Why are SSDs so expensive?

Where is the extensive pricing coming from? Are they hard to manufacture? Or is just because they're new?

 

IPod has a mechanical drive not SSD.

Yes it is new technology (I know but in size and application) manufacturing costs are very high and volume is low.

 

Well that was a dumb question, considering I can feel my iPod shaking now and then when I try to access it...

Would investing in a 64GB SSD be worth it? Or is that just for super hard-core users who need every second of bootup and read time?

 

It is not mainstream at this point. The price per GB is too high for me. I like the extra space of HDD. It really depends on you. What you do, how much money and your opinion on what is important to you. No right or wrong on this.

 

Well, how about a 10,000 rpm notebook drive??

 

I believe the 10k rpm notebook drives use a SAS interface rather than SATA.

 

Are there any clear benefits to an SSD over a regular HDD right now?

 

Well if you have deep pockets, they are quite a bit faster than most traditional hard drives, but fast enough to justify their price premium? IMHO no...but we each have our own.

 

faster, quieter, uses less power, more reliable*

 

Less heat, shock resistant, lighter.

 

Eh sorry negative on almost all those.

They are only faster at certain things, not everything.
They are quieter though.
They dont use less power.
They have a high failure rate.

 

are you sure ?

<- electrical engineer

 

Nizzy is pretty much right.
However the only SSD's I recall with problems are the non-samsung rebranded ocz core drives.
Most SSD's do consume more energy than a mechanical drive.

SSD's are better at loading lots of small files, while mechanical drives are better at loading large files.

K-TRON

 

0.1 to 0.3 ms access times, vs 10+ ms for laptop HDD

above 60MB/s on almost all SSDs available, some of which go above 100MB/s, with write speeds at almost that rate too

power consumption: here's just an example. The rest is just a matter of time to drop power, and they will .... unlike regular HDD

http://www.samsung.com/us/business/semiconductor/newsView.do?news_id=901.0

failure: we could have a looooong discusion about which is more reliable, an electrical device that uses mechanical parts, or an electrical device made entirely of chips. An average laptop HDD lasts about 3 -4 years. I would bet the SSDs will overcome that by at least 2 times. And I do understand the write cycles on those

 

SSDs are typically fast for reading data but my experience with flash drives is that they stink at write speeds. Intel, Micron and Numonyx are coming out with Phase Change Memory SSDs which are a different technology and there are claims that performance is much better than flash-based SSDs. I'm still waiting for independent reviews and benchmarks for their product.

Intel is doing some controller work too which seems to be a problem spot with flash-based SSDs.

The performance difference is due to how the devices work. HDDs have a spinning platter so that sequential access is fast as you read sequential blocks along a track. But random access requires time to position the right sector under the head which involves moving the head to the right track and spinning the disk so that the right sector is under the head. I don't recall why writes take longer than reads do on SSDs.

 

I don't know but from what I do know almost certain it has to do with the SSD's must write/erase entire blocks of information. A HDD can erase and write a bit in theory. Yea I know less than a byte is useless but still much less than a block.

 

I thought they used SCSI interface

 

You can't generalize SSDs just like you can't generalize with HDs. SSDs (not all) can be faster in EVERY aspects compared to a HD. Again with the power, some SSDs can perform better and also use less power. Different technologies have different reliability, but SLC technology (the more expensive one) has been used for at least 2 decades in mission critical applications, and it is much more reliable than traditional hard drives.

On the subject of 2.5" 10k drives, they aren't really designed for notebooks but slim line/rack mount/blade servers where space isn't plentiful. There are some that use SAS and others that use SCSI.

 

Are you SURE? Phase Change SSDs? wouldn't those only be around 8GB capacity or so? Considering that 1Gb Phase change modules are not even past development? For comparison MLC NAND flash is currently being mass
produced at 16Gb (16 times the density of PRAM). Currently the target of PRAM is NOR Flash markets, not NAND Flash.

 

Faster....yes most definitely and by far.
Quieter... incredibly.
Less Heat.... by Far
Better Battery.... Yes I have experienced this.
More reliable.....Yup.
More Durable.... By far...these have been monkey tested.

And so on and so on... You need to know what you want and are willing to pay however.

Three specific ssds stand out which haven't been the subject of any controversy that I am aware of, this being the Mtron or Mtron Pro, Memoright and Samsung SATA II. In short, they are slc and not mlc drives.

I run all three and love em. I just got the Memoright GT 64 GB in the mail as a matter of fact and will be hooking it up soon enough. They have a life expectancy of somewhere around 200 years and I believe they probably will last that.

In the end, it comes down to what you have to have and how much you are willing to pay for it. MLC ssds are ging through some extreme growing pains as did the first batch of Sandisks...

