1.5 tb hard drives

[tmo85]

How long untill 1.5 TB HD are available? Will there be performance gains? will they run more quietly or more power efficient?

Cheers,
T

[v0thanhtam]

Time will tell....

[Zelucifer]

At a guess? Within 6 months. No way of knowing about power or noise, however it's almost a given that they will be at least marginally faster.

Not sure how much you know about HD's, but generally speaking larger HDs, have larger platter sizes. So there's more information in less space. This means the heads of the hard drive dont' have to go as far to seek certain sectors, resulting in better performance.

[clocker]

Not sure how much you know about HD's, but generally speaking larger HDs, have larger platter sizes. So there's more information in less space. This means the heads of the hard drive dont' have to go as far to seek certain sectors, resulting in better performance.
I don't think this is quite right.

Physical size of the platter doesn't change.
To increase the capacity of a drive either the data density has to grow (i.e., implement perpendicular recording, for instance) or another platter is added- or both.

How long untill 1.5 TB HD are available? Will there be performance gains? will they run more quietly or more power efficient?
Current HDDs are dinosaurs and investing in large capacity units seems like a bad idea to me.
Solid state drives are going to become the norm- sooner rather than later- and run silently while using less power and generating less heat.

A side benefit to the commercialization of SSDs will be the elimination of optical drives as well.
We've seen the continuous increase in capacity- coupled with a corresponding drop in price- of thumb drives, to the point where it will soon be economically feasible to provide content (both software and media) on a USB drive rather than a disk.
This couples with the ability of new operating systems (i.e., Vista) to boot from a flash drive, thus, no disks needed.

This should lead to a fairly radical change in the appearance of desktop PCs.
If you look at the design of cases, one of the major parameters is that it's necessary to accommodate the size of an optical drive, both it's width and depth. To a slightly lesser degree, this is also true of mechanical HDDs.
Remove these two units from the picture and now the case need only be large enough to fit the motherboard and power supply and all you need to interface with the PC is access to a USB port.

Should be interesting.

[lee551]

wow, after clocker's bladerunner predictions i got all excited. i saw that sumsung has made 64gb ss drives. pretty damn cool.

[clocker]

wow, after clocker's bladerunner predictions i got all excited. i saw that sumsung has made 64gb ss drives. pretty damn cool.
Pshaw, that's nuttin.

at CES 2008, BiTMICRO Networks announced the release of SSD drives with capacities of up to 832GB, for release in Q3 2008.
Now, granted these will no doubt be brutally expensive but there's no reason this technology won't follow the normal trend and get bigger at the same time it gets cheaper.

Hell, think back to only five years ago when SATA was exotic and 120GB drives were huge.

[lee551]

very nice. hopefully in 5 more years i can order a tb ssd off newegg for 100 bones. :D

and to the OP: you can get a 1tb sata drive on newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014+103530090&name=800GB+and+higher) for $250-350. reviews seem to be so-so though.

[Broken]

I don't see an economical solid state HD anytime in the near future.
It'd be great if there was. From my understanding with a solid state hard drive the need to have RAM is eliminated, because basically the entire HD is RAM. This isn't practiced, this would be under a new ideal platform.

But for the foreseeable future,
I think it will be much cheaper to buy a few gigs of RAM with traditional HD technology.

I see 2TB hard drives within the next year.

[DKre8ive1]

I wonder how much space you would lose on a 2TB drive well you don't really lose anything, but by the way they label drives it does feel like you lose some space.

My guess is 160gigs but I am not sure tbh and this makes me wonder if they will ever change there labeling process, since that would seem like a big difference to a person that is not computer savvy and probably end up pissing off the customer.

Disgruntled customer = bad for business. :P

[DKre8ive1]

Doh! double post sorry. :pinch:

[clocker]

I wonder how much space you would lose on a 2TB drive well you don't really lose anything, but by the way they label drives it does feel like you lose some space.
The difference is roughly 7% so a 2TB drive would format to @1860GB.


...this makes me wonder if they will ever change there labeling process, since that would seem like a big difference to a person that is not computer savvy and probably end up pissing off the customer.

Disgruntled customer = bad for business. :P
Seagate recently lost a class action suit over this very issue but it seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.
Most people who are ignorant of the difference in labeling conventions are also unable to find the "properties" tab in My Computer, so they never know what size HDD they have anyway.

