Why Solid State Drives Won't Replace Spinning Disk (Enterprise Forum)

[Drew Wilson]

It wasn't that long ago that solid state drives (SSDs) were DRAM-based and cost a fortune. Then the proliferation of mobile devices requiring shock and vibration profiles that exceeded hard drives created a huge market for flash. Prices dropped, and with more money available for R&D, the density increased dramatically.

It's been a period of tremendous evolution for flash, but I believe dark clouds are forming on the horizon. Let's start with a little history to help me make my point. I first heard more than 20 years ago that tape was dead, but it took data deduplication to make disk cheap enough to hurt tape sales. So it wasn't disk drives alone that were able to impact tape sales; it was disk drives combined with new technology.

Now we're hearing from some that flash drives are going to replace hard disk drives, and that the cost difference, though great now, will continue to decline. Vendors are putting out charts showing the cost of flash drives and hard disk drives converging, which looks to me like some of the charts I saw for tape and disk more than 20 years ago. I don't think it's going to happen any time soon, and the reasons have to do with lithography limits and disk drive density.

More... (http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/article.php/3894671)

[Mels_Smileys45]

My old PC blew up but when I build my new PC it will have an SSD as the main drive but I am still gonna install a large spinner for the back up. I did not read the rest but perhaps thats where its going IDK. The new SSD's are just so darn FAST!!!! I am certain that boot times will be almost instant before long.


BTW, where is everyone at these days? Feel like I am all alone....wha?

[NDGAARONDI]

Was looking into SSD and I think people are paying through the nose for them if they are getting them as HDD replacements. It's the classic format wars again and it will take over a decade before large SDD can become affordable to the extent that HDD are now. I might get a SSD (64GB) as the drive for the operating system and stick to externals (only switch them on when accessing a file etc). The main advantage I can see for SDD are that they are quiet.

[Atheist Icon]

SSD will replace Spinners, its only a matter of time. Until SSD get on parity with price, it will not happen. I can find 2TB hard drives for 99-139, a 1TB SSD is around 4400.

Hell, I remember when 100GB HDD were a couple thousand.