Thinking of buying Hard Disc storage - potential price increases/shortages

[topt]

Article from the Register following Seagate announcement and WD apparently have already said the same -

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/23/seagate_hdd_prices/

Quote

Seagate has joined Western Digital in increasing the prices of hard drives, with rising demand due to the huge data requirements of AI taking the blame.

 

[HappyExpat57]

I've recently switched over to nearly all PCIE M.2 drives along with two external bays. WICKED fast and much less expensive (at least so far . . .)

[OneMoreFarang]

You can buy 6TB for about 5000B. How much storage do you need? And would you think it's too expensive if it would cost 7000B?

For anybody who used PCs for years, any storage is cheap now compared to year ago. 

[OneMoreFarang]

Just now, HappyExpat57 said:

I've recently switched over to nearly all PCIE M.2 drives along with two external bays. WICKED fast and much less expensive (at least so far . . .)

I use such a "drive" for drive C with OS, programs, etc.

For other drives, like video storage etc. traditional HDDs are just fine. The movies don't play faster if I use an SSD. 

[Photoguy21]

What are you intending to store on the drive? What ever you will store I would go for an SSD drive

[BritManToo]

20 minutes ago, Photoguy21 said:

What are you intending to store on the drive? What ever you will store I would go for an SSD drive

Do they have 40TB ssd at a reasonable price?

[ukrules]

45 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Do they have 40TB ssd at a reasonable price?

Yes, of course, if you need 40 TB then you can get it for a reasonable price unless your need isn't really a need.

 

Just setup a RAID6 array with a bunch of 20+ TB drives and you have redundancy as well - that is my preferred config on a proper server and it can be done at home.

 

I did notice the price of these high end enterprise class drives was rising months back.

 

I doubt it's got much to do with AI.

 

 

[BritManToo]

1 hour ago, ukrules said:

Just setup a RAID6 array with a bunch of 20+ TB drives

Don't think they have 20TB ssd either.

[ukrules]

2 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Don't think they have 20TB ssd either.

You don't need a 20TB SSD.

 

There's nothing wrong with a few of these :

Edited April 24 by ukrules

[patman30]

This is likely to only affect newer high capacity drives with new tech
ones that most people will have no desire for
you can get 8TB NVME drives, which are fine for most people
and you can get board with 5x M2 slots, allowing up to 40TB NVME SSD today
what will always matter is price per TB, and mostly only businesses will justify paying a premium per TB

One of my rigs

[howto]

Samsung Pro PCIE M.2 (or SATA) 1~2TB for the OS + apps (that force install on C:\) 

and 1, 2 or 3 Seagate Ironwolf Pro NAS 8TB (or so) 7200 RPM HDD's on SATA.

Yes, I've noted the price increases lately. 

Yes it is likely due to large scale AI models.

No, one cannot get the same $ per MB storage using SSD yet.

[Peterphuket]

11 minutes ago, patman30 said:

This is likely to only affect newer high capacity drives with new tech
ones that most people will have no desire for
you can get 8TB NVME drives, which are fine for most people
and you can get board with 5x M2 slots, allowing up to 40TB NVME SSD today
what will always matter is price per TB, and mostly only businesses will justify paying a premium per TB

One of my rigs

Looks like, you are mining?

[patman30]

8 minutes ago, Peterphuket said:

Looks like, you are mining?

mining what?

[mikecha]

use  cloud  easy

[BritManToo]

16 hours ago, ukrules said:

You don't need a 20TB SSD.

I think you missed the point of the discussion, maybe you should read the posts before replying.

[spidermike007]

Look into the Seagate One touch SSD. They are tiny, fast, and I have several that are 1-2TB each. Amazing for storage of movies, photos, music and data that requires alot of space. 

[Peterphuket]

3 hours ago, patman30 said:

mining what?

Crypto.

[JBChiangRai]

20 hours ago, ukrules said:

Yes, of course, if you need 40 TB then you can get it for a reasonable price unless your need isn't really a need.

 

Just setup a RAID6 array with a bunch of 20+ TB drives and you have redundancy as well - that is my preferred config on a proper server and it can be done at home.

 

I did notice the price of these high end enterprise class drives was rising months back.

 

I doubt it's got much to do with AI.

 

 

 

It depends what you're storing and how you use it.

 

For example, if you're storing media then you don't need multiple simultaneous writes, you are typically just writing one file at a time.

 

A far more elegant solution is to run UNRAID instead of RAID6, the electric cost savings are huge. 

 

With one or two parity drives and in my PC I have 20 data drives as well as 2 parity drives.  I can handle any 2 simultaneous disk crashes without losing data and with 3 crashes I lose data on 1, 2,or 3 drives only.  Furthermore there are never more than 3 drives spun up together when writing and only one drive when reading, disks spin down when not being used.   UNRAID makes all 20 data drives appear as one large disk but each disk has a file system on it.

 

The Antec 1200 case will allow 20 drives to be stored using 5in3 hot swappable drive caddies.  I have 3 UNRAID systems in Antec 1200 cases.

[Photoguy21]

23 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Do they have 40TB ssd at a reasonable price?

I would doubt it but there again a 40Tb in a HDD is not easy to find or cheap

[patman30]

2 hours ago, Peterphuket said:

Crypto.

Nope.

