Are HDDs Being Replaced By SSDs?
As more consumers prefer to purchase notebooks, tablets, smartphones, and modern PCs with solid-state drives (SSDs) over traditional PCs, HDD revenue is projected to decline. Sales of HDDs are projected to further slip. Solid-state drives (SSDs) have several advantages over hard disk drives (HDDs), but are they expected to completely replace HDDs any time soon?
”Solid-state drives (SSD) are becoming more of a trend given how inexpensive they have become. More and more servers are now ordered with SSDs rather than HDDs”, said Ashu Singhal of Orion Networks.
Hard disk drives (HDDs) are mechanical and the data recovery process is much simpler, but they are also more susceptible to physical damage. Magnetic platters are also capable of holding vast amounts of data, and this may be one of the reasons why the hard drive has not been completely replaced by the solid-state drive (SSD). One of the disadvantages of hard disk drives is their limited lifespan, especially if they are used often.
The HDD industry will face a multitude of challenges moving forward. Shipments for desktop PCs are not as high as they once were as consumers continue to prefer smartphones and tablets.
The declining price of SSDs will also allow them to take away some share from conventional HDDs. Many have already predicted the end of the hard disk drive. However, there have been some recent reports that have thrown some doubt at this. Could there be a slow, but delayed demise of HDDs?
”Enterprises are moving towards SSDs and moving away from HDDs slowly”, said Duleep Pillai, Veltec Networks.
HDDs are cheaper compared to SSDs but the difference in cost is slowly reducing. SSD technology is improving and so is the storage space. In another few years, I feel SSD will be the defacto standard. The main advantages are speed and reliability compared to HDDs as they don’t have any mechanical moving parts. At this stage, price is still a consideration and HDDs work out to be a lot cheaper for mass storage, but that will change soon.
Are SSDs Completely Replacing HDDs in Enterprise Storage?
The short answer, for now, will have to be no. Many organizations are still using traditional spinning media in their data solutions and do not seem to be in a hurry to change their infrastructure.
The long answer is that when we look ahead to a few years from now, many enterprise data solutions will require the use of solid-state drives to accommodate the extensive amount of data. For many organizations, it doesn’t seem right to have SSDs as data set solutions when large data sets need to be handled. After all, HDDs have a lower cost per GB of storage compared to SSDs.
”From our perspective, storing data on hard drives seems to be on the decline. More and more of our clients are moving to the cloud for obvious reasons. There will always be a special requirement for enterprise drives, clients that have a large amount of data that must be kept on-premise, and require high throughput”, said Jorge Rojas of Tektonic Inc.
Enterprise hard disk drives use leading-edge technologies to demonstrate high performance and offer high capacities. However, hard disk drives are not shipped in huge volumes, but they are sold at a premium because of technology and extended reliability. Since many devices no longer have HDDs, but still have to store files somewhere, data is housed in the cloud and stored on various data center-class HDDs.
”Enterprise hard drives for servers have been slim pickings since before the pandemic started. Often we find ourselves designing servers around what hard drives are available versus which hard drives we prefer to implement. The good news is SSD prices have come down considerably in recent years”, said Joe Cannata, Techsperts LLC.
It is true that SSDs have been steadily dropping in price for years with no signs of slowing. The modern business world has been experiencing a shift in the way data sets are handled. The problem no longer arises from the cost of the storage, but from the cost of accessing the data.
What Is One Specific Benefit That HDDs Provide to Enterprises Storing Data?
While consumer drives are a lower-cost option, they are better suited for desktops and laptops, and some workstations. When you need reliability and high performance at a larger capacity, enterprise drives are the best option.
”We have experienced that servers are, most times, not getting replaced but retired. Unless, of course, there is a specific requirement. Like applications that must be hosted on-premise, and clients that are keeping a hybrid environment for this reason or just still not quite comfortable with moving everything to the cloud. This is quickly changing” said Jorge Rojas, Tektonic Inc.
We are even in the process of reviewing how we conduct our business. Our office has been unoccupied for almost 2 years. Not that we had servers in the office. They were already on the data center. But now we are also considering getting rid of whatever servers we can.
”Hard disk drives have evolved to better meet the expectations of today’s mass storage technology. One company that has been doing well with this is Pure Storage”, said Alex Hanna, ExcalTech.
Pure Storage is great for any enterprise-level company wishing to store large amounts of data that can get monitored and expanded as needed. Instead of having to replace your hard disk drives every time your data space is taken, this hardware solution helps expand the amount of data that can be stored and monitored. Pure Storage uses a flash array disk approach. Additional flash disks can be added to expand, and Pure Storage engineers will come in for routine maintenance and updates.
”Instead of having multiple disk drives for specific data, you can compress and store more data efficiently, safely, and exponentially. They use deduplication, and with this technique, your Pure Storage device will only need to save one copy of your programs and files that are common to more than one workstation so that there are no redundancies and, therefore, leaving you with more storage”, added Hanna.
While HDDs will still be around in workplaces with high-capacity storage needs, like data centers, cloud storage providers, and backup services, SSDs are becoming an attractive option.
