[tdg84]

Since the SSD drives have came out the prices have come down. Not sure of the exact $ per GB ($/GB), but it's considerably less now than it was just a year ago. My question is how far can/will it go? Will the cost of an SSD ever be the same as a traditional HDD in terms of cost per GB?

Also, if the memory in a SSD is similar to a USB flash drive memory, how come the price difference is so large? Its probably due to speed and things like that, but thats an answer I've been wanting to know for a while.

[compnovo]

tdg84, on 10 July 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Since the SSD drives have came out the prices have come down. Not sure of the exact $ per GB ($/GB), but it's considerably less now than it was just a year ago. My question is how far can/will it go? Will the cost of an SSD ever be the same as a traditional HDD in terms of cost per GB?

Also, if the memory in a SSD is similar to a USB flash drive memory, how come the price difference is so large? Its probably due to speed and things like that, but thats an answer I've been wanting to know for a while.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
I'm seeing reliable SSDs advertised on Newegg for <$1/GB, so the prices have dropped a lot. I don't know if SSD prices will ever match those of HDDs, I doubt that anyone knows at this point, but I do believe they going to be the boot drives of the future. Platter drives are currently the most cost effective storage drives.

Why the big price difference? Part of it is simple market economics: supply and demand. Now that more manufacturers are entering the SSD market it's starting to "flood" so the only way to move volumes is to lower the prices (sort of the McDonalds approach). However, these aren't just a board full of memory chips. There are sophisticated controllers that handle memory allocation and wear leveling, in addition to a whole bunch of stuff I don't pretend to understand. But hey, I was in college when pocket calculators cost a few hundred bucks so I've seen prices go down as the technology matures.

This post has been edited by compnovo: 10 July 2012 - 03:26 PM

[LiveBrianD]

Lately I've seen a lot of SSDs for $1/GB normally, and less on sale. (For instance, the 128GB and 256GB versions of the Samsung 830.)

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if SSDs end up replacing hard drives in most systems - after all, not many people need all that much space anyway. The price has nowhere to go but down. (and the sooner we get away from hard drives and the price fixing, the better)

[LincolnSpector]

tdg84, on 10 July 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Since the SSD drives have came out the prices have come down. Not sure of the exact $ per GB ($/GB), but it's considerably less now than it was just a year ago. My question is how far can/will it go? Will the cost of an SSD ever be the same as a traditional HDD in terms of cost per GB?

Also, if the memory in a SSD is similar to a USB flash drive memory, how come the price difference is so large? Its probably due to speed and things like that, but thats an answer I've been wanting to know for a while.

As long as there's a market for both SSDs and HDDs, HDDs will be cheaper by the gigabyte. That's because the technologies will both continue to improve.

Eventually, I suspect, the market for HDDs will shrink, and there will be no money in improving the technology. Then SSDs will eventually surpass them.

Lincoln