Will Hard Disks become Obsolete in Near future

[maverick786us]

With the introduction of Flash Memory in SONY VIAO in which OS in instantly loaded from the memory, will it make Hard Disks obsolute by replacing it with Flash Memory?

[brokenarrow03]

I think it will eventually, however these days mechanical drives will still be superior due to cost and capacity factors...

Do you have a link to this VIAO?

[maverick786us]

High end Sony VIAO Laptops uses flash memory instead of hard disks to boot OS. IF you google this, you can find several links

[protias]

Eventually yes, but not in the near future (1+ year).

[mutantmagnet]

Hard drives will definitely be dead within the decade just like cassettes and VHS have been nearly wiped away by CDs and DVDs.

They have a fixed cost that can never be gotten around so eventually flash will just catch up in the price/GB ratio.

[heatlesssun]

Its all going to be about price. Once SSD drives are within 20% or so of HDDs, SSD's will become the new standard. My prediction is that this will happen by 2012.

[hmz]

Doubt that. We really don't know the reliability of SSD's. It may take years to find out.

[DonDon]

For desktop use yes. Most people do not need a 500 gig boot drive.

Hard drives will be around for quite a while in server use for bulk storage though.

Don

[Syntax Error]

High end Sony VIAO Laptops uses flash memory instead of hard disks to boot OS. IF you google this, you can find several links
You're talking about an SSD.

Sony Viaos are hardly the only laptops that use these...

[Nielo TM]

As technology advances, localized systems begins to unify. For example, in todays top-end MB architecture, NB is effectively dead. The PCI-E and Memory Controller are now found within the CPU. In few months, the onboard GPU will also be found within the CPU die.

The same thing will happen to the data storage architecture. Soon, system RAM and HDD will begin to unify thanks to recent advancements in DRAM technology (including memristor). Then it will unify with the CPU cache and registers. In 20 years, the architecture of a domestic PC will be unrecognizable.

[Ockie]

Define "hard-disks" first. SSD's and RAM drives can be considered hard drives. It's more of a concept or technology rather than a label.

[DonDon]

Define "hard-disks" first. SSD's and RAM drives can be considered hard drives. It's more of a concept or technology rather than a label.

Well, since Hard Disks were an advancement of the floppy disk technology, we can assume he was talking about a drive with a spinning platter. SSD's and Ram drives do not have spinning disks, and so do not fit the concept of a "Hard Disk" as mentioned in the thread title. Since the OP specifically mentioned flash memory was replacing hard disks, I think it is a safe assumption that he is wondering if the spinning disk magnetic storage media was in danger of being obsolete.

IMHO, yes they are for desktop and laptop use.

Don

[Empty_Quarter]

I dont know, i'd give it a few years till one can say HDDs are obsolete. With HDDs increasing in capacity very quickly, they make for good storage drives.

A decade sounds about right.

[Ockie]

Well, since Hard Disks were an advancement of the floppy disk technology, we can assume he was talking about a drive with a spinning platter. SSD's and Ram drives do not have spinning disks, and so do not fit the concept of a "Hard Disk" as mentioned in the thread title. Since the OP specifically mentioned flash memory was replacing hard disks, I think it is a safe assumption that he is wondering if the spinning disk magnetic storage media was in danger of being obsolete.

IMHO, yes they are for desktop and laptop use.

Don

So what would you call an solid state disk? Not a hard drive? A hard drive is a function or concept.

I guess my mind is a little more open to the concept of a hard-drive rather than just assuming it's a metallic spinning platter... then again, I've used technologies considered hard-drives way before ssd's were found on mainstream.

[epimetheus]

I'm with Ockie here. Hard drive is a functional nomenclature these days. It isn't confined to the type of media, but rather it's purpose. I don't give a crap if there are miniature hamsters taking notes inside my data storage device, the damn thing's still a hard drive.

On topic, spinning magnetic media is here for a while. The readership of [H]ard|Forum does not represent the majority of computer users. We always adopt new technology before the masses do.

[Nielo TM]

I dont know, i'd give it a few years till one can say HDDs are obsolete. With HDDs increasing in capacity very quickly, they make for good storage drives.

A decade sounds about right.

Their capacity vs cost are improving at an expectational rate. However, their latency and transfer speed are far too slow.

I suppose one could say HDDs are excellent for archiving, but SSD are more suitable for performance

[dr.stevil]

I suspect that HDD's (in the traditional mechanical sense) will be around for at least another decade in some form or another.

As someone else pointed out, SSD's aren't a proven technology yet... who knows how they'll perform as they age

[Empty_Quarter]

Their capacity vs cost are improving at an expectational rate. However, their latency and transfer speed are far too slow.

I suppose one could say HDDs are excellent for archiving, but SSD are more suitable for performance

I agree, HDDs for mass storage, SSDs for performance (or in a couple of years), mainstream purposes.

I hardly doubt SSDs can match HDDs in cost per GB. Even in a decades time.

[yacoub35]

"Will Hard Disks become Obsolete in Near future"?