Besides, the time to get irate over a few missing GBs was five years ago when the average HDD was maybe 20GB total and the per GB cost was much higher.
Nowadays, with cheap giant drives being the norm, a few gigs one way or the other is no big deal.

[Busyman™]

I'd rather have smaller drives equalling 1.5 TB than one alone.

It's too much to lose if the hard drive fails.

Also I don't see SSDs replacing HDDs anytime soon due to cost and drive size. HHDs are the next step since they use current hard drive tech along with flash memory. Current hard drives last a decent amount of time but a hybrid saves the platters from spinning as much and they use less power.

Even hybrid drives are kind of expensive right now so I don't see SSDs making mass headway into folks homes for some time.


very nice. hopefully in 5 more years i can order a tb ssd off newegg for 100 bones. :D

Dream on.......

[clocker]

Also I don't see SSDs replacing HDDs anytime soon due to cost and drive size.
Wanna bet?
SSDs have three major things going for them that will soon render mechanical (even hybrid ) drives obsolete:

-Physical size
-Low power consumption and heat signature
-Practical immunity from physical shock

All three benefits are directly applicable to laptops and laptops will dominate the future market and thus, the hardware requirements.

Cost is of no consequence whatsoever- look at the current price structure of RAM (DDR2 is absurdly cheap)- as it's only a function of production facilities and they've been ramping up tremendously. Major memory makers have actually curtailed production in an effort to stabilize prices and profits (think diamonds and DeBeers here...).

Again, I ask you to look at the history of HDDs...five years ago SATA was an exotic and expensive technology and now the world's largest drive maker (Seagate) has dropped PATA drives altogether and SATA is ubiquitous.

SSDs will (I believe) follow the exact same adoption path...maybe even faster.
It's simply too good a technology not to succeed and , unlike many other advances...like SLI, for instance, it solves problems for a very wide spectrum of users.

As long as I'm proselytizing... I also think the obsession with giant storage capabilities on personal computers is soon to end.
With the increasing spread of web based apps/storage, why would you need to carry all that data on your machine?
Hit the web, stream what you want and then move on...no need to actually have it on your hard drive.

Google probably will rule the Earth, sooner rather than later.

[OXO]

haha i do not have HD 1.5 tb loool http://torrents.czone.ro/pic/smilies/wall.gif

[Busyman™]

Also I don't see SSDs replacing HDDs anytime soon due to cost and drive size.
Wanna bet?
SSDs have three major things going for them that will soon render mechanical (even hybrid ) drives obsolete:

-Physical size
-Low power consumption and heat signature
-Practical immunity from physical shock

All three benefits are directly applicable to laptops and laptops will dominate the future market and thus, the hardware requirements.

Cost is of no consequence whatsoever- look at the current price structure of RAM (DDR2 is absurdly cheap)- as it's only a function of production facilities and they've been ramping up tremendously. Major memory makers have actually curtailed production in an effort to stabilize prices and profits (think diamonds and DeBeers here...).

Again, I ask you to look at the history of HDDs...five years ago SATA was an exotic and expensive technology and now the world's largest drive maker (Seagate) has dropped PATA drives altogether and SATA is ubiquitous.

SSDs will (I believe) follow the exact same adoption path...maybe even faster.
It's simply too good a technology not to succeed and , unlike many other advances...like SLI, for instance, it solves problems for a very wide spectrum of users.

As long as I'm proselytizing... I also think the obsession with giant storage capabilities on personal computers is soon to end.
With the increasing spread of web based apps/storage, why would you need to carry all that data on your machine?
Hit the web, stream what you want and then move on...no need to actually have it on your hard drive.

Google probably will rule the Earth, sooner rather than later.

You just named the pros.

Tell everyone the cons.

Also web-based apps/storage has been around for awhile now with masses still not biting.

There many that are not comfortable with off-site storage (including myself).

Hell I have a computer that I never connect to the web due to security concerns (it's an intellectual property typa thang).

[clocker]

You just named the pros.

Tell everyone the cons.



Why don't you enumerate the cons...I can't think of any offhand.

[Busyman™]

You just named the pros.

Tell everyone the cons.



Why don't you enumerate the cons...I can't think of any offhand.

