Solidstate Drives?

WillSpengler · 23 Apr 2008 at 14:37

Just out of curiosity more than anything.

Does anyone have any predictions of when we'll see these catching up on conventional HDDs in terms of size and price?

Can't wait til we reach that point, should be able to reach higher density drives and they will be much more reliable

Will_3rd · 23 Apr 2008 at 14:38

a large number of years I would imagine

AbsenceJam · 23 Apr 2008 at 14:49

Well flash memory prices keep falling and the chips keep gaining more capacity, also current solidstate drives aren't really indicative of what would be possible if there was a serious effort to put SDD's in computers. I still think it's going to be a long time and HDD manufacturers can go a lot further than 1TB - http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/04/18/oducat_sells_hdd_kit_to_mystery_vendor/ so SSD's will have a lot of catching up to do.

mrthingyx · 23 Apr 2008 at 14:55

Give it a couple of years.

SSDs first appeared on benchmark sites a couple of years ago as a 'viable' alternative to motor/spindle drives for the deep-pocketed enthusiast. Capacities were tiny, prices were shocking and transfer rates were worse than ATA drives. 8Gb for around $300-ish was a bit rich, if you ask me.

Now we have SSDs that are 64Gb in capacity, have transfer rates to rival the best 7200rpm drives that cost in the region of £600. Smaller drives with slightly slower transfer rates can be had for a fifth of the price.

A couple of years will work wonders for all technology markets. If you can't wait, be prepared to donate body parts. If you can, there are plenty of equivalent options out there that make a bit more noise and slightly slower access times for a tiny fraction of the price.

WillSpengler · 23 Apr 2008 at 14:56

True, the density of conventional drives has a while to go still. Eventually they will reach the state of basically being atomic force microscopes, and that'll give a max density of these drives at about 300 Gb per square inch. IIRC most drives are currently only using 40 Gb per square inch.

Either way, SS can overtake that number eventually

(or even better, let's get the holodiscs on the go, estimated up to 40 million Gb per cm3 ! )

I'm hoping your right mrthingyx, hopefully only 2-3 years til they are more viable!

dazz25 · 23 Apr 2008 at 17:16

I would guess at 3-5 years!

ih8modem · 23 Apr 2008 at 22:19

Industry predictions are that they will begin mainstream integration end 2008, and will become a threat to laptop drive manufacturers end 2009.

Desktop enthusiasts will begin picking them up at reasonable prices (so still more than a raptor) around the same time.

All info above is what I have gathered from reading a lot of articles on the net over the past few days.

The early adopters are currently buying the mobi mtron series starting at around 200 quid for 16GB. (Sometimes a little cheaper on the bay, but you never know the source.)

I am not refering to the Transcend drives though, they are MLC based and are pathetically slow. Quite surprised Transcend actually released these drives. 1MB/sec write is just plain ..... brown stuff.