SSD prices

r3loaded

r3loaded

r3loaded

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Manchester, UK
Anyone noticed how SSD prices have jumped up a lot recently? I bought my 128GB Crucial M225 in August for just under £210, now just about every website is listing it for £260+! Similarly, I remember the OCZ Vertex being a cheaper than it is now at £320. It seems I bought my SSD at the exact bottom of prices :D

Anyone know why prices have rocketed? Supply issues?
 
Yup, it is unfortunate as I was hoping prices would slowly spiral downwards like HDDs. However, like ram price they seem to be more volatile to supply/demand.
 
Recent demand/supply because of Windows 7. Alas NAND prices have increased because of this, also I heard one of the large manufacturers have just bought the current entire world stock of NAND so could be some monopoly going on at the moment.
 
I was jsut looking around for one as I have a new build and Windows 7 and it would have been nice to have a Windows 7 optimised system (Windows 7 supports SSD`s better than Vista). However, thanks to a thread on here I`ve noticed the prices have risen by nearly 50% for some (M225`s) over recent months and I think buying now would be like buying the stock market at the very top.
Tempted to get a cheap 320 gb 7000rpm drive for now but I also have two 1TB Samsung F1`s that I was running Raid mirrored in my old machine some months ago. I`m might use those seperately (non raid), partitioning one to put Windows 7 on, and using the second partition of that drive to frequently backup my crucial data from my other 1TB drive daily, therefore hopefully having a good enough backup process for now until prices drop down on SSD`s in the new year (hopefully!) and I can then put the drives back into a mirrored raid.



You can easily get a good 320gb 7200 drive for <£30, are SSD`s really that good to be paying £370 to get the best 160GB SSD drive? About 2.5 times more expensive than a 150GB VelociRaptor too. Actually I think the 150GB Raptor is a little overpriced also, should be more like £100 or less.

Something I`m considering with the current prices is the fact that SSD`s don`t power down either(?) so might not be the best solution for a Desktop PC machine on 24/7 often idling for long periods.
 
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My guess is by end Q1 2010 they would have dropped quite a bit, possibly below the levels prices rose from. By then the initial Win7 rush will be over, Christmas over and drives more readily available. I don`t think prices will rise from current levels but won`t drop suddenly either.
I`ve noticed some sellers already have rising stock levels of some SSD drives, I`m not sure who will buy at current levels if they know the market (and where prices rose from). If supply exceeds demand - down - down down.

All IMO of course :)
 
As I've posted before, I can't see prices coming down at all for another 6 months or so, when 3BPC and 4BPC MLC NAND starts to arrive, and can't see SSD's coming back down to their summer '09 prices for a year.
Big concern for me at the moment is that at the moment process advancements are no good for SSD's, shrinks and increasing the Bits Per Cell (BPC) of MLC NAND both hurt the lifespan of drives - to the extent that they will be wearing out in a few hundred erase cycles - fine for mp3 players, smartphones, usb keys etc, but unacceptable for SSD's - so theres not going to be a predictable price drop in SSD's when NAND with better memory density arrives, any drop will be indirect and due to reduced demand for SSD quality NAND - Flash manufacturers will definitely be reducing supply of it though so they can divert production resources into smartphone quality NAND.
I expect we'll see SLC drives becoming dominant again when we shrink to the 20nm range, which will give us better performance and lifespans than we currently have, but prices will stay over £1/gb with SSD's firmly in the enthusiast pigeon hole for another couple of years.
 
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In a nutshell Apple ordered 100m units of 8g nand flash I believe. The entire world stock as manufacturers were sitting on existing stock and not producing large supplies due to 'tough economic conditions'
 
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