Yeah sure ya can't.:ermm:

[clocker]

Why don't you enumerate the cons...I can't think of any offhand.

Yeah sure ya can't.:ermm:
Well, let's see.
SSDs have:
-smaller size
-lower power consumption
-less heat
-higher MTBF
-no noise
-faster seek and more consistent read/write speed
-higher shock resistance

Right now, the only downsides I can think of are price (which will fall) and size (which will increase)- although this current situation reminds me of Raptors from a few years ago or the more recent iRAM- both of which solutions I tried and loved.

So, Busy, unless you just want to appear cryptically superior, why don't you tell us what the big objections are?

[Broken]

I for one would love to see solid state become the standard.
Like I said in another post in this thread. With a solid state drive, RAM becomes unnecessary. Because, basically the entire hard drive is RAM. It would be awesome to have the entire drive ready all the time. The performance would be amazing.

But I'm very pessimistic about the entire idea. Just because a technology is superior doesn't guarantee it's acceptance, at least not in the near term. Especially when it requires a totally new technological concept.

For the foreseeable future, I think hybrid drives will rule the market.
I also believe it will be a long transition into full SS.

[krunktastic]

I'd rather have smaller drives equalling 1.5 TB than one alone.

It's too much to lose if the hard drive fails.

Also I don't see SSDs replacing HDDs anytime soon due to cost and drive size. HHDs are the next step since they use current hard drive tech along with flash memory. Current hard drives last a decent amount of time but a hybrid saves the platters from spinning as much and they use less power.

Even hybrid drives are kind of expensive right now so I don't see SSDs making mass headway into folks homes for some time.


very nice. hopefully in 5 more years i can order a tb ssd off newegg for 100 bones. :D

Dream on.......

Definitely agree. Considering the fail rate of the newer 1tb drives, which mind you isn't that bad, but could be improved, I would be apprehensive to have all my data accumulated on one drive. Several other drives would seem more reasonable, and nowadays the cost per GB is cheapest at around 500GB.

[matt526]

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/features.html
Apple MacBook Air can be shipped with a 64GB SSD for
only $3,098.00

[athenaesword]

it's not about how quickly the technology comes out. it's about how quickly the market bites it. price will only drop significantly if a significant portion of the market decides to take the plunge and make the conversion.

new technology always takes a while before the masses become wellinformed enough, and tbh the majority of the globe isn't exactly computer savy. take for example ddr3 ram. it's been out for awhile now, but the prices are still ridiculous. why? because noone needs them. and when noone needs them, nobody buys them at those prices, and so prices don't fall, so even fewer people buy them.

to wait for the price for solid state drives to match up to harddrives would take quite some time, because harddrives won't just stop at where it's at now. you might have 2TB/3TB stable harddrives out by the time 250GB solid state becomes affordable.

also, when you mentioned 5 years before, clocker, yes it's true. but then 5 years is a long time. you'll probbaly have changed 2 or 3 rigs by then. so i wouldn't say 5 years is "the near future", which is when u're claiming solid state drives will go mainstream.

[clocker]

it's not about how quickly the technology comes out. it's about how quickly the market bites it. price will only drop significantly if a significant portion of the market decides to take the plunge
If by "market" you mean "OEMs" then yes, I agree.
They will jump on this technology fast and hard which will drive down the price quickly.

I'll bet we'll be able to buy a 120GB SSD for under $200 within 18 months.

[sumvell]

Just a thought!!! Will usb3.0 accelarate the development of bigger SSDs? I mean the transfer speed of usb3.0 is reportedly more than the PCI slot?

[clocker]

No, SSDs are SATAII which is even faster.

[mbucari1]

I know one BIG con which makes me weary. Solid State Drives have data writing limits where HDDs have virtually none. Isn't the max number of writes like 500,000? Seems to be among the major cons for this technology.

[athenaesword]

200bucks for 120 is really expensive imo. i mean if ure using with with a desktop, what're the chances of having it bang around and being damaged, which is the primary advantage of ssds anyway. that's why flash audio players are so popular, because they might actually be susceptible to that kind of abuse, unlike harddrives.

[clocker]

200bucks for 120 is really expensive imo. i mean if ure using with with a desktop, what're the chances of having it bang around and being damaged, which is the primary advantage of ssds anyway.
I consider the primary advantage of SSDs to be the speed, not the durability.

