The drives are just as reliable as when they were $70 or $100. The warranty is the same length.
Warranty periods went down to a year on a lot of the cheaper drives. Standard for consumer drives a few years back was 3 years.
No one said anything about enterprise. Even if we were, the price multiple between enterprise spinning disks and SSDs isn't better.
Enterprise SSDs are typically faster, not necessarily more robust. It's a fair comparison using enterprise HDDs and decent consumer SSDs like Samsung. Both have a 5-year warranty.
You need to take the blinders off on slower drives. If they make a drive that spins slower, they just use cheaper parts with the same reliability ratings. There's no advantage but the price.
Less power consumption and less noise are also advantages.
That does not follow. If the mass market is sensitive to price, they won't pay twice as much for a quarter of the space. Most people don't understand SSDs, let alone are willing to pay the premium for the performance.
SSDs have been hyped much like the 7200 RPM drives before them. Also, if you ask most computer users how big their drive is you'll get a blank stare. Most people buy new drives solely on price and speed (hence the reason 7200 RPM sells). When a salesperson says you can get something way faster than 7200 RPM for the same price, don't think most people won't go for it. Only those who actually know they need a certain amount of space won't. Also, the cost of the drive is a fraction of the system cost. You get more performance gains by going from HDD to SSD than you would by upgrading any other component. Salespeople will harp on that fact indefinitely. I know because once I went in MicroCenter asking about a 4TB HDD they had on sale. The salesperson kept pushing me to get a 500GB SSD instead with stuff like "this will make your system fly", "how many people need more than 500GB?" and so forth. I hadn't intended on buying anything actually but this exchange was very enlightening. As mostly a bunch of computer people, I don't think too many here have a pulse on what the average person thinks.
The enterprise version of 2TB drive that I bought is about $70. This has been mentioned, but you could just get three "indecent" drives and run a double mirror with much greater reliability and performance.
So you need the space and power for three drives, plus you have to cope with the extra noise? Doesn't seem like a great answer unless you're running a data center. I don't even know how to set drives up in RAID, much less have any desire to. Your answer here is like me telling someone who wants to measure their car battery voltage to get a Fluke 189 like I just bought instead of a $3 multimeter at Harbor Freight. Sometimes I need to take off my EE blinders when giving people advice. I'd recommend the computer experts here do the same.
Addendum: I did the math for the extra power consumption. At let's say 6 watts per drive that's 18 watts. At the power meter it's maybe 21 watts accounting for power supply efficiency. My machine is generally on 24/7, so in a year that's ~184 kW-hrs. Over the 5 years I would probably use the drives it's 920 kW-hrs. At NYC prices of about $0.30 kW-hr delivered I'd be paying $276 for power plus and $210 for three drives. Total cost then for this solution using three drives is $276 for power plus $210 for the drives. Grand total $486. Now look at using an SSD instead. Average power consumption is close the idle power consumption of 60 mW given that I rarely access bulk storage. Let's call it 100mW for argument's sake. Over the same 5 years of 24/7 operation total power usage at the meter is ~4.4 kW-hrs at a whopping cost of $1.32. The 2TB SSD would cost me about $630 going by Newegg's recent prices. So grand total is $631.32. I'd rather pay an extra ~$150 for a solution which uses far less space, makes no noise, and is likely just as reliable, if not more so. Within less than a year I'd say TCO between these two solutions will be the same. We just need 2TB SSDs to fall to around $480.
Before you say BUT you can have the HDDs spin down to save power, well, sure you can but then if you occasionally access data your access times go WAY up waiting for those drives to spin up. Kind of negates the entire notion that "7200 RPM is faster". I actually tried letting HDDs spin down a few times. The lag was so annoying I just let them run 24/7 now. Probably better for mechanical reliability as well.
Your point appears to apply exactly to one person, and that's you.
It applies to anyone who evaluates these things logically. HDDs are great at one thing-cheap, bulk storage. As such, they should consume as little power as possible, make as little noise as possible, and be as cheap as possible. In general, slower RPM maximizes these three criteria. 7200RPM means more noise and power and heat, and either lower reliability or a more expensive drive to get the same reliability. So what's the point? A little extra speed? For bulk storage it just doesn't matter if your access times are little less. 7200 RPM gets you exactly 1.38888 ms less rotational latency and therefore access times (assuming seek times are identical) over 5400 RPM. It may or may not get you 33% better STRs. That depends upon whether or not you increase areal density if you go to 5400 RPM. My point here is even at 3600 RPM seek times and STRs would be "good enough" for 99% of bulk storage needs. Maybe this doesn't work for some data centers, but that's why you have the more pricey 7200 RPM enterprise drives.
This is also why I
can't wait for SSDs to become cheap enough to put spinning disks in the dust bin of history for good. If HDDs makers are going to eliminate products which were a better fit for lots of people then they deserve to go out of business. Here's hoping Seagate and WD file chapter 8 within the next few years.