Not until SSDs become a hell of a lot cheaper per GB and more durable for long-term usage especially for storage of important data.

[iceredwing]

That will likely be based on price. As computers improve, programs have become increasingly larger. Videos & Photos have increased substantially in size as the technology has improved the quality of the output.

SSDs will eventually take over consumer desktops and laptops when they are more cost effective at a reasonable size. And that reasonable size will be dictated by how large those common everyday files become.

But I don't see hard drives being phased out completely because I don't really see SSDs becoming main stream storage drives anytime soon. But I wouldn't bet against SSD prices coming down as technology improves. Look at how much advancement the industry has made in the last decade, the growth is exponential. But as SSDs become cheaper so will hard drives.

[Crotan]

I see it happening but like it has been mentioned not until prices come down and storage goes up. Currently, most configurations of modern day Laptops have the option of an SDD as the sole drive, of course with a hefty price tag, but it's there. It's certainly on its way.

[SmokeRngs]

Define "hard-disks" first. SSD's and RAM drives can be considered hard drives. It's more of a concept or technology rather than a label.

I'd say you are incorrect. Hard disk drives are just that, drives that use hard disks represented by platters. Floppy disk drives are the same concept but different because they use thin, magnetic sheets of disk which are floppy.

Solid state drives are completely different. They don't have disks at all and instead use flash memory that isn't a disk.

http://www.hardfolding.com/fhtag.php/mem/207/1/2.png (http://www.hardfolding.com/fh_stats/?pz=102&tnum=33&id=207) http://www.hardfolding.com/w_tag.php/mem/67729/1/2.png (http://www.hardfolding.com/?p=2611&tid=33&id=67729)

[ShadowVlican]

HDDs may become obsolete due to their relative slow speeds, but it functions perfectly fine as a mass storage device

i don't know whether SSDs can ever replace HDDs on the storage front... they'll have to surpass the data density and price/gb for that to happen

[Ockie]

I'd say you are incorrect.

I would disagree. A media that is distinct from its storage medium confined in a sealed environment is classified as a hard drive. Whether or not you decide to declare it a magnetic device or not, then that is up to you, but a hard drive can also include tape mediums as well and can include solid state also.

You are too narrow minded on your view of what a "hard drive" is or perhaps too accustomed. Just like how Kleenex is referred to as any micro cell tissue based paper.

But whatever, I'm not gonna argue it, I just think it's a false concept to think hard drives will become obsolete when it's really the device type. A better title would have been "Will magnetic or mechanical disks become obsolete in the near future?" well, absolutely!

[DonDon]

I would disagree. A media that is distinct from its storage medium confined in a sealed environment is classified as a hard drive. Whether or not you decide to declare it a magnetic device or not, then that is up to you, but a hard drive can also include tape mediums as well and can include solid state also.

You are too narrow minded on your view of what a "hard drive" is or perhaps too accustomed. Just like how Kleenex is referred to as any micro cell tissue based paper.

But whatever, I'm not gonna argue it, I just think it's a false concept to think hard drives will become obsolete when it's really the device type. A better title would have been "Will magnetic or mechanical disks become obsolete in the near future?" well, absolutely!

The thread title is, " Will Hard DISKS become Obsolete in Near future." He did not say Drive, he asked about DISKS. Hard disks as the os drive are definitely limited.

While they serve the same function, SSDs and hard disks are 2 entirely different classes of drives. Once you use a SSD for an OS drive, it is difficult to go back to a hard disk.

We can argue semantics all night, but in my mind a hard drive and a Solid State drive are 2 entirely different beasties that serve the same purpose.

Don

[maverick786us]

The biggest drawback I've read about Solid State Drives is its life expetency, Limited write (erase) cycles: Flash-memory cells will often wear out after 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles for MLC, and up to 100,000 write cycles for SLC.

I don't know how much time it will take for this limitation to overcome, and once there is a solution to this, it should'nt take much time for Solid State Drives to come into mainstream.

[DonDon]

The biggest drawback I've read about Solid State Drives is its life expetency, Limited write (erase) cycles: Flash-memory cells will often wear out after 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles for MLC, and up to 100,000 write cycles for SLC.

I don't know how much time it will take for this limitation to overcome, and once there is a to this, it should'nt take much time for Solid State Drives to come into mainstream.

Oh good lord, not again.

Should I bother to go through this crap yet again???? Sure, why not, but I am so annoyed at people who bring up a point in a thread without doing ANY research into what they just said.

In normal usage, a MLC based SSD will be long obsolete before they hit the 10K write issue. In that time, a comparable hard drive will have had to be replaced due to physical wear issues with motors and bearings.

OH, BTW, during that time, the SSD is an order of magnitude faster than the magnetic drive.

Do you people who hate SSDs also have a vinyl LP collection that you listen to regularly?

Don

[maverick786us]

I've done enough research before putting this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_drives

I don't have any hatered for SSDs, infact I would love to see SSDs in action but this limitation is a concern for me.