We need to understand that mlc ssds such as the crucial and new OCZ are extremely new technology. Slc ssds on the other hand are very trusted technology being moulded into consumer use. They have been trusted in most of our worlds most crucial operations....fighter jets, medical and aeronautical navigation equipment and so on...

For anyone wondering about slc/mlc or testing of the drives I discuss, you are welcome to read my articles below...hope they help.

 

um... SAS is Serial Attached SCSI as opposed to parallel... IME they are mostly used in slimline servers

 

I've been using a Samsung SATA II SLC(First OCZ drives) in my Thinkpad T61 since April and I haven't had any problems with it.

 

about why it takes more time to write than to read:

well, "memorizing" an electrical charge without continues power supply requires capacitance. That can not only be capacitors, but also any CMOS-type transistors and their gates that have capacitance due to their nature (can not get rid of it). Anyhow, to charge a capacitor takes time .... pretty simple. I'm sure you could find a typical cap charge curve in wikipedia somewhere.

deleting (or writing a "0") would not be a problem as you can just short that capacitor, lol

reading could be only applying that capacitor charge to say a base of a transistor and just see if it's going to open or not

- however, it could also be because the device has to verify that whatever it just stored is actually what it intended to store, so a read back of some sort could slower the speeds ... like a checksum of some sort. But then, that could apply to reading as well .. duhh

 

What? I posted a while back SSD must write to an entire block? In Theory a HDD can write one bit at a time? Go back and read. It is cool if you ignore my posts but to then post in conflict? Explain why I lack a clue or don't do as I said?

 

^ it doesn't matter how many capacitors you charge at the same time, you still have to wait untill they store the charge.

So what are you saying anyways ?

 

Slower write speeds – as erase blocks on flash-based SSDs generally are quite large, they are far slower than conventional disks for random writes and therefore vulnerable to write fragmentation, and in some cases for sequential writes.

 

now get back to the second page of this thread and watch carefully what the other guy asked there, because it's not about comparision between writing of SSDs and that of HDDs, but rather comparision of the reading and writing speeds of SSDs

 

Yes and I thought I was addressing that. You need to not point out an entire page as you did! That is rude! You wanna link page two? I explained something in a comparative way. I do not give f### if you are an electrical engineer or not. SSD's read faster than writes is fact! Make a point! I might not know but I put it out do not belittle me, deal with the issue or #### ### ##.

 

^ go to sleep son

I just tried to explain why writes take longer than reads when dealing with chips. What you did is you came out arguing with something irrelevant, and then switched to completely different topic ...

how about you just GTFO

 

^^ Oh my little friend so far from going to sleep. Does the need to erase to an entire block have nothing to do with read/write disparities? You still have not linked to what I asked? I would like? Could resolve my issue?

You want to get hung up on capacitance? Are you sure? Block erasure or capacitance plus block erasure well you are the EE not me?

So come back with some input other than going to sleep?

 

why do you keep arguing ?

obviously you don't know. Also, you assume stuff .. which is fine

and do you seriously want me to post a link to page 2 on this thread ?!?! ... lol

- anyways, we are going off topic. Apology to the OP. The price is high because the technology is new, the supplies are low, and the demand is somewhat high.

 

I know, they cost barely anything tp produce, my neighbor knows a head guy at Samsung electronics, and because of the currency differences, the actual drives only cost about $60 USD in parts, the rest is profit.

Plus the companies can charge whatever they want, cause I am sure their is some sort of mutual agreement between, Samsung, M-Tron, memoright, and the other manufacturers about what prices they are going to market their drives at.

K-TRON

 

Maybe G.Skill needs to make SSDs, and sell them on NewEgg for us

 

Because you say nothing of any use to anyone. You won't link as to what you think is magical? You were not needed in this discussion. I was here before your interjection of up to this point irrelevant points. You have been asked and do not answer.

 

If he means the raw materials of silicon and metal which go into producing the drives maybe hes right. Ofcourse when you consider it costs 5 Billion+
to build a Semiconductor Fab.....

 

Well yes, that is true. The actual memory chips, and board do cost around $50-60 per model, so the rest does go to profit and paying off the factories.

I dont know how I forgot to mention that

K-TRON

 

On the topic of power savings... The 160GB Fujitsu drive that my HP dv5z came with was rated for 5V at 0.6A, or 3.0W (according to the label on the drive). My 120GB OCZ CoreV2 is rated for 5V at 0.35A, or 1.75W. So obviously there's a potential savings of at least 1.25W (could be more; I don't know the idle vs active power consumption of either drive).

But in the grand scheme of things, with the CPU taking 25-35W of power, this isn't going to make a huge impact on battery life...