[DyNast]

My 120GB look lamer then ever

[mbucari1]

200bucks for 120 is really expensive imo. i mean if ure using with with a desktop, what're the chances of having it bang around and being damaged, which is the primary advantage of ssds anyway.
I consider the primary advantage of SSDs to be the speed, not the durability.
They're slower with random writes than HDDs.

[sumvell]

I know one BIG con which makes me weary. Solid State Drives have data writing limits where HDDs have virtually none. Isn't the max number of writes like 500,000? Seems to be among the major cons for this technology.

Thats a very interesting point.

[badvirus]

i have 800 GB on RAID 0!!!

[mbucari1]

i have 800 GB on RAID 0!!!Good luck with that raid. I've lost 2 arrays in the past due to hardware issues. Since then I've stuck with single HDDs.

[clocker]

I know one BIG con which makes me weary. Solid State Drives have data writing limits where HDDs have virtually none. Isn't the max number of writes like 500,000? Seems to be among the major cons for this technology.

As far as direct reports from the DVN guys, as well as Mtron direct they are rating the lifespan of Solid State NAND material at 140 years of 50GB read/write per day. So, unless you are constantly using the drive in a server 365 days, 24/7 I can honestly say these drives will probably outlast most rotating mechanical drives for the average desktop user.

From a discussion here. (http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=530580&page=1)

[lee551]

dragging this up again...

i was on engadget and read that sony's top end vaio tz comes with a 64gb ssd where windows is installed to improve boot time PLUS its 250gb hdd.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/vaio-tz-gets-a-64gb-sdd-250gb-hdd-configuration/

go early adopters!

[clocker]

Since I've switched back to XP 64, I'm seriously considering reviving my iRAM 4GB ramdisk for the OS.
Just have to come up with 4 x 1GB sticks of DDR.

Of all my different storage configurations, the iRAM is by far my fave.

So I'd have a 4GB ramdisk for the OS, 2 x 250GB in RAID0 for apps and data and a external 500GB eSATA for backup.

Sweet.

Then, as soon as practical- and I'm sticking to my 18 month prediction- I'll start converting over to SSDs.

Can't wait.

[zo6vetteboy]

Not unless you have 2 750 gigs in RAID.

[Busyman™]

dragging this up again...

i was on engadget and read that sony's top end vaio tz comes with a 64gb ssd where windows is installed to improve boot time PLUS its 250gb hdd.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/vaio-tz-gets-a-64gb-sdd-250gb-hdd-configuration/

go early adopters!

Agreed. They help bring prices down for the rest of us.

[davidw89]

i got 2 500gb w.d. not raided (dont know how to do ti and which one is best)
waiting for at least 1.5tb or 2tb..

[macking]

I don't think this is quite right.

Physical size of the platter doesn't change.
To increase the capacity of a drive either the data density has to grow (i.e., implement perpendicular recording, for instance) or another platter is added- or both.

How long untill 1.5 TB HD are available? Will there be performance gains? will they run more quietly or more power efficient?
Current HDDs are dinosaurs and investing in large capacity units seems like a bad idea to me.
Solid state drives are going to become the norm- sooner rather than later- and run silently while using less power and generating less heat.

A side benefit to the commercialization of SSDs will be the elimination of optical drives as well.
We've seen the continuous increase in capacity- coupled with a corresponding drop in price- of thumb drives, to the point where it will soon be economically feasible to provide content (both software and media) on a USB drive rather than a disk.
This couples with the ability of new operating systems (i.e., Vista) to boot from a flash drive, thus, no disks needed.

This should lead to a fairly radical change in the appearance of desktop PCs.
If you look at the design of cases, one of the major parameters is that it's necessary to accommodate the size of an optical drive, both it's width and depth. To a slightly lesser degree, this is also true of mechanical HDDs.
Remove these two units from the picture and now the case need only be large enough to fit the motherboard and power supply and all you need to interface with the PC is access to a USB port.

Should be interesting.

I don't think we'll be moving to SSD's anytime soon theyr still coming down in price too slowly and have issues of their own.

