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The future of hard drives - flash?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: here
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I repeatedly heard that the current spinning disc hard drives will be replaced by flash hard drives.
I just wonder the time frame for this. And what sizes and prices we can expect.
And: would that allow an instant-on of an operation system - no booting up?
And how much more reliable would such a flash hard drive be?
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Minnesota
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I would say that this is far from happening soon. Flash media is still at very low capacities (compared to today's magnetic drives). While most drives shipped computers are at an upwards of 200GB's, flash still is at a measly 8GB's (give or take a few...).
Also, flash media tends to be more expensive, when compared per gig. One pays about $100 for 8 gigs of flash, whereas another pays $100 for 250 gigs.
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If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
"Great minds discuss IDEAS. Average minds discuss EVENTS. Small minds discuss PEOPLE." - Eleanor Roosevelt
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
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16 and 32GB flash drives (2.5" for laptops) will be out in June for about $300 and $600, respectively. 64 and 128GB drives should be out before the end of the year, for about the same prices. The wholesale price of flash memory is currently about $8.75/GB and dropping fast.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA
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I don't think solid state (flash) will replace spinning drives any time soon. For the foreseeable future, the cost of a hard drive will always be less per GB.
As for instant on, and not needing to reboot--we already have that. There is nothing special about flash that would improve upon what here today.
Chris
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Seattle, Washington
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It's gonna be a while before flash replaces hard disks. MacWorld says it should happen over the next year, but prices would have to drop a ton. I would say that we might see solid state drives starting to replace hard disks by 2010.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: here
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Isn't data much more safe on a flash drive than on a spinning disc drive?
No moving parts.
Less sensitive to vibration and impact?
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
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Solid state storage is definitely A Good Thing, but cost and limited rewrites make flash an unlikely replacement for hard drives at the present time.
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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
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Originally Posted by Big Mac 
Solid state storage is definitely A Good Thing, but cost and limited rewrites make flash an unlikely replacement for hard drives at the present time.
With wear-levelling and the rewrite capability of the current flash chips (>1e6 cycles), the lifetime isn't that bad (10 years of constant writes at 100MBps for a 32G device).
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