Article by CyberGeek

Hard drives have been around the block since the 60′s, but they are nearing the end of the road. Over the past decade great strides have been made to increase their capacity, increase their speed and become more efficient but, there is only so much speed and reliability you can get from using mechanical parts with spinning platters. Moving parts means more power consumption, less reliability especially when it comes to shock, slower data access, and a bigger physical form factor. So why doesnt the entire industry adapt flash based storage? Primarily cost. Traditional HDD’s costs penny’s per gigabyte. A 512GB SSD drive can costs $ 700 and up while a 500Gb Hard Drive costs around $ 60.

SSD’s are made up of the same flash memory that can be found in just about every current portable electronic device out there. Cell phones, mp3 players, G.P.S. systems, Photography Cameras, and USB thumb drives. A perfect example that shows the differences between the same devices with both types of storage is Apple’s iPod. The hard drive version has more space and costs less per GB than the flash. However the batteries do not last as long and are more prone to failures due to the hard drive crashing from shock. They are also bulkier than the slim, flash based iPod. As prices for Flash memory drops, SSD’s become more affordable. This also means you will get more gigabytes per dollar. More consumer level SSDs are available than ever before. Newegg, a popular online tech distributor, carries over 200 models of SSD Drives ranging from 30GB to 1TB.Hard Drive manufacturers are scrambling to fit more and more data in the same sized enclosures but eventually they will hit a ceiling. They have used techniques like adding thinner platters or writing the bits to the drive vertically, not horizontally, called Perpendicular Recording Technology to increase the areal density. This technology buys HDD sometime in the mainstream market. Google researchers wrote a paper on file storage technologies and failures in 2007 and found that 33% of hard drive failed without S.M.A.R.T. reporting a failure. Experts suggest that by 2016 most desktops and 25% laptops will be using a hybrid system of traditional hard drive mixed with an SSD. This setup most likely will have the operating system and applications stored on the SSD while personal files such and movies, pictures, and documents will be stored on the larger, traditional HDD. While the computer is in operation it will shut down the standard HDD until it needs to access data from it, leaving the computer to run from the faster and more efficient SSD drive.Analysts say 10% of Enterprise data centers will be SSD by 2013 and by 2020 nearly all enterprise data centers will be moved to solid state drives. SSD datacenters will be much cheaper than traditional ones due to the smaller physical space needed and the costs associated with running the data center. SSD’s uses one half or less of the electrical power that traditional hard drives use. It is clear that NAND based storage technology is our future. It’s more reliable, faster data access, lighter, quieter and more efficient. As the technology is adopted more prices will drop and capacity will grow to be the same as magnetic hard drives without paying a hefty premium to live in the fast lane.

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