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Analysts estimate SSD prices will drop 50 percent by mid-2023:
As SSD and NAND prices gradually decline, analysts now believe the price drops have no end in sight. The latest projections show that next year, consumers may be able to add 2TB worth of SSD storage to their PC for less than $100.
It's safe to say that one of the best inventions for PC components was the creation of NAND flash and the subsequent M.2 SSDs. The ability to store upwards of multiple terabytes of data on a storage device nearly the same size as a stick of gum is fantastic.Unfortunately, M.2 drives with those high amounts of data have been unfathomable for most consumers for a while.
Recently, SSDs have seen significant price cuts and capacity increases. Just six years ago, a 1 TB NVMe drive from Samsung cost nearly $500. Now, the same SSDs go for $90. That's an 80-percent price cut. Analysts believe this steady price decline will continue. Estimations indicate current SSD costs could be cut in half by the middle of 2023. If projections prove correct, 1 TB M.2 SSDs could retail for around $50, 2 TB SSDs might reach sub-$100 prices, and the 4 TB drives approaching the $200 mark might put them within reach of budget-minded customers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday October 13 2022, @09:22PM
Storage is boring and stagnant now. HDD $/TB has plateaued and the technology is prone to horrible mechanical failures, especially on cheaper consumer drives. The 30-100 TB HAMR/MAMR drives on the roadmap are probably only relevant to big companies.
An SSD sets you way back on capacity and $/TB, and isn't reliable for unpowered data retention. The move to cheap QLC causes problems, and PLC (5 bits per cell) might be on the menu.
SD card technology also uses NAND, so same problems. The 2 TB SD/microSD that would max out SDXC readers is missing in action. It's unclear if SDUC (supporting up to 128 TB) will ever catch on given that smartphones are ditching microSD capability. Newer versions of the SD standard have specified impressive speeds of up to 4 GB/s (PCIe 4.0 x2), but actually reaching those speeds might be impossible due to heat issues.
Optical discs are dying. You can get BDXL discs, but $/TB is much worse than HDDs. The consumer electronics industry is phasing out optical discs at every turn, and prices will continue to creep up. Storage longevity of existing consumer discs is debatable. "Archival Disc" allegedly hits 1 TB (the 500 GB discs exist, not sure about 1 TB), but it's only relevant to enterprise, again. There's still talk of multi-terabyte discs [whathifi.com], but there will be resistance to putting anything in the hands of consumers, who will be
forcedencouraged to store everything in the cloud instead.Two things could save us: post-NAND universal memory to tackle SSDs, and some kind of super optical/holographic technology for bulk storage. Both are plagued by vaporware as expected. Intel's 3D XPoint/Optane was portrayed like a universal memory early on, but that was a lie and now Intel has ditched it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]