[Dylan16807]

Good quality has a baseline level of speed which is pretty fast. There's not much you can cut at that point.

But cheap SSDs got down to 2x the price of hard drives last year. Even after prices stabilized, they're at 3x. Flash catching up relatively soon seems likely. Flash matching the current price of hard drives seems even more likely.

[ksec]

I think that is too optimistic. The cost / capacity of NAND, even by Western Digital roadmap wouldn't have come down to current HDD price by 2027 / 2028. And that is assuming HDD price dont fall.

[didgetmaster]

I agree. The price difference between SSD storage and HDD per TB is still a multiple (seems to be currently about 5x). That is better than the 10x it was a few years ago; but I don't expect them to be equivalent any time soon.

[Dylan16807]

What numbers are you looking at for 5x?

Making sure I'm looking at new hard drives, I see prices around $15/TB at the cheap end. There are a few name-brand SSDs at $45/TB, many more at $50/TB. They're not high end but even the low end is fast these days.

[didgetmaster]

Just like SSDs are $50 at the cheap end; I have seen HDD at $10 on the cheap end.

[Dylan16807]

Definitely new ones? When and where? I keep an eye on prices and I've never seen that.

[didgetmaster]

Although the ads I saw claimed to be new drives, I have no way to verify that they are not refurbished. Of course, I don't know if the $50 per tb SSDs are reliable either.

[Teever]

It seems that HDD density has stopped improving so fast and you're going to run into a wall on price reduction because due to the extra material and shipping cost involved in producing an HDD vs. a tiny m.2 SSD.

[Dylan16807]

I think it's more that we have different amounts of time in mind for "relatively soon". I'd be happy with that roadmap.

Where can I find info on that roadmap, by the way? I've found a few things but they're very vague about price at best.

[Coolbeanstoo]

Interesting, thanks. I'm quite hopeful to be hard drive free at some point in my NAS