I don't know when 1.5BTb HDD's will be available but according to Seagate using their new HAMR technology they should have 5Tb HDD's on shelves by 2010:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2124628/seagate-claims-storage-breakthrough

Hitachi have plans for their own "Terabyte Era" HDD's packing 4Tb of space by 2011:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/news/2007/10/16/Hitachi-Breakthrough-Heralds-4TB-HDD-By-2011/p1

I don't think storage is going to slow done one bit in the foreseeable future.

[clocker]

I don't think we'll be moving to SSD's anytime soon theyr still coming down in price too slowly and have issues of their own.


Care to elaborate about these "issues"?

[lee551]

dunno why people seem to be so pessimistic about the topic. most articles i read about it project them becoming more common in laptops thru 2009/10.

bitmicro announces 1.6TB ssd (http://www.news.com/BitMicro-announces-1.6TB-solid-state-drive/2100-1006_3-6229730.html)

[Busyman]

dunno why people seem to be so pessimistic about the topic. most articles i read about it project them becoming more common in laptops thru 2009/10.

What's the size and cost though?

I have no doubt you could get one if you pay a premium for it.

[macking]

I don't think we'll be moving to SSD's anytime soon theyr still coming down in price too slowly and have issues of their own.


Care to elaborate about these "issues"?

Writing speed is one BIG issue:


The problem is, in most cases, flash memory is not able to write data as quickly as a conventional hard drive. Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica found (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook-air-ssd-review.ars/1) that solid-state write speeds on a MacBook Air were between 13.86 and 14.67MB per second (MB/s), less than half as fast as the 33.3MB/s of a hard drive-equipped MacBook Air with its relatively slow-spinning 4200-RPM disk inside.

They can read slightly faster but the difference is practically tiny:


However, the MacBook Air's solid-state disk was able to read data slightly faster (between 7.29 and 49.59MB/s compared with the spinning drive's speed of 6.32 to 32.74MB/s on that same Macbook Air)

Cost is another issue a 64GB SSD will cost you 1000 dollars, you can buy a lot more HDD storage for that much.

And the whole thing about them taking up less battery life is mute too since the HDD only takes up 5% to 15% of a laptops battery.

http://dvice.com/archives/2008/02/shift_are_solid.php

This is a good read.

SSD's need improved writing speeds, more storage and much improved bang for buck before theyr even in the same league as HDD's let alone replacing them.

I like the idea of hybrid HDD's though

[clocker]

Your objection is basically cost/GB then.

The extended battery life due to lower power consumption is hardly a "MOOT" point...even a 10% increase is pretty significant, but I don't care about laptops anyway, so I'm willing to concede the point.
Besides, of far bigger import to laptop users would be the resistance to shock and the SSDs general durability.

Read/write speeds are simply a matter of fine tuning the technology- even mechanical drives have benefited from new algorithms- and applying newer chip designs (which seem to come out almost monthly).
Look at the speed differential between DDR1 and DDR3...two years ago DDR3 was just a rumor and now it's set to become the standard.
Do you doubt the same progression will not apply to SSDs?

Back to price...again, any new tech is always very expensive for early adopters- take SLI, for instance.

I just don't think you naysayers are taking a very long perspective regarding SSDs- and by perspective, I mean computer time which is roughly equivalent to dog years.
So go ahead, keep investing in mechanical drives- after all, they are dirt cheap these days- but don't kid yourself by thinking that they won't soon become as obsolete as the floppy drive.

[lee551]

dunno why people seem to be so pessimistic about the topic. most articles i read about it project them becoming more common in laptops thru 2009/10.

What's the size and cost though?

I have no doubt you could get one if you pay a premium for it.

first paragraph says it's the size of a standard 3.5in hdd, and i'm sure it costs more than my first car.

not telling everyone that we should go buy them tomorrow at all. it's just fun to see the progress being made. i wonder if i can hold out on a new rig until they're commonplace. :P

[kooftspc11]

goddamn solid state drives cost 1 billion dollars right now for like 2gb

[macking]

Read/write speeds are simply a matter of fine tuning the technology- even mechanical drives have benefited from new algorithms- and applying newer chip designs (which seem to come out almost monthly).

Thats fair enough but the fact remains that at the moment the speeds of the drives are dreadful when it comes to writing and at this very moment it is unknown when that will be remedied.

You can't predict the future you can only talk about now and if it changes I will concede the point but "at this moment in time" SSD's are incredibly slow at writing.


