Is it Time to Buy a Solid State Drive?
Since the introduction of Solid State Drives (SSD’s), it has been possible to achieve much faster file access, better shock resistance, and lower noise levels, all in the one package. However, this has come at a price – quite literally. The first SSD’s to market carried a price tag which put them out of reach of the average consumer. The capacities were also quite limited when compared to HDD’s. The high prices which early adopters of new technology have to pay, reduce over a period of time to a level where most users are willing to pay the asking price. A kind of virtuous circle ensues. Lower prices and better features attract higher sales.Higher sales allow further price reductions as R&D costs are recovered, fabrication plant yields get better and economies of scale kick in. This cycle continues until some kind of equilibrium is reached.
Hard drives are established, reliable and cheap so they are not about to disappear, but there are a few applications where SSD’s have carved themselves a slice of the pie. 2008 was the year the netbook came to prominence. Netbooks can be supplied with SSD’s or HDD’s, but those people choosing one with a HDD are missing out on one of the main selling points of the original netbooks. A long battery life. This is a comparatively slow, cheap, low power machine, so it is somewhat of a paradox to find fast, more expensive relatively new technology being used in this type of entry level computer.
SSD’s are finding a growing market in laptop PC’s. Until the price level falls far enough to justify complete replacement of HDD’s in laptops, small SSD’s have found their way into another niche. Many people now fit a solid state drive to their laptop as a secondary drive which will speed up access times to popular files and reduce the drain on their battery, thus increasing battery life. If the SSD contains the operating system and application software, both of which require mainly read access, an improvement in response times will be noticed. Data files can remain on the HDD.
Users who have carputers are also likely to to be early adopters as the prices come down. There are 2 main factors which have a big affect on carputers, but which can be ignored for home PC’s. They are subjected to vibrations, jolts and sudden acceleration/deceleration forces every day. Few of us are lucky enough to live in places where the roads are as free from humps and potholes as we would wish. This can seriously limit the life of a HDD and can make the additional cost of an SSD worth considering. It is also important for carputers to have a low power consumption and here, SSD’s win hands down over HDD’s. (SSD or HDD?)
So – will 2009 be the year when SSD sales outnumber HDD sales? It may happen, but I’m not sure it will happen this year. However, I’m convinced it will happen within the next few years. HDD manufacturers have increased both size and speed at a breathtaking rate since IBM first launched the hard disk over 50 years ago. However this rate of change cannot go on indefinitely. SSD’s by comparison have only attracted the developers attention relatively recently, and we can look forward to massive improvements in the years to come.
To find out more details of how you can install your own carputer, click here