back to article Hard drive sales to see double-digit dive this year

Hard drive sales will take a nose drive in 2013, according to a report by the market analysts at IHS. "Facing a relentless onslaught from tablets, smartphones and solid state drives (SSD), global hard disk drive (HDD) market revenue in 2013 will decline by about 12 percent this year," IHS reported in an email on Monday …

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  1. johnnymotel

    dunno why....

    the manufacturers don't just take the 3.5" form factor and fill it with cheap SS memory, doesn't have to be super-fast, but faster than a platter drive.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Helium hype

    Oh please, forget about this Helium thing!!!

    Never could I recommend such a drive for anybody to use. Helium is one of the scarcest elements on this planet and is therefore quite expensive and as long as fusion reactors are not working, this will not change and the demand for it is raising. The molecules are small and have the bad tedency to "tunnel" through every known enclosing. Hence, sooner than later these drives will fail and it is a simple matter of measureing the pressure when filling the drive to control how long the drive will last for the customer. Please add 2 to 2 to calculate for yourself how long these drives will be usable.

    1. Steven Jones

      Re: Helium hype

      @AC

      The molecules are small and have the bad tedency to "tunnel" through every known enclosing.

      Helium exist as individual atoms, not molecules...

      In any event, it's perfectly possible to design a container to hold helium at atmospheric pressure which will be more than sufficient for the expected lifetime of a hard drive. Helium diffusion rates through solids are only about 3 x higher than ordinary air. You can, however, reasonably expect and such drive to be hermetically sealed with no spindles penetrating the casing.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hard Drive decline?

    While I can understand that people would want an SSD for the OS do they really have the lifespan to work as a much accessed data drive. Maybe I've got it wrong here but from what I remember SSD's have a limited rewrite lifespan whereas a traditional HD can last and last and last.

    Still thanks for the heads up. I'll be buying a couple optical drives as spares to ensure I can watch my DVD collection in the decades to come.

  4. KroSha

    Still using them here

    DVD and BD are by far the most cost effective archival medium for lots of people. I used to work for a games manufacturer, and we had rooms of DVDs keeping the reference copies of old work. Not business critical, so not on tape, but needed and important to have available on short notice.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Still using them here

      I guess the paranoid would make at least two archival copies on optical disks from different disc manufactures- just in case some latent disc decay manifests itself some years down the line.

      1. KroSha
        Thumb Up

        Re: Still using them here

        4 copies with 2 brands, actually. One of each to the reference Library, the others to offsite storage.

  5. Andy Fletcher

    Stopped buying machines with optical drives 2 years ago

    They're used so infrequently now, I can't see a reason to have one spinning in every users machine. USB Plextor for those rare occaisions. I think it was used twice in 2012.

  6. I Like Heckling Silver badge
    Meh

    Needs to happen sooner

    I've been holding of buying new drives since the floods a few years ago... Prices should have dropped back to pre-flood levels last year, but thanks to a lack of competition, they've remaind higher than they were when sellers started price gouging customers. As soon as the forecasts for higher prices were announced, online sellers immediately hiked their prices on existing stock.

    I have an 8TB media server, I want to rebuild it and place all but 1 drive with all 3TB (currently a mix of 2 and 1.5) and make use of a much more effective raid setup... which I can't do at the moment. 3TB drives are still in excess of £100 and 4TB well over £200

    Even 1TB drives are more expensive than the two 1.5TB drives I purchased 3yrs ago.

    On the plus side, SSD's are dropping to a more affordable level... But I need storage capacity more than I need speed.

  7. Belardi

    for many the SSD is enough

    For many business computers, 80-120GB is more than enough space. On the 3 desktops I'm building I quoted the client $80 for 500GB HD or 110 for intel 120GB SSD. The SSD won. I could go with the Samsung for $95 but I trust intel still.

    For those who have lots of data... Hybrid setups.

    Optical drives should be around for a few more years as some software comes on discs.

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