My Prediction: SSD's to replace hard drives in 1-1/2 to 2 years

phaZed

phaZed

Well-Known Member
Reaction score
3,148
Location
Richmond, VA
So, I have been keeping a close eye on SSD drives and I am going to throw a prediction out there.

In 1-1/2 to 2 years everything will be SSD and not only that, it will make monetary sense to replace a failed mechanical hard drive with an SSD.

I predict the only hard drives worth purchasing will be the extremely large capacity ones (Think 2TB, 4TB, and the upcoming 8TB drives).

6-9 months ago the average 500GB SSD price was ~$400-450.
Today: PNY 480GB SSD for $150
Samsung Evo 500GB SSD for $169.99
1TB Samsung 840 EVO mSATA SSD for $399.99


And to think I spent almost $300 for a 128GB Samsung just a few years ago.


Next up for consideration is that AMD is releasing their R7 SSD line soon in which they partnered with Toshiba (OCZ, yuck). The big news here is that they are going to have a BOM (Bill of Material) cost of $10-$20. This will further lower costs across the SSD board to stay competitive.

So, that's my prediction! Whatcha think? :D
 
I don't think you are far off, of course we will still see regular hard drives for many more years but in desktops and especially laptops they will become standard in the next 2-4 years I believe.
 
Last edited:
HFultzjr said:
Wow, there goes a lot of business out the door!

Replacing bad drives is one of the most common things I do.

Harold
Click to expand...

I don't think you'll have to worry much. I think SSDs are less reliable then mechanical HDDs. As they get more common the more trouble we are going to see from them. And that is more work for us.
 
nlinecomputers said:
I don't think you'll have to worry much. I think SSDs are less reliable then mechanical HDDs. As they get more common the more trouble we are going to see from them. And that is more work for us.
Click to expand...

So far, save for 3x brands, that's the way I see it too. I see wicked...WICKED high rates of failure with most brands of SSDs.
 
nlinecomputers said:
So what do you think is good. I don't trust any of them myself. At least not without a rock solid backup system in place.
Click to expand...

I was using Crucial M4 drives but now have started putting Crucial MX100's in non business systems. Pretty good reviews. Good price and they are fast. Some people have mentioned chipset/sata issues with some mobo's but you find out fast if it wont work. I have tried a few PNY drives on old, slow machines to keep them alive but cant speak to longevity at this point.
 
SSD's are the future and the future is already here. My oldest SSD has about 6years of experience. I haven't had one fail yet and I own 4. Sure, that's a tiny sample but until Consumers Reports compiles the failure rate of storage devices like they do cars we will never get real world figures.

No moving parts. Negligible access and seek times. Disk latency is virtually no more. SSD's use 1/3 the power but cost 3X more per GB. HDD's use cache to speed themselves up so why not use all NAND chips and omit the problematic spinning platters and flying heads altogether?

HDD's have 50+ years of development. SSD's have about 7 years. I still create multiple backups because as any tech worth his or her salt knows it's just a matter of time until any storage medium takes a permanent vacation.

Laptops used to cost 3X as much as a desktop. Today, they are pretty much equal in cost. When that happens to the cost of an SDD, HDD's will follow the floppy into the big bit bucket in the sky.

So that's my long-winded soliloquy of why I agree with the OP's prediction.
 
I have only installed a few ( count them 3) SSD's in laptops for customers. I have to say that I am not really gung ho about them at this point. Sure, They might be the wave of the future but to me they are still an emerging product.

You still do not have as much storage as a good hard drive. However, I think they will really outpace mechanical hard drives when it comes to the laptop market.

The one issue that bothers me is that when a SSD dies then there really isnt much of a chance of recovering your data. This is a biggy for me. With a hard drive failure you have a better chance.

I just do not see trading off the possibility to recover data for my residential customers just for an increase in speed.

coffee
 
I've probably installed somewhere between 50 and 80 SSDs over the last few years and, while I do tend to stick mainly to Samsung or Kingston, I've used most makes, 'cept maybe OCZ.

So far I've had only one failure, which only caused a minor inconvenience. I do use a fairly comprehensive fail-safe system to protect against such failures though, as I previously mentioned, which enabled me to quickly and remotely repair the system, without any loss of data. The drive seemed pretty-much dead and unresponsive though so, without backups, I think it's possible everything could've been lost.
 
For non-business customers I think we are approaching a point where an SSD along with some kind of cloud based backup service is going to become the norm. I think its very close and I think that the end user wont fight it because they have no other choice. Most have no idea how to backup or wont buy whats needed to set it up on their own or cant remember to run a program you set up or will not insert a USB stick or will disconnect or turn off external drives.

Internet access is almost a given for people using a personal computer since most of them use their computer solely for going on the internet. If they have an SSD drive there should be a standard, almost mandatory way to incrementally backup their "user data" every time they use the machine without them even thinking about it.

I know this can create a security or hacking risk, but aren't these people already at the same risk level even if they keep their data locally but use the internet ? So I don't think the fear that someone can "hack the cloud" should be a concern when someone can hack their computer much easier.

90% of residential "data recovery" customers are the typical docs, images, music and maybe email type recovery jobs. If those customers data were "in the cloud" and their SSD drive died then recovery would be installing a new drive, reloading the O/S, tweaking it with all the crap they want and then downloading the last backup of their junk from the cloud.

I know we are not really there yet, but I think its close.
 
Last edited:
Hey Jimbo, I totally agree with you.

I also see a time when the 'cloud' backup providers will be a main hacking target. A company like idrive though could survive it if (maybe they do already) build in a program to encrypt the backup before it hits their servers. Of course then the breakin will have to get past something like a 256bit encryption that only the customer knows.

I have an idrive account but I just used it to test it out. I dont really do any backups on the cloud.

Did you see this? :

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...nd-other-celebrities-nude-photos-9703142.html

I would post nudies of me on the web but I wouldnt want to scare others :)

coffee
 
I've had great luck with samsung so far. 500GB is what I use in my main machine.
 
Crucial and Samsung I heard are the best. I personally don't have any clients that use them at all. Only person that was interested in getting one was my father lol.

I was reading up on a article the other day on HowtoGeek on Hybrid Drives. What does anyone here seem to think about those? Will those pick up?
 
cypress said:
I was reading up on a article the other day on HowtoGeek on Hybrid Drives. What does anyone here seem to think about those? Will those pick up?
Click to expand...

Good experience with them....quite a while ago I tried one out of my wifes prior laptop, got a Samsung hybrid. Cloned her original drive to it. I immediately saw well improved bootup speed, login, and responsiveness when working around.

Have not done a lot of them to get a feel for reliability...but I'm sure if the SSD components fails..it's not total loss like with an SSD with how it works with the SSD cache part.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Appletax
Thinking About Switching From Legion 5 Pro To MacBook Pro M1 Pro
2 3
Replies
41
Views
5K
Sky-Knight
Sky-Knight
Moltuae
Tape could replace hard drives - in some cases - thanks to this breakthrough
Replies
8
Views
1K
alluseridsrejected
alluseridsrejected
T
Motherboard Dies after replacing Hard Drive
Replies
3
Views
654
techyguy717
T
B
Computer I wish I had never agreed to work on!
Replies
4
Views
880
discipulus
discipulus
freedomit
Hard drives for Hp MicroServer Gen8
Replies
8
Views
3K
MobileTechie
M
Back
Top