[astrallite]

The biggest drawback I've read about Solid State Drives is its life expetency, Limited write (erase) cycles: Flash-memory cells will often wear out after 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles for MLC, and up to 100,000 write cycles for SLC.

I don't know how much time it will take for this limitation to overcome, and once there is a to this, it should'nt take much time for Solid State Drives to come into mainstream.

10 years at 50GB/day for an Intel 80GB SSD. Or run a 5 full-drive sequential write tests per day for 5 years. Both are hard to consistently do.

Mainstream pricing is a concern though. Flagship hard drives for the last 10 years have been pretty steady around the $250 price mark. The same can't be said for SSDs ($800 for a 64GB Intel, $1400 for a 120GB Vertex EX).

[SmokeRngs]

Oh good lord, not again.

Should I bother to go through this crap yet again???? Sure, why not, but I am so annoyed at people who bring up a point in a thread without doing ANY research into what they just said.

In normal usage, a MLC based SSD will be long obsolete before they hit the 10K write issue. In that time, a comparable hard drive will have had to be replaced due to physical wear issues with motors and bearings.

OH, BTW, during that time, the SSD is an order of magnitude faster than the magnetic drive.

Do you people who hate SSDs also have a vinyl LP collection that you listen to regularly?

Don

I'll say up front that I haven't done research on this yet. However, there is one flaw in the testing; especially in the case of when an SSD is used as an OS drive. It's not very often that many of the files of the OS and installed programs are overwritten. That will leave a part of the drive which will rarely be written to. That's not a problem. However, the rest of the drive is likely to be written, erased and written again a lot more often wearing out that part of the drive. I know all about "leveling" with these drives and that's one of the main reasons they will last longer.

That said, it would not surprise me that even in that scenario the drive would likely outlast the first system it's installed in. In my case, that drive would likely be moved from my main system after I got a new drive to replace it and moved to another system to longer use. There is still the chance that at least part of the drive will wear out quicker than you might think.

I don't want to hear any bitching out of this. If you have proof that my scenario isn't likely to happen, then please post it. Also, I have nothing against SSDs. If I could afford a good one I would probably buy one to at least try one out.

[argoth]

Personally, I think hard drives can't die fast enough. They've been a hugely limiting factor in computing for years. Capacities may have increased, but performance gains didn't keep pace with their counterparts.

Mainstream pricing is a concern though. Flagship hard drives for the last 10 years have been pretty steady around the $250 price mark. The same can't be said for SSDs ($800 for a 64GB Intel, $1400 for a 120GB Vertex EX).

Thankfully prices for SSDs are dropping dramatically as more competition enters the market and more demand for the drives arises. SSDs are already big on the enterprise market. Also, SSDs are based on cheap to manufacture components and they are actually less expensive to produce than hard drives. Once they ramp up production and move more mainstream, we should see significantly lower prices.

Sure, when the Intel 80GB first came to market at $800 it was high, but that same product is less than half the price now in a matter of months. The OCZ Vertex EX is their server drive which is significantly more expensive than it's consumer counterpart (which was ~$400 at launch). Keep in mind though, when hard drives first came to market, they were also terribly expensive (100MB hard drives for $15,000 in 1983!). Times have changed though, the market will no longer bear such things.

Besides, we've all made expensive, bleeding edge purchases only to replace them with superior mainstream ones later I'm sure.

I remain optimistic.

[Yoda4561]

I remember paying upwards of 100 bucks for my 40 GB IBM deskstar in 2000/2001. If SSD's at current price and performance levels were released back then, there would be no question as to which was the better value. The only reason there's a debate now is because hard disk manufacturers have managed to make huge drives ridiculously cheap, I seriously wonder if they're actually making money off of them.

[Ockie]

The thread title is, " Will Hard DISKS become Obsolete in Near future." He did not say Drive, he asked about DISKS. Hard disks as the os drive are definitely limited.

While they serve the same function, SSDs and hard disks are 2 entirely different classes of drives. Once you use a SSD for an OS drive, it is difficult to go back to a hard disk.

We can argue semantics all night, but in my mind a hard drive and a Solid State drive are 2 entirely different beasties that serve the same purpose.

Don

Considering that he misspelled obsolete, I inquired about the fact what he meant by "disk". Keep in mind, not everyone is going to refer to a hard drive or hard disk (for the PC people) to rotating spinning mechanical magnetic platters. To a lot of consumers its the same thing and to a lot of technically inclined people it can mean the same thing due to its true definition which I stated before :rolleyes: I simply asked what the user meant by his disk comment as he did not clarify, so you guys just assumed and attacked me... therefore, I'll return hostile fire.

I'm not gonna let this one go, so you guys might just as well give up.

[othellomcbane]

Do you people who hate SSDs also have a vinyl LP collection that you listen to regularly?

Don


I love SSD's and I have a vinyl collection that I listen to regularly, thank you very much.

