when will ssd's become affordable?

[epkoc]

when will ssd's become affordable?

[helping]

sorry, what?

 

they're already pretty cheap..

[Koori]

Err...? What? @-@ It's like 1US$/GB?

[Popadookie]

When they're no longer the fastest storage technology available.

[rhyseyness]

Affordable is subjective.

You're going to have to be more specific I'm afraid.

In my opinion, SSD's are already affordable. I think they're pretty inexpensive for how much of a performance improvement you get over a mechanical drive.

How cheap do you want them to be?

[Saladin]

That question is relative. They are becoming cheaper as the demand for them grows and manufacturers achieve better economies of scale. As for their current price, if your goal is to put your operating system on them then its fairly affordable, if you want to have 10 TB of storage then not so affordable. Its a less of a price to storage volume issue than a price to performance issue.

[Koori]

It was like 10GB HDD in the past for like >$100... and SSD are like 1$/GB now bro.

[CoffeeBlack]

I think they're affordable. I'm a poor college student and I have 3.

[Wauthar]

How about... now.

[Biased Opinion]

 never if you want to replace all your HDDs. If you want to use one as a boot drive and have a spinning disc as a storage drive then they are are already affordable.

[Jamdude]

You can get a decent SSD for around £0.60/GB which is pretty damn affordable.

[Glenwing]

He probably means in comparison to hard drives.  $100 buys you a 120GB SSD if there is a good sale going, or 1000GB hard drive with some cash leftover.  Quite a gap still.  So, when will SSD prices drop enough so that mass storage with SSDs is reasonable to most consumers?

 

Basically it's just about scaling the manufacturing... hard drive companies like Seagate and WD have been around for ages, and hard drives are practically the only thing they do.  They already have enormous production capability and all their factories are already built.  Whereas, flash memory is not as developed of an industry, so the billions of dollars worth of advanced fabs and plants are still being paid for.  In addition since it's a newer technology, its still in development as manufacturers continue to improve it and research ways to deal with the inherent problems it does have.  And every time they make a breakthrough, it costs more millions to upgrade all their factories, change their fab techniques, etc... Basically, flash production hasn't quite "settled in" yet.  As for how long that will take, I don't know... not anytime soon.  It will probably be quite a while before they become near the level of hard drives if ever, although if NAND is replaced by more advanced technologies that are being looked into, like PCM or RRAM, those devices of course will start at high prices, but once they fall to a semi-affordable level then NAND SSDs will probably become very cheap for a period, before they are discontinued completely.  Just my predictions though.

[epkoc]

conclusion: im too poor

[CoffeeBlack]

conclusion: im too poor

Well, your avatar pic is a room fan strapped to a computer...

[epkoc]

living with a slow 160gb. yes you heard it! 160gb hdd is painfull. my system is not balanced at all

[coen113]

with 3d flash memory. than it will be much cheaper after a while.

[Saladin]

with 3d flash memory. than it will be much cheaper after a while.

They are gonna have to recoup their RD costs first.

[JLCitadel]

Eh I'd give it 5 years.

[appleseedexm]

I think they already are. If you compare them to 5200-HDDs, you'll have to wait a while. But IMO SSDs are not meant to be a complete replacement, especially when it comes to 4TB of storage, just for the purpose of storage. Even the architecture sais so. 

[Giancarlo124]

Theyre pretty affordable. You can get a 120gig ssd for 100 dollars. Thats less than 1usd per gigabyte.

[IdeaStormer]

Yes, they're still too expensive no matter how many people own one or two they are still too high a price component. If you have no data then yea a couple SSD's is great, but if you have anywhere in the range of a terabyte (TB) then you need to go to a traditional spinning HD, mainly because its the best economical choice.

 

Don't expect them to get any cheaper for a couple years, it will take another super storm to take HD production out or limit it to the extent that people have to buy SSD's.

[mr moose]

The cost of ssd's will drop when the cost of supply is cheap enough that it slightly outpaces demand,  When manufactures are still making money but are oversupplying, that's when they will drop the price and try to avoid having too much stock (stock costs money). I say this because I can see this happening before technology provides us a with a more accessible option in the short term.  I can't see optical roms on the consumer market for at least another 5 years, and unless the capacity of ssd's increases 10x in the next 2 years I can't see disc based storage being dropped by the industry anytime soon.

[ultimatemythbuster]

By the time you finish reading this post.