HDD

[Bob Willcox]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 06:47:49PM +0100, Alexandre DELAY wrote:
> The only prices I found about this kind of product is at:
> http://www.psism.com/flashdrive.htm
> 
> It is still expensive, but when I see the price of last year's usb flash
> disks compared to todays, the ratio is 1/2. I bet this will follow usb
> drives prices.

Well, there's the rub. It will take a lot of price halvings for flash
drives to even get close.

If you take ZipZoomFly as a typical online retailer, they are selling
400GB IDE drives for $251 and 4GB flash drives for $236. That works
out to $0.63/GB for the hard disk and $59/GB for the flash drive. This
represents a ratio of almost 94:1.

I think it will be a long time before flash drives can make up that
price differential, and during that time hard drive capacities will
likely continue to increase and their cost per GB continue to fall. It's
been this way for the 30 years that I've been watching it, and I don't
see any likely reason for that to change anytime soon.

Of course, there are applications where flash memory drives have
distinct advantages (e.g. portable devices), but for mainstream data
storage, I don't see any real threat to hard drive technology in the
foreseeable future.

Bob

> 
> I'm happy to see that some people are interrested by this topic.
> 
> cheers
> 
> > -----Message d'origine-----
> > De : owner-freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
> > [mailto:owner-freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org]De la part de Ragnar Lonn
> > Envoy? : jeudi 15 d?cembre 2005 10:58
> > ? : Bob Willcox
> > Cc : Alexandre DELAY; freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
> > Objet : Re: HDD
> >
> >
> > Bob Willcox wrote:
> >
> > >On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:45:53PM +0100, Alexandre DELAY wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>Don't you think that flash drives are also a good solution?
> > >>
> > >>I am sure that it will be the future replacement for hard drive disks.
> > >>see http://www.memtech.com/ for example
> > >>
> > >>With no buffer and 1ms access delay you minimise write
> > failures. It is an
> > >>interresting solution.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > >Hmm, I see no prices listed on the Memtech web site (did I simply
> > >miss them?). So, what does a 96GB flash drive cost in comparison to a
> > >magnetic disk hard drive of similar capacity?
> > >
> > >Stories of the impending demise of magnetic disk drives have been
> > >circulating since at least the late '70s (back then I seem to remember
> > >that bubble and/or CCD memory was to spell their doom). So far, it
> > >appears that nothing has come along that has been able to compete on a
> > >cost per byte basis. Flash memory might be the technology to do it, but
> > >somehow I doubt it.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > I like to build silent PCs on my spare time and avoiding any moving
> > parts is of course
> > a good way to achieve this goal. This makes me very interested in any
> > memory-based
> > hard disk replacements but so far, they seem to be hideously expensive.
> > You have to
> > pay over $1000 for 8 GB of storage. Multiply that with 10 or so and
> > you're likely
> > to have the cost of that 96GB flash drive.
> >
> > I too thought that memory disks would take over some five years ago or
> > so, but
> > conventional hard disk technology has managed to stay ahead all the
> > time, providing
> > lots more storage per dollar and often also throughput rates almost
> > matching that
> > of the solid state memories. I think we will see a shift sometime, but
> > I've stopped
> > trying to predict it. Hard disk technology has such a big lead that it
> > may take a
> > while yet, I think.
> >
> >   /Ragnar
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >

-- 
Bob Willcox                Men freely believe that what they wish to desire.
bob at immure.com                      -- Julius Caesar
Austin, TX