IDC: HDD Output To Reach Preflood Levels, But Prices Will Stay At A Postflood Premium

I'm pretty sure that the manufacturers could recoup some of their losses by selling them in large volume and cheaper price as opposed to small volume and higher price. As long as there is a steady drop in price, I wouldn't mind if they want to keep the prices steady for a while. If it remains constant for the next year or more, then they are shooting themselves in the foot. With the current price, their profit margin is huge. If they could sell it at the price before the flood, that would mean that their manufacturing costs aren't that high as no company would sell their product for less than what it needs to produce them.

I don't think they can come to an agreement that they should sell at this price which is higher. There exists a monopoly between the big players like Seagate and Western Digital but they are almost equal, not the 90/10 kind of monopoly we would see with Intel/AMD. HDD vendors are still competing with each other and sooner or later they will reduce the price to cut each other.

They price it so high, it has a domino effect on other vendors as well. OEMs that make laptops would either have to profit less or pass down the costs to the consumer, both of which they do not want. They would surely want their profit to increase as well and passing down the costs would only make it more expensive and less likely for someone to buy it. SSDs with increasing capacity are posing a threat to HDDs and it is only a matter of time when we would reach to a point where a reasonably priced SSD at a certain capacity would be a better choice than a HDD, if they decide to be arrogant about it and peg the HDD price sky high.

No written rule that SSDs should only be used as a boot drive. It can be used for storage, just that it is still too expensive to consider it as a form of storage and we have yet to reach 1TB SSD that is affordable for mainstream users.

3. No. HDDs aren't fast enough that it bottlenecks your SATA port. It is compatible.
4. It is normal.
5. That might have to do with the Advanced Format drives. Nothing to worry about if you don't do, it will still work regardless of whether you do it or not.
6. So far any brand works for me and I usually stick with cheaper drives as I wouldn't pay the premium for a WD Black.

Average users aren't going for that not because they don't want, it is because they can't afford it or it is still too expensive to be the common standard that HDDs are right now.

None. I've used Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung and Western Digital. All are working without any problems.

Get an external would be fine. Just put it in a safe place where you can't accidentally drop it.

You get more storage and some speed that SSD offers. You won't get the best of both worlds, it won't have the capacity of a HDD and won't be as fast as a SSD. Personally I don't think it is worth it.

It might make some sense if it is for a laptop, but I'll still go with SSDs for the durability factor, moving around and dropping the laptop by accident is not a good thing. For desktop, a SSD and HDD combo is still the best. 128GB these days is quite cheap, 256GB is getting more affordable and when that happens HDD as a primary drive is a thing of the past. When you're comparing speed, there is none that would come close to a SSD.

As for storage space, 500GB is a lot but I have no use for that much space as a primary drive yet. I usually would rather push my data to a secondary HDD, for easier formatting and I can access the data from the HDD from any PC since it has no installation or OS files in it.

Normal vibrations hardly ever matter to a HDD. The HDD itself vibrates to a certain extent and it is definitely within its operating specs. What matters is a sudden shock or strong blow to a HDD. Let's just say that you throw a laptop with a running HDD on the ground, it is very likely that you'll have a dead HDD from the impact when it falls. Corruption happens but it doesn't happen to each and every HDD, even if it did, only a small portion will be corrupted and will outlive the usable lifespan of the HDD.

No HDD is ever that reliable, even SSDs which are marketed as very reliable compared to HDDs are showing some reliability issues. What matters most is that if you want your data to be safe, make backups. If you want it very safe, make backups of backups and keep that copy of the backup elsewhere.

It certainly does but I'm quite certain modern HDDs are able to park the read/write head in case of regular vibrations, minimizing the damage if any exists. This isn't the case if a stronger impact happens and the HDD can't react just as fast. I just think that many are just worried that their HDDs would die even at the slightest vibration.

There is no safest way to store valuable data, this is because there is just too many factors to take into account that can kill the HDD. First level, do a RAID 1 Mirror with two HDD which reduces the chance of HDD premature death but doesn't prevent the possibility of both HDDs dying which can happen in a lightning strike for example. Second level, do a third backup in an external HDD along with the RAID 1 mentioned earlier to overcome the problem mentioned earlier but then there is another problem, what if your house catches on fire?

