Future Talk -- How long will it take?

[m-323]

there are lots of great new storage devices out there but I'm not buying anymore storage myself...

Just wondering how long everyone here thinks it will take for all the spinning disks in all the computers on the planet to become obsolete in lieu of solid state?

Just think... less space, less heat, less energy use, no need for lasers to burn disks, faster transfer rates, no noise, no fans, no liquid cooling. In fact, maybe there will be no need for personal storage at all.

Maybe Everything gets stored centrally at Google and manipulated by us using Google's fibre optic lines that they have been buying up over the past years. Then Google will have control of everything. All the information changing hands, all the media, even full feature movies, all stored online with Google as the gate keeper. Sobering thought.

Already been a few years since Ive personally stored email on our machines.

.. and will it happen before Dec 21 2012 - that is the question.

Maybe we should start an online pool

M/

 

[Giaguara]

When you can have Exabytes of data stored in a permanent, non-perishable format in something that takes much less space, is faster to access etc.
When solid state will be cheaper and replace all moving part hard drives in datacenters...

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Just wondering how long everyone here thinks it will take for all the spinning disks in all the computers on the planet to become obsolete in lieu of solid state?

Probably as long as it took VHS to go the way of DVD -- fifteen years or more, and VHS still isn't completely dead.

Just think... less space, less heat, less energy use, no need for lasers to burn disks, faster transfer rates, no noise, no fans, no liquid cooling. In fact, maybe there will be no need for personal storage at all.

Also, remember that solid-state storage also has a definite, finite lifespan -- unlike spinning disc hard drives, which have an estimated lifespan, but can theoretically run forever. I've got 10-year-old hard drives still in service that haven't shown a single symptom of failure. I don't think that solid-state drives are estimated to last 10 years.

Maybe Everything gets stored centrally at Google and manipulated by us using Google's fibre optic lines that they have been buying up over the past years. Then Google will have control of everything. All the information changing hands, all the media, even full feature movies, all stored online with Google as the gate keeper. Sobering thought.

I'll go for this idea, sure... when the United States gets off their collective buttocks and brings us up to par with the rest of the technologically advanced portions of the world in terms of internet speed and price.

 

[MisterMe]

...

Already been a few years since Ive personally stored email on our machines.

.. and will it happen before Dec 21 2012 - that is the question.

...

I wouldn't hold my breath. It hasn't been a few years; it has been more like a few decades. SSDs have been around for about 30 years. Over the next 30 years, I expect them to make remarkable progress.

 

[m-323]

Probably as long as it took VHS to go the way of DVD -- fifteen years or more, and VHS still isn't completely dead.

Ive still got a box of vhs tapes from a project I did years ago. I have a distributor for the program. they declared vhs officially dead. they wont even produce the program anymore on vhs.

I dont know what to do with the 50 or so tapes I have left in the basement. its the same show as on dvd but no one will take them even at a few cents on the dollar. :~(

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Ive still got a box of vhs tapes from a project I did years ago. I have a distributor for the program. they declared vhs officially dead. they wont even produce the program anymore on vhs.

One distributor claiming that VHS is dead only makes VHS dead for that one distributor, not for the entire industry.

Look at the porn industry -- still happily collecting money off of VHS productions/sales!

 

[Mikuro]

Also, remember that solid-state storage also has a definite, finite lifespan -- unlike spinning disc hard drives, which have an estimated lifespan, but can theoretically run forever. I've got 10-year-old hard drives still in service that haven't shown a single symptom of failure. I don't think that solid-state drives are estimated to last 10 years.

Are you referring to the limited erase-write cycles or something else? Is there a reason flash media would not last as well in archives (i.e., not in use) than HDs?

As for the limited writes, I think this is basically a non-issue now. The number of writes has increased a lot over the years (it's in the millions now), and with the storage size ever increasing, you can go a loooong time without overwriting any one part that many times (intelligent file systems try to wear out flash drives evenly).

There was an article about this a while back (I think this is the one: http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html ) that concluded that with even wear leveling, it would take over 50 years of constant writing at max speed to wear out a 64GB flash drive. That would increase proportionally as storage size increases and write endurance increases.

Obviously that's not a real-world scenario; in the real world there would be large parts of your disk that would very rarely change, so the wear on the rest of the disk would be higher. But even so, keeping lots of space free at all times is normal these days (and recommended in OS X even with HDs). I think I can safely expect to die long before I wear out the writes on modern flash media.

 

[fryke]

Or at least you'd live long enough that the files would be moved from the average 128 GB SSD to a 10 TB SSD in a couple of years, long before the original SSD dies its death.

 

[Rhisiart]

.....VHS still isn't completely dead.

Mine is.

 

[MisterMe]

...

As for the limited writes, I think this is basically a non-issue now. The number of writes has increased a lot over the years (it's in the millions now), ...

For fun and valuable prizes:

How many writes are performed by the virtual memory system each day?

 

[Mikuro]

For fun and valuable prizes:

How many writes are performed by the virtual memory system each day?

My system with 1GB of RAM has written an average of 87,040 writes of 4KB each (340MB) each day since my last startup 9 days ago. That's equivalent to 4.25 seconds of the worst-case scenario discussed in that article.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Do "they" really know how many sustained reads/writes a flash-based drive can handle? Hell, they still don't know what the expected shelf-life of a DVD-R is... 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?

I've heard suggestions that critical, long-term data be stored on (rotating platter, magnetic) hard drives and placed in a cool, dry place instead of storing that data on a recordable DVD because of the uncertainty and quality variance of DVD-/+R media.

Kind of like cars -- I had a Honda that was supposed to last 20 years or more die after 5 years. I had a VW Golf last 10 years and 250,000 miles. The Honda (which has a reputation of being reliable and long-term) had many problems (probably some that existed from the factory but were undetectable until the warranty ran out) and died a premature death. The Golf was a tank and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't kill it. I believe I could have put another quarter-million miles on that engine before it gave up the ghost.

The point is that they can make estimates about longevity, but these complex machines (hard drives and cars) are unpredictable. You're only certain of the shelf life when the unit finally dies and you're left with a finite, exact lifespan -- but by then, the data's gone. "After the fact" doesn't cut it for some people.