SSDs Get Ready for a Late 2009 Boost

[Guest]

As the market for NAND Flash stabilizes in the latter half of the year, consumer and enterprise demand for solid-state drives is expected to surpass hard drives.

SSDs Get Ready for a Late 2009 Boost : Read more

 

[xx12amanxx]

I just bought a G-Skill 64g ssd and im pretty impressed with it and to make the deal even better i only paid $130 for it!

 

[geoffs]

I can see SSDs overtaking HD in enterprise environments, where speed is usually more important than price or capacity, but in consumer goods, price and capacity are usually much bigger factors. I don't see consumer demand for SSDs overtaking HDs until price and capacity are very much closer.

Most consumer usage doesn't see a great speed advantage from SSD, web browsing, email, media playback (or encoding/transcoding) isn't particularly sensitive to the latency on a HD, so SSD makes very little difference. Unless usage patterns change (e.g. a new "killer app" that is latency sensitive arises), price and capacity are going to continue to be the driving factors in consumer electronics.

What could drive SSD demand in consumer PCs and Laptops is laptops with both a smaller (16GB-32GB) SSD for the OS & applications plus a large, cheap HD for data (e.g. media file) storage. However, that may require a lot of changes in installers and/or applications and/or user habits to get the data stored on a separate volume from the OS & applications, so it's not something that is likely to occur in a year or two. Yes, it can be done today and I've been using that method for my business clients for years, but it requires a moderate level of computer expertise to set it up that way and users don't always understand it. It can be very tedious to get some applications to install or work that way.

 

[geoffs]

Most consumer usage doesn't see a great speed advantage from SSD. Web browsing,...

What could drive SSD demand in consumer PCs and Laptops is machineswith both...

Correcting my typos. I wish TH had a preview feature on posts.

 

[baov]

Someone explain to me how "oversupply of NAND flash" keeps price high, and when the oversupply issue is resolve the price drops? Isn't oversupply supposed to drive price down?

 

[kamel5547]

[citation][nom]geoffs[/nom]I can see SSDs overtaking HD in enterprise environments, where speed is usually more important than price or capacity[/citation]


Depends on the application. For databases with many random reads sure... for an e-mail environment that stores TB and TB of data probably not. Same thing for file servers... the capacity trade off isn't quite there IMO just yet, but really isn't too far away (seeing as enterprise HDD's (10K & 15K) have lagged in capacity (450 GB being the largest and that was released relatively recently). I give it until 2010 for SDD's to provide a serious case t go into the majority of servers.

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]baov[/nom]Someone explain to me how "oversupply of NAND flash" keeps price high, and when the oversupply issue is resolve the price drops? Isn't oversupply supposed to drive price down?[/citation]
Too much production, not enough sales, no revenue for manufacturers, price hikes to counter this.

 

[saturn77]

So the market is fixed then? Not enough sales, no revenue for manufacturers = lowering prices not raising them.

 

[JWM]

Industry critics are doubtfully responding with, “about time” to the announcement. Seagate’s been dragging its heels with flash-based technology compared to its peers...

Excuse me, what peers? Check Newegg for SATA SSD drives and note that there are zero models from manufacturers of conventional HDs. ZERO.

None of the producers of SATA SSDs so far are in any way even close to a peer of Seagate. The fledgling SATA SSD manufacturers are providing the market with some great products and I'm glad. I even bought an Intel X25-M which I'm predictably thrilled with.

But the press is being childish in trying to constantly chide Seagate for being resistant to try and compete with these pipsqueak SSD manufacturers on some arbitrary timetable in their heads that has nothing to do with how business actually works.

Seagate knows what they are doing, as do the other big conventional HD manufacturers. They will release SSDs when they feel they can make a profit at it without unacceptable drawbacks like a severe devaluing of their existing product lines.