Third level, do what I've already mentioned in first and second level, and do a fourth backup in an external and store it elsewhere that is not your house. That is as safe as it gets for a consumer but to consider 100% safe isn't likely, I bet there is a 0.00001% chance that all will die from whatever cause and you'll still lose your data.

You only have 1 in 2 chances that WD is not reliable since the only players left in the game is Western Digital and Seagate. Not much of a choice there, just pick whatever you think is reliable and keep your fingers crossed.

What do you mean by great vibration? Too little information to know anything about it.

Clicking sound can be a lot of thing, Click of Death or just a routine thing for the HDD. My laptop HDD which I replaced with a larger capacity will click 1-5 seconds ever so often when it is running. This has been going on for more than a year and there are no issues with it, probably a false alarm. As for the vibration, it is normal for a HDD to vibrate a little bit when in operation. Probably it is best that you don't take the chance and get a new HDD while leaving this one for less important stuff or wait till it dies for RMA, which might be a few years from now.

No recommendations because all external HDDs are pretty much generic, not much difference from one brand to another. Just stick to well known brands and get one that has USB 3.0 support.

You can use the old HDD but if has the OS in it previously, you will have to format it. If the programs in the old HDD is a standalone software that does not need to be installed, it will run but if it is a type that needs to be installed, it won't work. The registry values for the programs you've installed on the old HDD is not present in the new HDD. There is of course ways to make it work but a lot of work and a reinstall would probably be easier and less time consuming.

I'm doubtful about Seagate. Their warranty is only 1 year, which I think is too short for a HDD. I may not like warranties but having a warranty this short doesn't sound like they are confident with their product. Then again, I don't like WD Green drives very much with their power saving features but has 2 year warranty so it can be very indecisive on which to choose since we only have 2 companies left in the world manufacturing HDDs.

It's the method that SSDs read and write that causes the NAND chips to fail after some time. The method is applicable to all current SSDs and it will not change unless there is a new method of storing bits. What SSD offers is durability which HDDs don't. For example, you would worry if you've dropped your external HDD but you wouldn't worry in the least if you've dropped your thumb drive. That's the advantage that solid state memory provides, besides the speed.

SSDs usually have a bad reputation when it comes to reliability only when it a new product released in the market. It will take months to actually fix the problems and create a very reliable product. Sandforce controllers initially had a bad reputation but after time of tweaking the firmware, things have changed and SSDs are no longer causing instability. There are many methods being used to ensure that NAND memory wouldn't wear out as fast. Some of which uses additional swap space in case some part dies, which is why some Sandforce drives are labeled 120GB instead of 128GB. That's just one of many methods currently implemented in current SSDs.

SSDs wear out as you use them but the amount of read/write that you would have to do is a lot before it shows fatigue. Just to give you an example of how much of read/write must be done, go here. This should pretty much sum up that SSDs are quite reliable in the long term as this test emulates unrealistic amounts of read/write that a normal user will do throughout the lifespan of the SSD.

As for HDDs, they haven't been too reliable as well, at least the 3TB ones. I agree that HDDs of the past have a good lifespan. I even have a few 40GB IDE HDDs that are still strong but the same can't be said about modern HDDs since the data density per platter has increased. With only 2 competitors left in the game it isn't good news either since they control how much HDDs should be priced and no price wars. With the reduced warranty period on most models, Seagate 1 year, WD 2 years, they're taking advantage on the fact that you don't have a choice when it comes to mass storage.

It can't show a test conducted in 10 years time for obvious reasons. The time span of the test is shorten by making it do read/writes that far more than a person would normally do. SSDs will not wear out if you don't use them, if you use them a lot, it will accelerate the wear. Refer back to the charts on the link, Crucial M4 64GB - 769TB, Corsair Force 3 120GB - 1015TB, Intel 520 60GB - 868TB.

These SSDs have been used more than the average person might do in the SSDs lifetime. They're writing to the entire SSD and flushing all the information, repeatedly till it dies. Not the kind of usage scenario a normal person would do. It isn't indicative of which brand is better though as the sample size of the test is too small.

SSDs aren't really that reliable compared to HDDs but at least SSDs are more likely to have a "graceful death" where it will die slowly. With HDDs, its a different matter. They are more prone to dying without notice and never start again. SSDs are never meant to replace HDDs for mass storage because of cost issues but it will complement it on many uses. Most new users aren't doing justice to their rig by using a SSD. It is probably one of the best upgrades one could do.