Peter Ehlert [2021-08-03 08:27:26] wrote:
> On August 3, 2021 8:17:58 AM Stefan Monnier <monn...@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>>> Second, the price of spinning disks is such that it makes no
>>> sense to buy anything smaller than 4TB, which will fit all this,
>>> and 6-8 TB are often a reasonable idea even for single users.
>> You seem to assume a 3½" form factor which either requires a "large"
>> desktop or an external enclosure.
> Not really. My HP z620 work station ain't huge.
Clearly "large" is smaller than "huge", so we don't disagree. FWIW of
my three desktops only one can accommodate 3½" disks (a Streacom F8
case) [ the other two are a 2006 Mac mini and a Librem mini. ]
>> Personally I consider this form factor dead every since I bought my
>> first 2TB 2½" disk.
> If you use Lots of drives (4tb), and are on a limited budget, like me... The
> 3.5 form factor is more cost effective.
That's why I wrote "personally". AFAIK the proportion of computer users
which "use lots of drives" is quite small. Maybe it's higher among
Debian users, admittedly, but still your original statement above lacks
a qualification like "AFAIC" or "IMO" ;-)
OK, to add actual info to this message, here's a quick look at today's
lowest prices in my "usual" store:
2TB $ 64 3½ HDD 32 $/TB
3TB $ 65 3½" HDD 22 $/TB
4TB $104 3½" HDD 26 $/TB
6TB $139 3½" HDD (external) 23 $/TB
8TB $199 3½" HDD 25 $/TB
10TB $323 3½" HDD (external) 32 $/TB
12TB $339 3½" HDD (external) 28 $/TB
I'm surprised at how stable the price per TB is over the 2-12 range.
It used to be the case that HDD price's curve was not nearly as linear
(which reflected the fact that production costs aren't (weren't?)
proportional to the drive's capacity).
I suspect that the profit margin varies widely over this spectrum.
2TB $ 60 2½" HDD (external) 30 $/TB
3TB $125 2½" HDD (external) 42 $/TB (only "recertified" available)
4TB $114 2½" HDD (external) 29 $/TB
5TB $139 2½" HDD (external) 28 $/TB
It's also interesting to see that the price per TB is about the same for
2½" HDD as for 3½" HDD, whereas it used to be significantly higher.
[ And also that in the 2½" space, your best bet in $/GB is to buy
a drive+enclosure, which implies you don't really know what you're
getting other than the capacity of the drive. :-( ]
That makes 3½" form factor even more dead than I thought (two 4TB 2½"
drives should offer better performance than one 8GB 3½" drive and use
less space, not sure about power consumption).
I wonder what kind of drives are used nowadays in big datacenters (and
whether the prices they pay for them looks anything like the ones
above).
For completeness, here's the list for SSDs:
½TB $ 60 2½" SSD 120 $/TB
1TB $100 2½" SSD 100 $/TB
2TB $244 2½" SSD 122 $/TB
4TB $540 2½" SSD 135 $/TB
so about 4x the price per TB (and here the linear price curve makes
a lot more sense).
Stefan