[DonDon]

Considering that he misspelled obsolete, I inquired about the fact what he meant by "disk". Keep in mind, not everyone is going to refer to a hard drive or hard disk (for the PC people) to rotating spinning mechanical magnetic platters. To a lot of consumers its the same thing and to a lot of technically inclined people it can mean the same thing due to its true definition which I stated before :rolleyes: I simply asked what the user meant by his disk comment as he did not clarify, so you guys just assumed and attacked me... therefore, I'll return hostile fire.

I'm not gonna let this one go, so you guys might just as well give up.

But did you read the first post?

With the introduction of Flash Memory in SONY VIAO in which OS in instantly loaded from the memory, will it make Hard Disks obsolute by replacing it with Flash Memory?

But what could he have possibly meant by "Flash Memory" besides a SSD? What new technology is there that would make SSDs obsolete in the near future?

I love SSD's and I have a vinyl collection that I listen to regularly, thank you very much.

Touche! But you have to admit that you are a rare breed. ;)

Don

[Ockie]

But what could he have possibly meant by "Flash Memory" besides a SSD? What new technology is there that would make SSDs obsolete in the near future?

There are a lot of new technologies to replace SSD (the ssd that you guys assume and I am assuming (here we go assuming again) that its the little drives you get on newegg), and there will be technologies to replace those technologies in its near future. But as my question still stands, what type of drive was he referring to to become obsolete and compared to what new technology. It's broad to assume all disk drives will be replaced with flash memory, especially when you are referring to basically every storage medium out there compared to anything with a flash based storage medium.

Realistically, the question in itself is rhetorical as everything becomes obsolete in computers in the near future.

Fuk me for trying to give a better answer than a blanket response. Next time someone asks if computers will become obsolete, I'll just answer yes with the rest of the sheep.

[DonDon]

I've done enough research before putting this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_drives

I don't have any hatered for SSDs, infact I would love to see SSDs in action but this limitation is a concern for me.

Yes, that is a limitation of flash technology. Yes, you can make some adjustments to how Windows operates to limit writes to the drive to maximise the drives life.

But, in normal use, the 10K write issue will not show up during the useful life of the drive, say 5 years.

From the Intel product brief.

Minimum Useful Life
A typical client usage of 20 GB writes per day is assumed. Should the host system
attempt to exceed 20 GB writes per day by a large margin for an extended period, the
drive will enable the endurance management feature to adjust write performance. By
efficiently managing performance, this feature enables the device to have, at a
minimum, a five year useful life. Under normal operation conditions, the drive will not
invoke this feature.

I have a feeling Intel is being extremely conservative on their estimates cause that is only a quarter of the 80 gig drives capacity. They specifically state that is the MINIMUM expected life.

Hard drives have a failure rate of 8% per year average over 5 years per Google. Link (research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf)

So, during that same 5 years, 40% of hard drives are going to fail.

Hmm, I don't understand where this concern about the write life is coming from, other than the drives are still expensive and it is an excuse people are using to justify not buying them right now. Trust me, once you use one, you will never be happy using a hard drive again.

Don

[SmokeRngs]

I'm not gonna let this one go, so you guys might just as well give up.

Just because you're not going to "give up" doesn't mean you're right. By your reasoning, a hard drive, optical drive, video card, RAM, motherboard, sound card, expansion ports and every other peripheral you can cram inside the case of the computer is a "CPU" because a large number of people call the computer as a whole the CPU.

An SSD is not the same as an HDD and the original post refers to HDDs. It's as simple as that.

[Elledan]

At this point the $/GB metric for SSDs is still much higher than that for an HDD. Yes, SSDs are faster, but in terms of sheer storage capacity, nothing can beat HDDs yet. Heck, for the price of one 160 GB SSD you can buy a pile of 2 TB HDDs, at that point I wouldn't care one bit about how much faster the SSD might be. It'd still be cheaper to buy more RAM and set up a RAM drive of a few GB.

I don't see the price of SSDs drop much in the near future either. At the current rate I doubt SSDs will come even close to catching up with HDDs price-wise for the next 5-10 years.

Do your needs include durability in harsh environments? Are you clumsy and often drop your laptop/netbook? Are the lower access times and faster small file transfer speeds more important than much faster sequential writing and reading speeds? In that case an SSD isn't such a bad choice.

Is your primary need storage? Then just use an HDD.

[Yoda4561]

Have you been keeping track of SSD prices for the last 2 years? Something like an OCZ vertex 30 gig would have been 3 or 4 grand back then, increases in capacity are as simple as adding a few more chips and normal process improvement. Or do you think that manufacturing has hit a wall in regards to minimum profitable price right now?

[DonDon]

At this point the $/GB metric for SSDs is still much higher than that for an HDD. Yes, SSDs are faster, but in terms of sheer storage capacity, nothing can beat HDDs yet. Heck, for the price of one 160 GB SSD you can buy a pile of 2 TB HDDs, at that point I wouldn't care one bit about how much faster the SSD might be. It'd still be cheaper to buy more RAM and set up a RAM drive of a few GB.

I don't see the price of SSDs drop much in the near future either. At the current rate I doubt SSDs will come even close to catching up with HDDs price-wise for the next 5-10 years.

