.
The optional Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox utility was installed to check/maintain SSD health.
The Drive Summary indicates that the estimated life remaining is ~95%
A Quick Diagnostic Scan was just executed.
The Read Scan and Data Integrity operations both completed successfully.
Over an approximately 28 year period, I've experienced several HDD failures.
I still have a few dead IBM Deskstar (aka Deathstar²) HDDs that need to be disposed.
¹ Research indicated Intel SSDs were extremely reliable.
² https://dfarq.homeip.net/the-death-star-that-killed-ibms-hard-drive-business/