The future of hard drives for the home user is under scrutiny by the price of technology for the solid state drive. After being introduced to the digital market as a plausible means to save photos, the next evolution for these devices became clear. They have made a tiny stab into the laptop market as a main storage unit.
Solid State Drives In The Laptop Market
HP, Apple, Lenovo and Dell have been known to use solid drives in their computer systems. “Depending on performance, SSDs can range in cost from $3 to $20 per gigabyte, says Jim Handy, a Los Gatos, Calif.-based SSD analyst with Objective Analysis” Tam Harbert quoted Jim Handy in The Industry Standard on February 8, 2010.
Solid drives are manufactured in low gigabyte sizes for laptops and desktops to save costs on the manufacturer’s part. These devices are available in larger sizes for the general consumer, if they are willing to pay the price. The individual owner’s may need the higher storage capacity of the conventional drive without the higher end cost from the solid drive. There are pro’s and con’s over using these types of drives.
Benefits of Using Solid Drives
There are several benefits of using the Solid drives over the conventional hard discs. The main advantage of the new drives is that they do not have moving parts and do not suffer from potential break downs. The potential data speed of reading and writing to the solid drive is due to the fact the data is “flashed” and not depending on a read and write head.
A real big craze for the Solid drives is the lack of heat output from these devices. This means the individual computer is running at a lower temperature than one with a hard disk drive. With a solid state drive running as a primary storage unit, the noise factor drops considerably due to the lack of moving parts.
Flaws of The Flash Drives
With appreciation of the many benefits of the solid drives today, there still remain flaws with the concept as a primary storage unit. “Flash memory used in solid-state disks doesn’t last long enough. Each memory ‘cell’ in an SSD can only be written to a limited number of times” in regards to Orestis Bastounis article in Computer Active on February 16, 2010
The second flaw that is ill for the SSD is the fact that fragments occur on the memory chips and a disk defragmenter cannot be used on them at this time. This doesn’t mean the drive cannot be “flashed over” but in this case the whole drive would be reformatted without the saved data.
Technology For Solid State Drives
As time progresses onward and technology evolves for the solid state drives, these devices will have a better advantage as a primary storage unit in the computer market. Until these major flaws are solved by the manufacturers the general public will have to wait until a faster hard disc to evolve from the technical storm on the horizon.
Mike Sawyer - Mike has been writing since childhood, he currently has three poetry books on the market. He is working on his bachelor's degree in ...
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