Do your needs include durability in harsh environments? Are you clumsy and often drop your laptop/netbook? Are the lower access times and faster small file transfer speeds more important than much faster sequential writing and reading speeds? In that case an SSD isn't such a bad choice.

Is your primary need storage? Then just use an HDD.

But what are you going to do with several 2 TB hard drives. Hook them up and watch them, uh spin.

I agree that hard drives still have their place. For bulk storage, they will be around for a long time. They will even be the system drive in budget systems for the forseeable future. But, most people do not need 1 TB of storage. And the hard drive is the major bottleneck of system performance right now. That will be the driving force for their adoption as the system drive.

In both of my desktop systems with SSD arrays, I still keep a bulk storage magnetic drive for when I want to play around with lots of data. I also have magnetic drives in my NAS.

I imagine the floor for SSDs will eventually hit the $50-60 range just like magnetic drives. When that will happen is anybod's guess though.

Don

[Phyltre]

I think that in the short-medium term, we are going to see a much deeper differentiation between OS-related memory/storage and hard storage space. While we've been putting both types of data on the same drives ever since hard drives became useful to end users, they are really two vastly different kinds of information.

A "primary" partition (consisting of 1-3 OS installations, several large software/game installations, temporary data and the like) will rarely grow past 250GB except in very extreme circumstances. This data needs to be imminently accessible because it is what makes the computer actually work. And it does not seem likely that this size will be exceeded in the next 2-5 years (obviously there will be continued growth, but very few programs can justify more than 10GB total data resulting an install. Only games really seem to be pushing the envelope there.)

It is really the secondary partition--the music, the movies/shows, the photo galleries, the shared workspaces--where we are seeing growth into the TB+ space. And this kind of information does not really need speed in the same sense that the primary partition does. They aren't system files, they're media files. Data bitrates have a long way to go before we need faster hard drives to play back movies.

So really we have two different kinds of long-term storage, and two different kinds of data. One is small but fast, one is huge but slow. We can't make HDDs as fast as SSDs, and we can't economically make SSDs as large as HDDs for the next couple years at least. For enthusiast desktop computing, I predict that both <500GB SSDs and >1TB HDDs will be an integral part of home systems for at least 3-5 years, at which time SSDs or whatever comes next will likely kick mechanical storage out for good. Laptops will probably move to SSDs exclusively within the next two years, since most people still don't have anything over 200GB in their laptops currently anyway.

[astrallite]

Sure, when the Intel 80GB first came to market at $800 it was high, but that same product is less than half the price now in a matter of months. The OCZ Vertex EX is their server drive which is significantly more expensive than it's consumer counterpart (which was ~$400 at launch).



A large part of the cost of these flagship drives is the cost of SLC NAND. MLC drives have been getting cheaper primarily because fabs have retooled most of their capacity for MLC, and the new fabs have been MLC-only. SLC would still be expensive in relation, but due to this shift in production prices are stagnant. This is the same phenomenon that plagued IPS LCD panel technology. That said, IPS *is* making a comeback (quality wins in the end), and OCZ hopes that if there's sufficient demand for their product, that SLC NAND prices will drop as fabs make the transition BACK to SLC production.

Remember, the WD Raptor was originally sold as an enterprise drive. That didn't stop gamers from buying them en-masse, to WD's surprise. Gamers want high quality...it's just few people wanted to mess around with SCSI controllers. Price/GB is terrible with the WD Raptor in relation to normal hard drives (actually its about 8 times more than the big 1TB+ storage drives), so you're dealing with even worse diminishing returns than MLC vs SLC pricing (which is closer to a factor of 2.5-3). The performance differential that a WD provides is also similar to SLC NAND...some gamers just want to squeeze in that last bit of performance.

[astrallite]

Have you been keeping track of SSD prices for the last 2 years? Something like an OCZ vertex 30 gig would have been 3 or 4 grand back then, increases in capacity are as simple as adding a few more chips and normal process improvement. Or do you think that manufacturing has hit a wall in regards to minimum profitable price right now?

Well to make an educated guess, I would think less of that is actually improved marginal cost compared to low demand and high sunk costs which prompted high initial pricing. In fact in the tech industry, cost of manufacturing (which is typically done by a 3rd party fab) actually goes up as they maintain a continuous cycle of process reduction--but marginal cost decreases.

This is only profitable if you assume sales keeps going up--if sales maintain or grow at a lower than predicted pace, then miniturizing your manufacturing process adds to an exponentially increasing sunk cost that can't be recovered by marginal cost. In other words, sales is the only way to make up for *increasing* costs over time.

Think of it as raising a chicken farm. Buying a bunch of chickens has a set cost. You have to sell your chickens at X cost at first, in order to feed yourself and pay off your debt to the bank. Feeding a chicken is a fixed cost (cost of manufacturing). Feeding one chicken does not get cheaper over time. Your hens will lay eggs, and you will have more chickens in the same amount of farm land, which means more revenue. BUT, you have to make an investment to set asside area for chickens to breed/raise chicks (cost of reducing your manufacturing process). Now for the same area of farmland (silicon wafer), you have more chickens you can sell. The cost of feeding chickens is the same, but now its easier to pay off your debt to the bank. But if demand for your chickens doesn't go up as much as you planned, your costs actually increase. But if it does, then you will be able to remain profitable and sell chickens at X-1, X-2, X-3...as you sell more and more chickens.

