Solid State Drives, are they finally a Solid Decision?

By Ces Garcia (First complete written article) September 28th 2012

Remember when hard drives clicked? When you would hear them spin up and click and clak while you typed away on your system? Well technology has come a long way with Storage drives for computer systems, as of late Solid-state drive's are a revolutionary data storage device that use integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. The standard solid state drive generally uses the same connection as a 2.5" laptop hard drive. SSDs (a common name) do not employ any moving mechanical components, this distinguishes them from traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), which are electromechanical devices containing spinning disks and movable read/write heads. Compared with standard HDDs, SSDs are typically less susceptible to; physical shock, are silent, and have lower access time and latency. In 2011 market prices were more expensive per unit of storage as opposed to prices in 2012 which have continued to decline. Would this mean the end of SSDs? Or just the beginning?we have all been seeing Solid State Drives. Today, we have the option to go with a non-mechanical storage drive which eliminates; noise, mechanical failure of internal components and frustration.

Recently we have been seeing many devices contain SSDs, one of the main reasons is because as of 2010 most SSDs are NAND-based flash memory, which retains data without power. SSDs aren't only seen in computer systems but also in devices such as; XBOX 360's, Certain Phones (Which have a different form factor of SSDs), Tablets, Laptop's and so many more. This allows these devices to perform at a faster speed than most, though one of the questions I get from people the most is "SSD's are fast but is the lack of space worth the speed?" Well it comes down to a matter of personal opinion, I personally think that the speed is worth the lack of space and when someone has to compensate for space in a Computer system its better to have a SSD for the Operating System and a traditional HDD for data. This concept also applies to other devices even though it requires different methods, with mobile devices it is always good to connect them to you computer every once and a while to back up documents or create more space.

So are solid states a solid decision? Of course they are, even though prices haven't been exactly steady considering they were expensive when they were released. As with most revolutionary hardware components they are expensive but as we have seen recently is that SSDs have dropped in price to less than $2 per gig. Considering that 1024mb Hard drives used to cost $1,099.00 dollars when they first released, that's not a bad cost. So what does this mean for SSDs and end users? Well my research shows that solid state hard drives are projected At 63% Growth leaving companies like OCZ with problems such as to much demand and not enough supply.

Former OCZ CEO Ryan Peterson (Who stepped down Sept 17th.) stated in the September 5th conference call:

"We have more, more than sufficient demand for our product. We really do not have any demand issues. We have an issue with too much demand, but not too little."

"New Bookings in the quarter were well in excess of the prior quarter which leaves us with an insurmountable backlog -- which is both good and bad." (Note: The 27 million backlog from last quarter has been filled.)

What does this mean for SSDs?

In general we have to take into account that with great components comes great responsibility. With demand at an all time high for SSDs soon we will experience an increase in cost for SSDs and according to certain vendors we can experience that increase in price within the next week. So pick up your SSDs as quick as possible, remember how high prices went up for HDD's when the flood hit.

Article written and posted by: Ces Garcia

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