As we all know the size of flash-based solid-state drives( SSD’s ) are increasing day by day and their prices are decreasing at the same rate. Will this cause a pain for the companies making conventional hard disks?? well to some extent its causing a level of worry but not much as big players like Seagate and Western Digital (WDC) have already grabbed many patents which wont let SSD’s replace hard drives easily. But don’t u think if u can get better performance for such low cost isn’t it better??

The advantages of SSD’s are —

  • Faster startup – as no spin-up is required.
  • Typically near-instantaneous random access – since there is no read/write head to move.
  • Extremely low read and write latency times – SSDs seek times are orders of magnitude smaller than the best current hard disk drives.
  • Lower power consumption and heat production – at least for small SSDs. High-end SSDs and SSDs larger than 64GB may have a much higher power consumption.
  • No noise – Lack of moving parts makes the SSD completely silent, although high-end SSDs and large SSDs may include cooling fans.
  • High mechanical reliability – Lack of moving parts almost eliminates the risk of mechanical failure.
  • Better able to endure extreme shock, high altitude, vibration and temperatures – SSDs are tougher than traditional hard drives.These features are useful for laptops, mobile computers, and devices that operate in extreme conditions.
  • Relatively deterministic performance – unlike hard disk drives, performance of SSDs is almost constant and deterministic across the entire storage. This is because seek time can be constant, so file fragmentation has less impact on performance than on physical drives.
  • For low-capacity SSDs, lower weight and size – size and weight per unit storage are still better for traditional hard drives, and microdrives allow up to 20 GB storage in a CompactFlash 42.8×36.4×5 mm (1.7×1.4×.2 in) form factor. Up to 64GB, SSDs are lighter than hard drives for the same size.

So the question is should the upcoming technology of SSDs be prometed and speeded up or not??