Why Solid State Drives Won’t Replace Spinning Disk

“It wasn’t that long ago that solid state drives (SSDs) were
DRAM-based and cost a fortune. Then the proliferation of mobile
devices requiring shock and vibration profiles that exceeded hard
drives created a huge market for flash. Prices dropped, and with
more money available for R&D, the density increased
dramatically.

“It’s been a period of tremendous evolution for flash, but I
believe dark clouds are forming on the horizon. Let’s start with a
little history to help me make my point. I first heard more than 20
years ago that tape was dead, but it took data deduplication to
make disk cheap enough to hurt tape sales. So it wasn’t disk drives
alone that were able to impact tape sales; it was disk drives
combined with new technology.

“Now we’re hearing from some that flash drives are going to
replace hard disk drives, and that the cost difference, though
great now, will continue to decline. Vendors are putting out charts
showing the cost of flash drives and hard disk drives converging,
which looks to me like some of the charts I saw for tape and disk
more than 20 years ago. I don’t think it’s going to happen any time
soon, and the reasons have to do with lithography limits and disk
drive density.”

Complete Story