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If you're not rocking a solid state drive in your system, it's probably because of price, are we right? And specifically, the cost per gigabyte can be hard to swallow when mechanical hard drives offer such a superior value, at least in terms of what you're paying. SSDs have a long way to go before they catch up to HDDs, but maybe they don't have to. Maybe SSDs just need to offer a better value before the mainstream market dives in en masse.
That's what a new report from market research firm Gartner seems to suggest, PCWorld reports. According to Gartner, SSDs are primed to have a banner year in 2012 as prices trickle down into the $1 per gigabyte territory, at which point mainstream buyers will start to come around.
Also helping the matter is the emerging tablet market. Most tablets use NAND flash memory for storage chores, and this has caused a rise in demand for NAND chip. Manufacturers are responding by adding capacity to fill this demand, which Gartner says will eventually push prices down.
If Gartner's research is right, the price of NAND flash memory chips will fall 30 percent this year, and another 36 percent in 2012. For the sake of comparison, some of today's SSDs range in price from around $1.50 per gigabyte for low capacity boot drives, to having to sign over your first born for high-performance, large capacity drives.
At what price (per gigabyte) do SSDs need to reach before you would consider ditching HDDs altogether?
Image Credit: OCZ
Comments are closed on this article
wololo
February 10, 2012 at 9:46pm
Here's a good resource which track the price of SSDs daily.
http://www.ssdtracker.comHere's the 1 ranked drive in terms of price per gigabyte:
OCZ Technology 120 GB Vertex
http://www.ssdtracker.com/126/ocz-technology-120-gb-vertex-plus-optimized-edition-sata-ii-2-5-inch-solid$137.67 / $1.15 per gigabyte
Hope that helps.
titan8813
May 12, 2011 at 11:12am
That's what I told myself would be the tipping point for my entry into the SSD market - $1/GB. I almost buckled and bought a 64GB Kingston drive for $75 AR when it was on ShellShocker a few months back, but I decided to wait knowing that my patience will be rewarded. Technically I'm already in the SSD market with a Super Talent mini PCI-e drive in my eee PC, but it maxes out at 40MB/s sequential reads so it's not really setting any records.
TechLarry
May 12, 2011 at 8:37am
SSD's are in the "Milking it for all it's worth" stage right now. It hasn't reached toaster status yet like hard drive have.
Probably won't be wrong. All it takes is one supplier to get it started.
wkstar
May 11, 2011 at 9:36pm
Kingston SSDNow 30GB, , I bought it 3/10/2010 just died last week. Lets just say that I am not happy.
wkstar
May 11, 2011 at 9:36pm
Kingston SSDNow 30GB, , I bought it 3/10/2010 just died last week. Lets just say that I am not happy.
hoopmanjh
May 11, 2011 at 6:52pm
In addition to unit cost dropping, capacities need to increase -- I'm guessing most people wouldn't want to replace a 1TB or 2TB mechanical drive with a stack of 128GB or 256GB SSD's.
someuid
May 11, 2011 at 2:44pm
Hehe. I remember the Insight Corp ads in Computer Shopper that listed the price per MB of physical hard drives around the time everyone was drooling over the fast approaching $1/MB price point.
I also remember capacities shooting up at that point as sales picked up and everyone was upgrading or adding a second drive. Hopefully the $1/GB price point for SSDs has the same effect.
praetor_alpha
May 11, 2011 at 2:39pm
I'm OK with current prices. But as unreliable as spinny drives are, I have heard SSDs are even more unreliable... on the order of 15-500 days until failure. Has anyone here have their $200+ SSD fail?
k11k
May 11, 2011 at 4:54pm
Yup,lasted 3 month, back to raid0 velociraptor hd. Waiting for replacement from OCZ.
bloodgain
May 11, 2011 at 1:12pm
Ooh, big reach there, Gartner. I think I need to get into market research. You can pick up a 128GB Vertex 2 drive (MPC's not-yet-updated-to-Vertex-3 Best of the Best line) for $180 after rebate at NewEgg, which works out to roughly $1.40/GB. $1/GB sometime in 2012 is not a prediction so much as what the drive manufacturers could tell you.
However, it was the $1/GB price point in hard drives that really kicked off the "keep everything" storage boom. I think that could be the mainstream SSD adoption point, though I think it will be at $0.50/GB before we see them common in mid-range laptops and gaming/multimedia desktops. We'll have to see prices at or near current HDD prices to see SSDs completely replace HDDs in consumer PCs.
I'd say at $0.10-0.15 per GB, SSDs would replace HDDs for me for everything but NAS-level massive storage for incremental backups and archival. At the current ~$0.05-0.06/GB, who needs HDDs, unless they start giving away 8TB drives as free gifts with purchase?
anhhai
May 11, 2011 at 1:04pm
WOrking in IT and setting up servers and workstations, I've learned to avoid OCZ. I pretty much memorize their RMA line now.
give me an SSD that can last more than 3 years. please....
Going with Intel...
rburkegt
May 11, 2011 at 1:01pm
$1/GB is acceptable for performance-oriented drives. I got onboard with WD Raptor drives when they reached that price point. I bought my first SSD when OCZ Agility 2 120GB hit $200 AR. Combined it with my old 300GB Velociraptor as a secondary drive.
Looking forward to the 256GB drives hitting $1/GB!
