Solid State Drives to Become Mainstream in 3-5 Years

Posted 07/06/2012 at 6:49am | by Paul Lilly

12

Comments

Print

If you ever want to experience true elation, try swapping out a fragmented hard disk drive (HDD) that's bogging down performance from an otherwise well equipped PC for a performance oriented solid state drive (SSD). The difference can be night and day, depending on how slow your HDD is. It's also a costly upgrade that usually results in downgraded storage capacity, hence why HDDs are still the popular storage medium of choice. But for how long?

Digitimes Research reckons we'll all be using SSDs in 3-5 years in place of HDDs. Everyone from enthusiasts to mainstream users will have made the leap, not necessarily through DIY upgrades, but via new systems.

"Growth in total storage capacity for HDDs has been decreasing, while demand for SSDs has kept increasing due to fast growing use of smartphones, tablet PCs, and ultrathin notebooks," Digitimes Research notes.

With regards to cost, Digitimes points out the fact that the average price of SSDs has been sliced in half in the first half of 2012, while prices of HDDs have gone up since Thailand was hit with flooding back in October 2011. There's still a significant divide in pricing between the two storage mediums -- SSDs average $0.80/gigabyte and HDDs average $0.09/gigabyte -- but within five years, we could be looking at a totally different landscape.

Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook