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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

Here's an article from 2011 doing Moore's Law extrapolation of RAM and disk prices: https://antranik.org/using-moores-law-to-predict-future-memo...

RAM, 2011: "A single 8GB stick of RAM is about $80 right now. In 2021, you’d be able to buy a single stick of RAM that contains 64GB for the same price."

Disks, 2011: "The price of a 1-terabyte hard drive is $80 now...

In 2013, a 2TB drive will be $80.

In 2015, a 4TB drive will be $80.

After that the doubling rate may lengthen to 3 years instead of 2 years so..

In 2018, an 8TB drive will be $80. And finally in 2021, for $80, you’d be able to buy a 16 terabyte hard drive"

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I don’t think it’s fair to expect hard drive capacity/$ to grow exponentially forever.

Certainly for consumer hard drives, there’s a cost of getting the drive to the customer (transport, shop rent, employee salaries, etc) which is, at best, fixed.

If manufacturing costs drop to zero, price will approach that fixed cost (plus any markup sellers manage to extract, for example by marketing their drives as better/more hip/etc.)

For the record, it's 2021 and the cheapest 16tb hard drive on pcpartpicker is $335. For $80 you can get a cheap 4tb hard drive.

When I was a kid, me and a friend would be amazed at a 25,000 dollar 1 TB multi hd array.

We couldn’t imagine how anyone would ever need so much space.

Is applying Moore's law relevant, since the manufacturing process of DRAM is hugely different from the one for usual chips (limited by capacitor size, not transistor one) ? Same goes for hard drives. Not saying that price gouging has nothing to do with this, but simply saying "Moore's law was not followed" does in no way imply something interfered with it.

Moore's law was (1) an observation of historical data and (2) never a guarantee by vendors to make higher capacity products at lower prices. The extrapolation is just nonsense wishful thinking.

lcd screens didn't fall in price because of an international criminal price-fixing conspiracy. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT-LCD_(Flat_Panel)_Antitrust_Li...

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