[codemac]

I wouldn't count them out, just as much as disk drives were supposed to replace tape for how long now?

I bet disks will get even more dense (think 20+ TiB), have better reliability when powered off, and be sold in pallets to large companies mostly.

For the consumer market, disk drives are already pretty much dead.

[toomuchtodo]

It all really depends on the SSD curve. If SSDs continue their price decline and capacity increases as this article mentions, it'd be difficult for HDDs to compete. Tape costs you no power in storage, but HDDs do unless you're powering them down and spinning them back up (which causes significant wear on the motor). SSDs get you cheap storage and lower power consumption, negating both tape and HDDs simultaneously.

TL;DR SSD advancement set to deprecate HDDs and tape in near future.

[codemac]

> (which causes significant wear on the motor)

[citation needed]

Copan and many other companies did really well powering down drives.