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What makes SSD's so expensive?
- Thread starter MultiMediaWill
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Yea but what actually makes them that fast? What physically inside of them makes them so expensive?
theres a small person in the drive doing all the fetching and storing, you are paying for his services.
You're asking the wrong forum apparently, lol.
Seriously, though. The non-moving parts is the biggest part of it. Wiki isn't far off. Data is fetched and stored in a cache-like manner rather than on a platter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive
Flash memory. The SSD does not have to make any movements like an HDD does when searching for data. An HDD has a motor to spin platters and the platters are then read or written to (picture a record player) whereas SSD data is in the form of flash memory chips. Data can be read/written almost instantaneously from flash memory.
In addition to performance, they are much more durable (can be immersed in water without data loss), deal with shock much better than HDDs, they are very light, generate no heat, no noise and all in all since there are no moving parts, there is a much lower failure chance.
As for pricing, it is just that it's new and better technology with HDDs still being more popular. Supply and demand basically. IBM's first personal computer was in the $10,000 range.
Basic econ 101. Supply and demand. SSDs are limited supply and they are exponentially greater than their HDD counterpart which are saturated in the market, so they will be high in price.
Some of you young bucks probably don't remember the VHS to DVD transition in the mid 90s. Basic DVD players were selling for close to $500 when they first hit the market. Now you can get a barebones basic DVD player for less than $50 new.
Some of you young bucks probably don't remember the VHS to DVD transition in the mid 90s. Basic DVD players were selling for close to $500 when they first hit the market. Now you can get a barebones basic DVD player for less than $50 new.
Still most of the cost of an SSD is taken up by the chips that make up the data storage. If you think of an SSD like lots of USB flash drives placed into a hard drive enclosure it is not difficult to see why they are expensive. Say for sake of argument 4gb USB flash drive is £5. To get a 128gb SSD you would require 32 USB flash drives, at a cost of £160. Factor in other components including DRAM, the enclosure and other technology and the price seems more justifiable. But just with any technology the price will continue to decrease.
Personally I no longer think an SSD is unobtainably expensive for most computer users. A small one of 128gb or less is very much affordable, given the improvements over a traditional HDD.
Personally I no longer think an SSD is unobtainably expensive for most computer users. A small one of 128gb or less is very much affordable, given the improvements over a traditional HDD.
I think we can modernize this a tad bit. for example, when blu-ray players came out, it was double the price of dvd players...super expensive compared to regular dvd players.
You can't even use the same flash chips as are available in the flash drives. You need high capacity, fast response flash chips that don't go into the bargin bin flash drives. And you have an upper limit on the number of chips you can use due to space. Higher capacity flash on the same size chip is more expensive (since you need more expensive equipment that can produce smaller transistors on the chip surfaces).
Your estimate does a decent job, but if you take these other things into account, it's a pretty optimistic estimate of the cost.
EDIT: As you get above 256GB or so, especially. At 128GB and lower, the chips are becoming common enough that prices are falling fairly quickly, but 32/64GB flash chips are still pricy as sin.
Obviously there made from a ivory deriving from a rare elephant species...
In the day an age when people are getting comfortable with 500, 750 and 1TB+ HDD's 128 won't suffice for some including my self. My 250HDD is full....everyday optibay is getting more and more attractive though...
Obviously there made from a ivory deriving from a rare elephant species...
In the day an age when people are getting comfortable with 500, 750 and 1TB+ HDD's 128 won't suffice for some including my self. My 250HDD is full....everyday optibay is getting more and more attractive though...
Word.
The only thing holding me back of getting an Optibay is the inability to hibernate. Nowadays I'm not so sure if I need hibernate.
