And at the same time there's a story on HN[1] about SSDs being half their price. Enjoy the record profits while they last, the world is moving to SSDs and this will only speed up that migration.
Not only are prices up, the Major Hard drive manufactures (Seagate, Western Digital) have cut back a lot of their warrantees to only one year. Evidence suggests that the spinning disk manufacturing companies are reluctant to invest in aggressively building supply/plants because of the transition to SSDs - the market demands for Hard Drives will be met - but nobody is expecting explosive growth will continue to grow.
SSDs are finally within about a factor of 3x where they need to be before their usage in Laptops hockey sticks, and a factor of 4x before they make major inroads into desktops. In about 18-24 months, we'll start to see a natural reduction in Hard Drive shipments as people just start buying fewer of them, and a _huge_ leap in SSDs and other flash based storage.
Just a note, consumer-grade drives had their warranty cut.
HDD manufacturers have consolidated...What exists now is a duopoly. There was no reason for Seagate to cut warranties if their facilities were not affected by the natural disaster. They are never going to lift the warranty back to 3 years like before.
11 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 33.8 ms ] thread[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182944
SSDs on the other hand have great warranties. Crucial offers 3 years while Plextor and Samsung offer 5 years.
[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4183869
SSDs are finally within about a factor of 3x where they need to be before their usage in Laptops hockey sticks, and a factor of 4x before they make major inroads into desktops. In about 18-24 months, we'll start to see a natural reduction in Hard Drive shipments as people just start buying fewer of them, and a _huge_ leap in SSDs and other flash based storage.
HDD manufacturers have consolidated...What exists now is a duopoly. There was no reason for Seagate to cut warranties if their facilities were not affected by the natural disaster. They are never going to lift the warranty back to 3 years like before.