Why do companies focus on making 2.5" Drives?

[Upstagebuffalo]

I was watching a few videos on SSDs and how they are awesome and what not, then I noticed that every single SSD I had seen was 2.5". Why is that? I mean I can understand the use for 2.5" drives for notebooks ect. but for the desktop/main gaming community you would think that a companies would put out an SSD that is 3.5" like a normal HDD so it could have more capacity and better preformance, I mean with the extra internal space you would think they could fit more in there to make it better. So why hasn't a company done it yet? Or has a company done it and there was no real benefit to doing it in the first place?



~Upstagebuffalo

 

[smorizio]

upstage have you ever looked on youtube at the parts inside of a ssd. most ssd are just a small controler and a few chips.
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/OCZ-Nocti-120-GB-Internal-2-5-NOC-MSATA-120G-SSD-Solid-State-Drive/00/$%28KGrHqF,!p0E63ZpG2%29tBO3jgFk%29e!~~_35.JPG
a 3.5 case would be a waste of space and cost to the end user. as you can see on the ebay image the two ram chips and the controller chip is on a very small logic board. a 3.5 drive most of the space is for the platters and the drive arm.

 

[jaguarskx]

Because there is no actual need for it. People who wants to put an SSD in a desktop will also buy a 3.5" to 2.5" adaptor. Since there are no mechanical parts in a SSD, simply increasing the size does not improvement performance. Sure a 3.5" SSD can potentially have higher capacities than a 2.5" SSD, but have you seen prices of high capacity SSDs?

There are actually two other SSD formats; mSATA which has recently been replaced by M.2 and they are basically used in laptops.

 

[USAFRet]

No need for a 3.5" SSD. Either a simple plate adapter (often included), or many cases nowadays have a 2.5" mount space included. My Antec ONE from last year has 2 such mount points.

 

[bryonhowley]

There were a some a few years ago that came out in 3.5 form factor but those have pretty much all been discontinued by now. The first OCZ I got was 3.5 that was about 3 years ago.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Companies focus on 2.5 inch ssd's because it is the same size as 2.5 inch hard disk drives which already existed. The 2.5 inch width is an international standard for laptop computers. In fact, I just replaced a 2.5 inch hard disk drive in a client's laptop with a new ssd. I simply pulled the hard drive and plugged in the ssd. No muss! No Fuss! No bother!

There is a second reason companies are focusing on the 2.5 inch width. Sales of traditional desktop computers have fallen drastically. There has been a literal explosion in mobile computing. This years sales of mobile computers have outpaced desktop pc's.

 

[jaguarskx]

I will add that 2.5" SSDs can be used in both desktops and laptops while 3.5" SSDs would only be used in the desktop market. Since physical size does not yet limit the capacity of a SSD, there is no reason for a 3.5" SSD which would be limited to a single market segment and likely carry a higher price because of a combination of manufacturing costs (less economies of scale compared to 2.5" SSDs since less will be produced) and lower demand due to it being available to only one market segment. Thus, they would need to sell for a higher price to justify production.

 

[Dan_73]

Ps demands very large 2.5 inch laptop space 2tb preferred if not bigger. 39 million ps4 s sold as of last month so so there is a demand for 39 million larger hard drives now!!!!!!!! Will be 80 plus million in just 3 more years.

 

[jaguarskx]

And....