Now if you chose to never set aside area for your hens to breed and raise their young, you'll probably reach a steady state population at which point, your costs will never go down, since the cost of feeding a chicken is the same.

Of course the farmers market only has so many customers. If you don't build hype for buyers outside of local markets, you can't fund your infrastructure (more hen houses). In that case, your customers will ALWAYS pay the same costs. There's no way to simply "reduce manufacturing costs" since it has to come from somewhere tangible. If there aren't those early adopters paying $4k for a tiny SSD, then tiny SSDs will always cost 4k.

[Yoda4561]

Well when you put it like that, I get hungry :D I do think demand is skyrocketing right now though. The whole "green is good" attitude and companies using whatever they can to capitalize on it. SSD's being lower power, makes this an easy sell for laptops and other portable computers. In the desktop space the current price/performance ratio seems to be attracting lots of new adopters, In the short term I see them replacing high performance drives like raptors in the consumer space. All of that should lead to costs snowballing downwards. The only thing that worries me is the volatility of memory prices. It seems they swing almost randomly from highs to lows and back again, If this affects SSD's flash memory too then widespread adoption might experience some speedbumps.

[[H]adouken!]

That will likely be based on price. As computers improve, programs have become increasingly larger. Videos & Photos have increased substantially in size as the technology has improved the quality of the output.

SSDs will eventually take over consumer desktops and laptops when they are more cost effective at a reasonable size. And that reasonable size will be dictated by how large those common everyday files become.

But I don't see hard drives being phased out completely because I don't really see SSDs becoming main stream storage drives anytime soon. But I wouldn't bet against SSD prices coming down as technology improves. Look at how much advancement the industry has made in the last decade, the growth is exponential. But as SSDs become cheaper so will hard drives.

+1,

HDD companies will have no choice but to drop prices as SSD's come down, if SSD's do make it to the same price as HDD's then you could be buying 1TB HDD's for a fraction of the cost that you would today.

Have you been keeping track of SSD prices for the last 2 years? Something like an OCZ vertex 30 gig would have been 3 or 4 grand back then, increases in capacity are as simple as adding a few more chips and normal process improvement. Or do you think that manufacturing has hit a wall in regards to minimum profitable price right now?

+1,

SSD's have been falling faster then world economy, just 2 years ago they where only for big companies or for military use. Now people are putting 24 in one computer just to laugh at the speed!!!

I think that in the short-medium term, we are going to see a much deeper differentiation between OS-related memory/storage and hard storage space. While we've been putting both types of data on the same drives ever since hard drives became useful to end users, they are really two vastly different kinds of information.

A "primary" partition (consisting of 1-3 OS installations, several large software/game installations, temporary data and the like) will rarely grow past 250GB except in very extreme circumstances. This data needs to be imminently accessible because it is what makes the computer actually work. And it does not seem likely that this size will be exceeded in the next 2-5 years (obviously there will be continued growth, but very few programs can justify more than 10GB total data resulting an install. Only games really seem to be pushing the envelope there.)

It is really the secondary partition--the music, the movies/shows, the photo galleries, the shared workspaces--where we are seeing growth into the TB+ space. And this kind of information does not really need speed in the same sense that the primary partition does. They aren't system files, they're media files. Data bitrates have a long way to go before we need faster hard drives to play back movies.

So really we have two different kinds of long-term storage, and two different kinds of data. One is small but fast, one is huge but slow. We can't make HDDs as fast as SSDs, and we can't economically make SSDs as large as HDDs for the next couple years at least. For enthusiast desktop computing, I predict that both <500GB SSDs and >1TB HDDs will be an integral part of home systems for at least 3-5 years, at which time SSDs or whatever comes next will likely kick mechanical storage out for good. Laptops will probably move to SSDs exclusively within the next two years, since most people still don't have anything over 200GB in their laptops currently anyway.

+1,

couldn't agree more, SSD's are not going to be used for storage on desktop computers for a very long time (IMO). HDD will continue to dominate the storage market for the best part of 2 years while SSD's do their job and keep your OS and Apps running as fast as possible.

A large part of the cost of these flagship drives is the cost of SLC NAND. MLC drives have been getting cheaper primarily because fabs have retooled most of their capacity for MLC, and the new fabs have been MLC-only. SLC would still be expensive in relation, but due to this shift in production prices are stagnant. This is the same phenomenon that plagued IPS LCD panel technology. That said, IPS *is* making a comeback (quality wins in the end), and OCZ hopes that if there's sufficient demand for their product, that SLC NAND prices will drop as fabs make the transition BACK to SLC production.