Look at the speed differential between DDR1 and DDR3...two years ago DDR3 was just a rumor and now it's set to become the standard.
Do you doubt the same progression will not apply to SSDs?

I don't see how that is a fair comparison when we moved to DDR2 it was just an evolution of DDR1 because DDR1 had hit the limit.

With HDD's to SSD's HDD's haven't hit the limit.

It's not like we're talking the xbox off the market and replacing it with something else these are two different products competing .

SSD progress is staggering but the cost and write speed is ridiculous.

That might be cured within a year or might take a decade but at this moment in time a HDD is simply a better investment.


Back to price...again, any new tech is always very expensive for early adopters- take SLI, for instance.

SLI is still the minority very few percent of GPU users even have a graphics card at all since 70% of graphics card sales are IGP's.

The point your making is not a valid one IMO though because flash is improving price/GB but the price isn't improving as fast as HDD's.


I just don't think you naysayers are taking a very long perspective regarding SSDs- and by perspective, I mean computer time which is roughly equivalent to dog years.
So go ahead, keep investing in mechanical drives- after all, they are dirt cheap these days- but don't kid yourself by thinking that they won't soon become as obsolete as the floppy drive.

SSD's may have a bright future since they do have advantages and the technology is developing at a staggering rate but at this moment in time they are too expensive, theyr coming down in price slower than traditional HDD's and they write too slowly.

I don't know if these problems will get remedied in a short period of time or whether they will stay with SSD for a long time.

End of the day whatever the future brings is up for debate SSD may very well replace HDD but I doubt it will be within the next couple of years anyway so I'd say go out and buy your HDD's at this moment in time and probably for the foreseeable future it's a better option.

[clocker]

SSD endurance. (http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html)
SSD speed. (http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-fastest.html)
Note that for the drives we would be particularly interested in (2.5/3.5" SATA) the average read/write is 100 MB/s which compares quite favorably with the fastest mechanical HDD.
Coupled with the huge advantage in seek time- a fraction of a mechanical unit's- and the noise factor (none!), I would posit that for the average user (i.e., NOT a server environment or data center crunch machine), a SSD is already a step up from a mechanical drive in every aspect save price.

At this point in their development, I would liken the mechanical hard drive to a NASCAR engine.
Every season they manage to tweak a bit more power and reliability of them but they are completely irrelevant to mainstream technology...they're V-8s with pushrods and carbs, fer crissake and there isn't a single showroom model that can be bought with that sort of technology.

If you look at mechanical drives, their technical improvements have all sprung from changes in the transfer bus (SATA2>PATA), added cache (which is flash based) and platter density.
Why do you think that Raptors don't come in large sizes?
Why hasn't spindle speed increased along with everything else?

Finally, I personally think that the whole "size matters" issue is a complete red herring.
After my experience in the computer repair biz, I can state with absolute confidence that the "average user" of a computer has no need whatsoever for a hard drive larger than 80GB.
Probably 90% of the machines we worked on weren't even using 20GB of storage space- and these were older machines with several years of use on them.

Granted, with the release of Vista (which starts out over 7GB!) this will change a bit, but even ceding creeping OS bloat, 80GB would suffice for years of normal use.
It's a complete mistake to assume that the folks who populate forums like this (including me) are even remotely typical.
The normal user will never download a movie or TV show and thinks that a few hundred .jpgs and .mp3s is a lot of data.

The other red herring issue I've seen lately is data recovery.
How can you recover data lost from a SSD?
Don't know, don't care.

Most users are completely oblivious to even the most rudimentary forms of backup and aren't willing to pay for current methods of forensic recovery anyway, so whether the data disappears from a mechanical drive or a SSD, the end result is the same.
And, quite frankly, the "data" they lose is generally garbage to begin with.

Oh well, I don't know what else to say except time will tell, won't it?

[macking]

SSD endurance. (http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html)
SSD speed. (http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-fastest.html)
Note that for the drives we would be particularly interested in (2.5/3.5" SATA) the average read/write is 100 MB/s which compares quite favorably with the fastest mechanical HDD.
Coupled with the huge advantage in seek time- a fraction of a mechanical unit's- and the noise factor (none!), I would posit that for the average user (i.e., NOT a server environment or data center crunch machine), a SSD is already a step up from a mechanical drive in every aspect save price.