[patman30]

1 hour ago, Photoguy21 said:

I would doubt it but there again a 40Tb in a HDD is not easy to find or cheap

That is because the largest HDDs on the market is 24TB
Seagate have recently announced a 30TB HDD but that is yet to hit the stores
not easy to find is an understatement as they are simply not available
Seagate released a 60TB SSD but that is expensive and hard to find and is for enterprise use
and 100TB from teamgroup has been rumoured

hopefully we will all get to see quartz storage if the powers in play ever allow the tech to reach the masses in our lifetimes

Edited April 25 by patman30

[john donson]

what do you guys store on that? 

[BigStar]

51 minutes ago, john donson said:

what do you guys store on that? 

 

For most in need of larger capacity, media files probably take up the most space. Some of us, notably the non-hipsters among us, find little worth streaming. Movies or series we like may not be available in the future anywhere, let alone currently streamed. To watch them again in the future, they have to be stored. Really hi-res movies good for display on large 4K screens represent large files indeed.

[BritManToo]

1 hour ago, john donson said:

what do you guys store on that? 

Movies, TV series, books, music. Come teotwawki (assuming I survive) I'll still have lots of entertainment.

[SpaceKadet]

One can never have enough storage...

Currently on my main PC I have 20TB HDD (8TB+8TB+4TB, all Seagate), 2TB NVMe for games, and 1TB NVMe as video work area. The system is on 1TB NVMe. All NVMe are Samsung. The HDD storage is about 68% utilized. What I store on HDDs? Porn, HD movies, TV series, photos, music.

 

Then I also have 24TB NAS....

[Photoguy21]

22 hours ago, patman30 said:

That is because the largest HDDs on the market is 24TB
Seagate have recently announced a 30TB HDD but that is yet to hit the stores
not easy to find is an understatement as they are simply not available
Seagate released a 60TB SSD but that is expensive and hard to find and is for enterprise use
and 100TB from teamgroup has been rumoured

hopefully we will all get to see quartz storage if the powers in play ever allow the tech to reach the masses in our lifetimes

I think Samsung made a 60Tb drive but you would have to sell your souls, home and first born to buy it. Why would you actually need, as an individual, such a large drive? A business yes of course but for an individual it seems a bit excessive for normal day to day usage.

[BritManToo]

23 hours ago, patman30 said:

That is because the largest HDDs on the market is 24TB
Seagate have recently announced a 30TB HDD but that is yet to hit the stores
not easy to find is an understatement as they are simply not available
Seagate released a 60TB SSD but that is expensive and hard to find and is for enterprise use
and 100TB from teamgroup has been rumoured

hopefully we will all get to see quartz storage if the powers in play ever allow the tech to reach the masses in our lifetimes

You just buy a Synology NAS and treat it as a single drive.

My 2 bay Synology ds233j can take 2x 22TB hds internally, and another 2 USB drives externally.

They also make 4 bay models.

 

No need to even turn your computer on as it can download torrents, and play to your smart TV on it's own

Edited April 26 by BritManToo

[SpaceKadet]

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

You just buy a Synology NAS and treat it as a single drive.

My 2 bay Synology ds233j can take 2x 22TB hds internally, and another 2 USB drives externally.

They also make 4 bay models.

 

No need to even turn your computer on as it can download torrents, and play to your smart TV on it's own

That's an expensive solution. 

4 bay Synology NAS enclosure = 20.000 baht. 4x8TB NAS drives = 40.000 baht. Total of 60.000 or so baht.

 

With only 2 drives you are limited to only RAID0 or RAID1.

RAID0 will give you twice the capacity of a single drive, but no data redundancy. If one drive fails, you'll lose the whole RAID.

RAID1 will give you only half the capacity of 2 drives, but provides redundancy.

IMO, Raid0 and Raid1 are generally for specialized applications.

 

RAID5 and RAID6 gives very good data redundancy and read speed, but need minimum of 3 drives for RAID5 and 4 drives for RAID6. 

With only 4 bays, you could also build RAID10, which will give you the same capacity and data redundancy as RAID6, but with higher write speeds.

I would go for a minimum 5 bay enclosure to build a decent NAS.

 

My NAS has 8x2TB drives and a dedicated HBA card to drive them all, plus 2x4TB HDD and 1TB SSD. It runs TrueNAS software.

[BritManToo]

3 minutes ago, SpaceKadet said:

With only 2 drives you are limited to only RAID0 or RAID1.

RAID0 will give you twice the capacity of a single drive, but no data redundancy. If one drive fails, you'll lose the whole RAID.

RAID1 will give you only half the capacity of 2 drives, but provides redundancy.

IMO, Raid0 and Raid1 are generally for specialized applications.

I don't use raid, I just keep a second Nas in a different place with the same files on it.

Edited April 26 by BritManToo

[patman30]

16 hours ago, BritManToo said:

You just buy a Synology NAS and treat it as a single drive.

My 2 bay Synology ds233j can take 2x 22TB hds internally, and another 2 USB drives externally.

They also make 4 bay models.

No need to even turn your computer on as it can download torrents, and play to your smart TV on it's own

or i could take the 17,000 it costs to buy a 2 bay synology lol
and build my own NAS at a fraction of the cost
or i can just access any of my networked machines i already have running 24/7 and view any files i want
i have over 100 HDDs spread across 6 rigs which run 24/7 (although currently scaling this down with higher capacity drives to save power)
"No need to even turn your computer on"...... what do you think your NAS is lol