Remember, the WD Raptor was originally sold as an enterprise drive. That didn't stop gamers from buying them en-masse, to WD's surprise. Gamers want high quality...it's just few people wanted to mess around with SCSI controllers. Price/GB is terrible with the WD Raptor in relation to normal hard drives (actually its about 8 times more than the big 1TB+ storage drives), so you're dealing with even worse diminishing returns than MLC vs SLC pricing (which is closer to a factor of 2.5-3). The performance differential that a WD provides is also similar to SLC NAND...some gamers just want to squeeze in that last bit of performance.

TBH we SHOULD all be talking about getting SLC NAND drives, MLC shouldn't even exist anymore, it is obsolete to SLC in every way. However the lack of interest in SSD's and the high prices stopped fab's from sticking with SLC in the past. If it wasn't for that the previous high prices of SLC we could have seen the current prices for MLC as the current prices for SLC instead. Now, as everyone starts to SLOWLY move back to SLC we will start to see prices come down, but again this process takes time, and the economy doesn't help at all.

Well when you put it like that, I get hungry :D I do think demand is skyrocketing right now though. The whole "green is good" attitude and companies using whatever they can to capitalize on it. SSD's being lower power, makes this an easy sell for laptops and other portable computers. In the desktop space the current price/performance ratio seems to be attracting lots of new adopters, In the short term I see them replacing high performance drives like raptors in the consumer space. All of that should lead to costs snowballing downwards. The only thing that worries me is the volatility of memory prices. It seems they swing almost randomly from highs to lows and back again, If this affects SSD's flash memory too then widespread adoption might experience some speedbumps.

:D

Totally agree, drives such as V-Raptors are getting the boot first, their price comes too close to the SSD price yet the SSD has all the benefits, when the V-raptors start to be replaced demand will dramatically increase and the higher the demand the more NAND will be made, the more thats made the cheaper it gets and more it advances as they start to make even more money. Eventually those savings will start to reflect on the consumer prices.


epic quoting there :P

[Impulse]

I wonder when you'll actually start to see some mass-market PR for SSDs, or when they'll become a selling point on new systems... Right now if you were to ask the average joe what a SSD is he wouldn't have the faintest idea, but he might grasp the difference between 1GB of RAM on his old system and 4GB on his new one (or a faster processor, etc.). Yet the SSD will have a bigger impact on performance than just about any upgrade he can do right now... You'd think they'd be easier to market.

[DonDon]

I wonder when you'll actually start to see some mass-market PR for SSDs, or when they'll become a selling point on new systems... Right now if you were to ask the average joe what a SSD is he wouldn't have the faintest idea, but he might grasp the difference between 1GB of RAM on his old system and 4GB on his new one (or a faster processor, etc.). Yet the SSD will have a bigger impact on performance than just about any upgrade he can do right now... You'd think they'd be easier to market.

Well, they are just getting to the point that the enthusiast market is adopting them. Mainstream acceptance is only a matter of time. It's hard to quantify a faster system in advertisement without some kind of stat, but they will figure a way.

Don

[Mcot]

adouken!;1034078670']+
TBH we SHOULD all be talking about getting SLC NAND drives, MLC shouldn't even exist anymore, it is obsolete to SLC in every way. However the lack of interest in SSD's and the high prices stopped fab's from sticking with SLC in the past. If it wasn't for that the previous high prices of SLC we could have seen the current prices for MLC as the current prices for SLC instead. Now, as everyone starts to SLOWLY move back to SLC we will start to see prices come down, but again this process takes time, and the economy doesn't help at all.

:

MLC allows for more density. Some of the current implementations have been extremely poor, but you should not write it off because of that.

You all are really missing the boat though. Flash memory will not kill the hard drive, it is the next generation of memory technologies such as M-RAM and P-RAM that will.

[[H]adouken!]

M-RAM has been in development since the 1990's, it still has some time to go.

[R0N1]

Magnetic HDD's are what general people are going to buy, and probably still for a couple years. SSD's need to become much cheaper, even the MLC versions, before them to be considered by the mainstream. Even then for high capacity storage needs HDD's will be much more inexpensive. SLC drives should also drop in price, but still being used mostly for enterprise and high end parts. We will probably some other memory technologies before magnetic HDD becomes obsolete.

[Blazestorm]

I'll go SSD when I can get 2-3 fast 120GB drives for ~ $100 each.. run them in RAID0 then have 640's in Raid5 for data... then my server for stuff beyond that...

but I'm willing to wait till prices fall on them :)

[astrallite]

You may need to wait for a while...SSD prices hinge on NAND pricing. And MLC NAND is going for $2/GB in bulk from Samsung to OEMs. For the last few months, price of NAND has been steadily increasing due to increased demand, and probably will continue to increase until new fabs come up.

[travbrad]

You may need to wait for a while...SSD prices hinge on NAND pricing. And MLC NAND is going for $2/GB in bulk from Samsung to OEMs. For the last few months, price of NAND has been steadily increasing due to increased demand, and probably will continue to increase until new fabs come up.

Yeah, it would be nice if there was more competition and production capacity in this area, that would surely drive prices down quite fast.

