It is practically impossible to find a desktop, laptop or Mini PC that does not integrate an SSD. These drives are more efficient, faster and more robust than their predecessors, although their capacity is significantly smaller. Although the hard drives at a professional and industrial level are still very important, they could end up disappearing in about five years.
The HDD market has been in continuous contraction for over a decade and has no sign of stopping. Mechanical drives have the big problem of performance, which is very low, with read and write speeds of just 100 MB/s. In addition, they present the problems of vibrations, which when there are many units in a system can be a problem.
Goodbye hard drives
Who has indicated the date of death of hard drives has been Shawn Rosemarin, Vice President of Research and Development by Pure Storage. Surely this company does not sound like anything to you, but it is specialized in professional storage
He has highlighted that the problem with this type of units lies in the energy consumption. A mechanical hard drive can consume up to 10 times more power than an SSD. The mechanical parts, such as the actuators and the discs, represent a large energy expenditure for their operation.
Rosemarin points out that the reduction in the price of TB in SSDs is a key factor. Due to this reduction,s hard drives could stop being manufactured in 2028.
Rosemarin is aware that the user does not care excessively about the energy consumption of the HDD, which is normal. But, she wants to make it clear that over 3% of world electricity is used in the Data Centers and what about him 35% of said energy they consume it storage systems. He also comments that most of these are HDDs.
He comments that as the price of the TB on SSDs is dropping, the cost of HDD replacement will also drop. It indicates that the presence of hard drives will fall on a larger scale. In addition, he considers that the consumption in data centers, thanks to the change will fall between 80-90%.
Something that you have been asked is about a possible decrease in the price of electricity. He points out that this does not seem feasible in the short term without advances in nuclear power technology. He also comments that there are countries and regions that have already adopted notable energy restrictions.
He has not missed the opportunity to say that “I have not mentioned the poor performance of HDDs in terms of I/O transmission speed”
The day will come, but putting a date on it is still very exaggerated
We are all clear that there will come a day when hard drives stop being manufactured and produced. Establishing that it will be in five or ten years is the same as something exaggerated. Seagate and Western Digital have plans for HDDs up to 50TB that should arrive in 2030.
It is quite drastic to say that in just five years these will stop being manufactured. What seems likely is that units of 4 TB or less will stop being manufactured, it would be normal. 500 GB hard drives are no longer (or barely) produced today, they don’t make the slightest sense.
We see it as more likely that the minimum capacity of these units will increase in the coming years. They still make sense for massive data storage, although it is true that the factors that Rosemarin points to for their discontinuation are evident.
