HDD Obsolescence?

[ChrisXPPro]

Keep hearing whispers that over the next year or so the HDD will be finished and we'll be going to solid state storage.  It seems a logical progression and it'll be good to get aware from something mechanical.

But, I have not as yet found any definitive articles on this - in fact I'll be honest I have not really dug deep but - wondering what the surfers here may have found out, as to what we might be able to look forward to.

[Dusty]

Solid State Drives have been among us for some time but at a price.   Currently a 120Gb drive is about $500, depending on which brand/market you go for.

They're available in 2.5 and 3.5 form factors, the only reported problem I have come across was one of partitioning on a Toshiba machine.

Some info here and a manufacturers blurb at this site..

[DaveLembke]

Other issue with Solid State drives is that they shrink in storage capacity over time as memory cells die, and very unlikely to ever get data back from a crashed solid state.

[Kurtiskain]

Other issue with Solid State drives is that they shrink in storage capacity over time as memory cells die, and very unlikely to ever get data back from a crashed solid state.

So the flash drives you get slowly shrink in size?

or is this different?

[Calum]

Issues with SSD devices that I'm aware of are currently high cost, sequential write speeds are slow, and writing to the same place over and over causes the drive to fail quickly (think paging file = death).
However, the random read speeds are phenomenal, they use less power than HDDs and are silent.
As flash memory becomes more popular I think we'll eventually see SSD devices replacing HDDs, but not for a few years yet.

[patio]

Issues with SSD devices that I'm aware of are currently high cost, sequential write speeds are slow, and writing to the same place over and over causes the drive to fail quickly (think paging file = death).
However, the random read speeds are phenomenal, they use less power than HDDs and are silent.
As flash memory becomes more popular I think we'll eventually see SSD devices replacing HDDs, but not for a few years yet.

I think because of these faults attributes they may never even go mainstream...
I doubt you could trust these to a server enviornment.
Time will tell.

[ChrisXPPro]

Thx for your views - indeed some issues mentioned are ones I have been aware of, which makes the prospects seem less than confidence inspiring in the short term.

[Calum]

Flash memory, as in SSDs replacing HDDs, is already mainstream, or close enough.  It's very common in media players, web books, laptops, and for high end systems that need fast access.
You're right in saying time will tell - I think we could see SSDs in some form replacing HDDs across the board, in time.  Current products need to mature, from "temporary" storage such as flash drives to longer term storage, HDDs.

[patio]

I'd say we're 5 Years away from "mainstream" changes...

[Kurtiskain]

Which will hopefully make HDD prices tumble and i can afford lots of GB's for next to nothing 

[patio]

My last 500G high speed SATA cost me $45.00 U.S.

I love the Holidays.
BTW i also grabbed sme 1066 RAM but i won't tease you here.

[Kurtiskain]

lol lucky but I don't have a job

and that $45 US would be approx $75-80 here.

I only just put DDR 800 on my list

still waiting for the funds to trickle over into my account for the new bare bones kit I mentioned in the SBCC