[maven]

Most research firms who predict trends and analyze markets all report that the HDD demand and revenue will continue to grow through 2012. IDC a well respected marketing firm has stated that "Flash-based solid state disk drives (SSDs) will curtail HDD demand in some markets, but the HDD industry will shrug-off these and other competing storage technologies to attain consecutive years of record-setting HDD shipments and revenue". They also state that by the year 2012 HDD capacities will increase by nearly threefold from they were at the end of 2008.

[GotNoRice]

I don't see mechanical storage going away anytime soon; by the time we have 1TB SSD's there will probably be 10TB Mechanical drives.

Not that SSD's won't have a secure place in future systems.

Actually what I predict is a new generation of hybrid drives. How about something like a 1TB drive with an 80GB SSD buffer that attempts to keep all of your frequently used files in the buffer? No matter what, there are going to be files on your SSD that end up almost never being accessed, and that is really just wasted space.

[DemonDiablo]

I would disagree. A media that is distinct from its storage medium confined in a sealed environment is classified as a hard drive.

Says who, you? You're more than free to go ahead with that train of thinking but dont go lumping everyone else in there with you. And for the record he said hard disks not hard drives. On hard drives you could probably easily argue correctly on that and I'd probably agree but you'd be dead wrong on hard disks, imo (which is what I believe is what you meant to say).

At the end of the day I'm pretty sure you're going to find yourself alone and by yourself all the way out there in left field, while the rest of the industry will be clearly labeling a hard disk drive and a solid state drive as two separate and different entities. You make it no hidden fact that you're hugely biased against ssd tech, which is perfectly fine but try not to be to shocked and amazed as the rest of the industry leaves you behind.

SSD isnt going to be replacing hard disks any time soon but the potential is obviously there. The potential to make it cheaper and bigger than hdd is clear, obvious, and will inevitably happen.

The two, valid, arguments against ssd is reliability and storage. First off everyone touting off the superiority of hdd as being vastly reliable gots that dead on right. I mean hard disks never die, crash, or fritz out on you. Yup, never does that happen anymore the tech is matured to the point of 100% reliability! Again a decade is all it will take to prove that sdd has the same matched stability and reliability of hdd. Shit happens, hard disks fail. And guess what when that happens, its not the technology thats failed you, its usually the manufacturer. Secondly on the storage front size and cost will go down. Short of handing out hdd's for free its only a matter of time before ssd's catch up. Thats just an obvious statement of fact that though. The not so obvious fact is that you can put more ssd's in a pc case than you can put hdd's in a pc case. Not only can you triple the amount of ssd's you can put in a case, its going to create less heat and less noise.

A decade tops.

[Ockie]

Says who, you? You're more than free to go ahead with that train of thinking but dont go lumping everyone else in there with you. And for the record he said hard disks not hard drives. On hard drives you could probably easily argue correctly on that and I'd probably agree but you'd be dead wrong on hard disks, imo (which is what I believe is what you meant to say).



Feel free to look up the definition. :rolleyes:


You make it no hidden fact that you're hugely biased against ssd tech, which is perfectly fine but try not to be to shocked and amazed as the rest of the industry leaves you behind.


LMFAO... You do know what I do for a living right? I have more SSD's under one roof than you will see in your entire life. But hey keep dreaming.

I also have an order for the new fusionIO, but keep your wishful thinking. There is a reason I have this forum title and I'm not going to really defend it or need to, one can simply come take a tour.

[DemonDiablo]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hard%20disk

Doesnt sound like a ssd to me. And really this is all you have to say as a retort. The second part of your response is meaningless, it does little to refute or agree with anything in regards to the topic. Which is what I would really prefer to see you answer instead of continually talking semantics an an irrelevant point. We can beat the horse into a pulp all day long but like I said its your opinion and ill be damned if I'm going to be changing that within my life time.

[spacetrader]

Its all going to be about price. Once SSD drives are within 20% or so of HDDs, SSD's will become the new standard. My prediction is that this will happen by 2012.

i think this is actually accurate. its going to be like lcd's over crt's- yet at a lot, lot quicker pace. it took forever for lcd's to really get good enough to replace crt, and when they did the changeover was quick, but not crazy. i think in the next two years ssd's will hit that sweet spot in price, while blowing away the competition in terms of performance, and that will be that. the 1tb+ hdd's might stick around for archiving and backups... but likely once all the manufacturers go flash it will be cheap enough to dump spinning discs alltogether.

[Griff805]

one can simply come take a tour.

Ooo, that sounds kinda fun. Where you located? :)

[Surly73]

With the introduction of Flash Memory in SONY VIAO in which OS in instantly loaded from the memory, will it make Hard Disks obsolute by replacing it with Flash Memory?

I think they will go more like DVD Optical media. Yes, Blu-Ray came out, but most still use DVD-Rs. The drives don't have a whole lot of development or new features, but they're cheap, and so is the media.

SSDs will continue to become more mainstream, but magnetic HD will have higher capacity and lower price. They may also stop making many advancements in capability and simply use the progress of technology to get less expensive.

IMO, of course.