Your points are good but you seem to be downplaying the factor that has determined failure in other superior technologies through technology history.

Price.


At this point in their development, I would liken the mechanical hard drive to a NASCAR engine.
Every season they manage to tweak a bit more power and reliability of them but they are completely irrelevant to mainstream technology...they're V-8s with pushrods and carbs, fer crissake and there isn't a single showroom model that can be bought with that sort of technology.

I compare it a petrol engine versus a hydrogen fuel engine.

The hydrogen fuel engine has a lot of advantages but at this moment it isn't ready to replace petrol engines and it is a toss up on when it will mature enough and be viable from a price point of view.


If you look at mechanical drives, their technical improvements have all sprung from changes in the transfer bus (SATA2>PATA), added cache (which is flash based) and platter density.
Why do you think that Raptors don't come in large sizes?
Why hasn't spindle speed increased along with everything else?

As long as the technology keeps evolving and comes at a better pricepoint it will keep making sales.

If you look at SSD sales to HDD sales you can see for yourself how popular HDD's are.

Also HDD technology isn't dead just after going to perpendicular recording and improving speeds we have Seagate working on HAMR technology which will give us 5Tb HDD's in 2010 and is capable of delivering upto 300Tb HDD's.

Also Hitachi have shrunk the drive recording heads to half the size they are now.



Finally, I personally think that the whole "size matters" issue is a complete red herring.
After my experience in the computer repair biz, I can state with absolute confidence that the "average user" of a computer has no need whatsoever for a hard drive larger than 80GB.
Probably 90% of the machines we worked on weren't even using 20GB of storage space- and these were older machines with several years of use on them.

I disagree with you on this point I think storage will come extremely important in the future.

Case in example is online downloads.

I've read 50% of all internet traffic is bit torrent type traffic.

Thats a lot of downloading going on.

Apple's iStore has accumulated 4 billion song downloads, 50 million TV episodes and 1.3 million full lenght movies.

Thats not to mention Microsoft's plans to distribute HD movies over the internet in the coming years.

If they succeed in turning the PC into a Home Theater Centre Piece we're going to need all the storage we can get.


Granted, with the release of Vista (which starts out over 7GB!) this will change a bit, but even ceding creeping OS bloat, 80GB would suffice for years of normal use.
It's a complete mistake to assume that the folks who populate forums like this (including me) are even remotely typical.
The normal user will never download a movie or TV show and thinks that a few hundred .jpgs and .mp3s is a lot of data.

Thats a good point but people like bit torrent, Apple and Microsoft are having great success over populating out hard drives and when you look at their grand plans to offer HD content over the internet eventually you can see we're going to need a lot more than 20GB or 80GB


Oh well, I don't know what else to say except time will tell, won't it?

I think time will tell but you seem to be writing the death warrant of hard drives already.

Like I said I'm not sure what will come of the HDD vs SDD thing since theyr too of the fastest moving and most aggressive markets around.

HDD's may be dead in 5 years or SDD may never take off I just can't make that prediction and I don't think anybody else can either.

I think it is a wait and see situation since both have their own advantages at this moment in time and the people behind them are working on some interesting technologies that could have a big impact in the coming years.

Intel are working on phase changing flash memory which could easily rival anything HAMR could lead to.

Talking about right now though I'd take the mechanical relic because it costs a lot less.

[clocker]

I am not now, nor have I in previous posts, downplayed the price factor.
I have consistently stated that I believe the price/GB will drop precipitously- in fact, I've said a 120GB SSD will cost under $200 within 18 months.

-Comparing current SSD/HDD sales is irrelevant.
-There is absolutely no reason to expect that MS will succeed in foisting off the "Media Center" concept on a significant share of the market and if they do, it will be far enough in the future that I still think the mechanical drive won't be a part of it.
-50% of internet traffic may well be torrents but that says nothing about the percentage of users responsible for the traffic. My guess is that under 10% of PC users would be the active torrent seeders.

And finally, yes, I am perfectly willing to sound the death knell for mechanical drives.

Ironically, at this very moment I have two 750GB WD mechanical drives on order at Newegg for a customer build (video surveillance recorder) and another 250GB for a standard PC, so I'm obviously aware of which way the cookie crumbles as of today.