Will we all be using SSD instead of HDD a few years from now?

[GundamF91]

Just wondering if SSD is on the path to completely replace HDD a few years from now on. Is the technology getting to that point?

 

[octopus41092]

Well until I can get 500GB SSD's for under $100 I wouldn't. Even maybe like $200. At this point they're just not cost effective and I don't think that they will be even in a couple of years unless they have some sort of break through.

 

[Brovane]

I don't see SSD completely replacing Hard Drives in a few years because SSD are not even close to the same capacity as HDD. Maybe what will happen is this, a PC might have a SSD for performance as its primary OS drive and you have say a 2TB HDD as a large storage drive for media etc. I do see SSD becoming more prevalent in the laptop market. What is interesting is that the new EMC CX4 SAN supports SSD. So you can have another tier of storage with incredibly low seek times.

 

[taltamir]

capacity is far beyond the needs of average joe, and the various benefits of SSDs are awesome, and just increasing.

There is the OCZ core series for about 200$ right now, and intel said they will be releasing a revolutionary new controller that gives 200 MBs read 100 MBs write at a much lower cost. In a few YEARS is a very long time. In a few years I expect there to be massive, cheap, "storage" type drives, which are platters, and main drives being SSDs. with most drives sold being SSD.

Or maybe there will be an unexpected breakthrough in SSD tech and even storage would be relegated to them.

OCZ's high end drives right now, go for 500$ for a 64GB, and outperform the velociraptor. They also cost more though... so it is too much.

Intel says their new SSD will debut at a cheaper price that when SSDs go for right now. Drop 50% in 09, and another 50% in 2010.

latest sneak peak:
http://www.hothardware.com/New...or_and_SSD_Sneak_Peek/

 

[iBPJohn]

I think that hard drives will be around for at least 5 years, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's around for longer.
We should see 3TB hard drives very soon as the big manufactures have discovered new hard drive technologies
http://www.westerndigital.com/...ssRelease.asp?release={05F7E0B4-B357-4D6A-8993-73172269E411}

And Hitachi claims there will be 5TB by 2010:
http://tcmagazine.com/comments...id=6&highlight=Hitachi

High densities creates higher speeds because the heads can read more at once.

 

[Modelworks]

I don't see it happening in the next few years. SSD is exciting but it is new technology and with that comes cost and problems.
Hard drives are proven , well understood, and low cost.


The other thing that concerns me is the write limits.
I have worked with flash based microprocessors that have 1000000 write cycles before they fail , thats great for them, but not good for a hard drive that is continually swapping information. You can use algorithms all you want to move the data around and lessen the problem, but in the end it is still limited.

You may see SSD being used for things like program storage, while hard drives are still used for things that write often , like paging files.

 

[khelben1979]

If the prices for SSD:s drops hugely in the coming years, then I think that ordinary harddrives will be out of the game for good, definitely.

 

[supremelaw]

I am anticipating very dense RAM becoming widely available in the foreseeable future,
permitting very large and very fast main memory subsystems:

It's inevitable, imho, e.g. Elpida just announced DDR3 memory chips
that function at 2.5GHz and at very low voltages:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/m...nction_at_2_50GHz.html


With super dense RAM technology, the OS can be loaded directly into RAM,
and restored from a relatively slow SSD or rotating disk drive
if and when power is turned OFF to that RAM subsystem
e.g. something like the GHOST restore task, integrated into a BIOS.

Right now, there are server motherboards with 32 DIMM slots:
just extrapolate that current technology to memory modules
with 8, 16 and 32GB EACH.

Micron is now manufacturing 4GB SO-DIMMs, and as expected
they are relatively expensive (for now).

For many users, there won't be an absolute need for an
OS to occupy huge amounts of space e.g. 30-50GB:
that space requirement should become user-configurable.

Thus, a 10-20GB C: partition could be carved out of a
total main memory capacity of 128GB, leaving 108-118GB
for application programs.

The speed of memory-resident file systems has
already been well established, if not widely documented (yet).

And, with the migration to 64-bit logic becoming an accomplished fact --
industry-wide -- the benefits of a 128GB-to-1TB main memory
will be enormous.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[z1ggy]

I think SSD's will become something to boot up from and something that is very fast...I haven't read into the problems of them yet I woudl assume they are going to become more reliable than HDD's maybe once the technology is very well in place since there are no moving parts. I think HDD's will be around still for a long time until SSD's grow into the 100-200gb range.. or fall dramatically in price. I remember a while back when the TB disks came out they were very very expensive. Now look how cheap they are relatively speaking. I woudl expect the same thing to happn to SSD's.. just like every other computer technology to ever hit the market.

 

[Modelworks]

You can make SSD cheap but it still has a write/erase cycle limitation.