It'll probably be awhile yet before SSD replaces HDD for mass storage. I'm not taking application space, but the terabyte or two you want for video and audio storage. HDD is down near $0.20 a GB and even $2.50 a GB sounds spendy .

1roll20s

@TheCyberBob: SSD = Solid State Drive. Electromagnetism is NOT what fcks up a regular HD these days - it's the MOVING parts that brake down eventually.

SSD = less heat, less energy, more efficient, and faster.

gizak

@VishusBurn: "They are the most unreliable part of a computer and people are very eager to get rid of them for good."

True. But the only thing that SSD's guarantee for stability and longevity over typical disc HD's is not being able to get fsck'd up by any form of electromagnetism. Disc based drives will be around for quite some time anyways. Too many discs in a corporate environment per company and at this price to make it viable to just go and switch em all out with the new hotness.

TheCyberBob

Well you can hardly compare the cheap slow flash that is in a really cheap slow mini-laptop with actual speedy optimized SSD drives. You certainly can't base an opinion about all SSD options on such highly limited experience.

There is a flash based option out there (I forget the name) that promises something like 800MB/sec too... that is going to an extreme in the other direction.

SSD is the future, plain and simple. The only reason nasty old rotating metal platters are still with us is the fact that they have managed to drive manufacturing (and sale) costs down to where it's still more MB for the dollar... that won't last forever and good riddance I say.

cr0ft

Six months ago, this news would have really excited me. Now, after using my Eee for a while, the slow writes are a deal-breaker for me. IDE worked great to eliminate external controllers from computers, can't they make some kind of OS-transparent logic internal to hybrid drives, so they don't need special OS support? With speeds and prices as they are, I would love to see some kind of triple-hybrid drive with a large high-speed capacitor-backed RAM writing cache (set up so it can flush itself to the disk even after power loss), as well as the high-read-speed flash memory cache on it, that I could drop into any system as an upgrade.

Tired_

@thebear91: Yes, it's called "wear leveling".

soggy_cheerio

even an an AMD fanboy, i'll be happy if intel can deliver on these ideas. because at $2.50 a gigabyte, it would still be exorbitantly expensive to back up my 300GB hard drive onto solid state, but 1 grand is less gruesome on the wallet than 4 grand.

plus, when flash gets cheap enough, huge amounts of skip-free space on my car stereo FTW. and a phone that has more than 47MB of media storage.

rimplestultskin

Yeah, but Apple definitely has a hand in driving up demand for SSD's. Demand not for Apple's MacBook Air, but demand for supplier's drives. More computers sold with SSD's = more suppliers investing in the technology = lower prices. Equals equals equals!

I am VERY eager to see SSD's take over, not for the consumer space but for the server and enterprise space. You don't get tired of replacing HDs when you've got 2 or 3 computers at home, you get tired of replacing HDs when you're responsible for 200-300 computers and a couple rack enclosures full of servers.

jamesuschrist

@dagamer34: Um, what? Apple was certainly NOT the first laptop manufacturer to start tossing in SSD-based hard drives as an option.

BillyShears

@chuchi78: 10-15 years?

Way off. Think more like 4-7.
TV's are not comparable to storage devices.
PC builders(myself included) are sic of hard drives crapping out.
They are the most unreliable part of a computer and people are very eager to get rid of them for good.
Once these come down in price; people will be all over them like flies on honey.

VishusBurn

It'll be a good 10 to 15 years before we see spinning hard drives go the way of the floppy. They're always going to be cheaper than their SSD counterparts. Think tube TVs next to LCDs/Plasmas or even rear-projection units. There are still companies making them and flat panels have been around since the mid 90's (and longer for projection). Until the SSD drives become as cheap (or cheaper, as if), there will always be room for cheaper technology. That is, unless the tree-huggers actually get spinning drives pulled due to excess energy waste. Let's hear it for sub-$100 200-gig SSDs!

chuchi78

with sony's new hard drive laser encoding tech. HD's will be around a while, esp in desktops, since they'll hold 5-10x the memory with the same architecture

clarkjw

i miss the pic with solid snake. i loved reading a story about ssd and seeing that pic lol.

killerstache

One thing I'd like to know about SSD's is whether or not it has the ability to map out bad areas of the RAM, like a hard drive will do.

160 GB, a few bits are bound to go bad.

Me thinks HD's, even in laptops, will be around for a while.

thebear91

@1stage:
Flash made for hard drives is not the same as Flash for general storage. Speed differences in reading and writing to cells is what makes it problematic when talking cost reductions in computer drives compared to other consumer ones.

Even if you hate the MacBook Air, the one thing it did trigger was the massive use of hard-drive grade Flash chips so that demand will increase, manufacturers will invest more sooner, and we might have cheaper prices faster.

dagamer34

@Ferg1: What makes you think ipods will be cheaper due to this? This just means that apple will take more profit.

Ph30nix

cheeper ipods comin at cha FAST!

Ferg1

I'm a bit hesitant to make any grand claims about this.
But i think it's fair to say that we can say goodbye to spinning hunks of metal in all but the desknotiest of laptops within the next 2 years.

Desktops might take a bit longer though.

Synthaxx

Hmmm... two years seems excessive. Figure $10 a GB for SSD now, that would put it at $2.50 in 2010, so we have to wait two years for a $400 160Gb hard drive?

It will be sooner and cheaper.

Consider that other flash devices have exceeded the 75% price decrease in shorter time: 4Gb USB drives are about $30 now versus $120 a year or so ago, so that is 75% in ONE year, not TWO years.

I anticipate we'll see SSDs at $5 a GB in 6 months, not in a year.

1stage