SD CARD(S) INSTEAD OF HDD and CD/DVD's?

I've noticed that the price of a new 64gb SD card is down to $40, on my local Craigslist. I've also noticed that there are adapters available to convert sd cards to the 2.5" SATA hard-drive form-factor. (But these seem limited to 16gb sd cards, right now.)

As the price of SD cards continues to plunge, how long will it be until we can buy a cheap adapter units in current 1.8" and 2.5" sizes, pair them with cheap SD cards to make our own SSD's? Will we see holders for multiple SD's?

The 2.5" adapters I see on ebay are now limited to 16gb, but I suspect HDD manufacturers must be getting a little anxious.

Also, it seems high time to bid goodbye to DVD's and CD's. Will it be the SD form-factor, the usb stick, or another format that does them in?

 

It's possible, but SD cards suffer from the same set of issues that make most* USB thumb drives unsuitable as boot drives - they're slow, they're tuned for sequential access speeds over random access speeds, and they use low end NAND.

* Excluding high end USB thumb drives which have an SSD controller, of course.

 

Yup, a problem with SD cards is that they don't really have wear leveling so that they can wear out if used like a system drive.

That said, the next media is probably USB sticks due to wide spread use, compatibility and speed/cost. Also, SD cards are probably easier to lose than a USB stick.

 

I can see SD cards and thumb drives replacing optical disks as install media, especially if the MacBook Air/Ultrabook form factor factor becomes a standard (I can see this happening, especially if Netbooks evolve into "normal" spec laptops). The lack of built-in optical drives would likely drive people and/or OEMs to use other media. As it is, a lot of us already mount ISOs on flash media for installs.

 

I believe Commander Wolf ran Windows XP off a 4 GB Compact Flash, but it was SLC as MLC causes horrible stuttering.

 

I doubt that, the price to produce 1 sd card compared to a dvd or even a blu-ray disc is far too expensive, downloads or dvd is still a viable medium for cheap mass production installers.

 

agree that cost of DVD is much more lower than flash media. Though the chance of needing to ship physical media is fading away.

Most new machine has those as part of the HDD image and for additional program installation, direct download is the norm.

But SD card is not suitable as a daily use drive on pc(well smart phone has been using it for a while) due to the mentioned frequent read/write

 

If Apple can ship Lion on a USB flash drive, Microsoft can ship Windows 8 on a USB flash drive. I'm just sayin...

 

OS X Mountain Lion to be download-only, USB stick going the way of the dodo -- Engadget

 

how many Lion Apple shipped each year ? It makes no economic sense for Microsoft to ship it in flash media.

And I doubt you see LV style packaging in handbags selling 20 bucks in Walmart.

 

The Lion USB stick comes at an extremely high premium compared to the Snow Leopard DVD and Lion via digital download - IIRC it more than doubles the price of the OS.

 

How can at worse worse case a $5 USB thumb drive double the cost of the OS? AT COST price for a 4GB flash drive would probably be like $2-$3. Still much more expensive than DVD which probably costs < $0.50 each, but hardly a massive hit.