Solid State Drive Prices Coming Down? / More Available?

I saw this drive and was surprised to see that it was now available and much lower than the rumored prices spoken of just a month ago.

Anyone seen a larger solid state drive for a cheaper price?

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/specs.aspx?EDC=1318763&cm_sp=Product-_-Specs-_-Main+Tab

http://computers.costupdate.com/Har...te-Drive-Ssd-Ide-Flash-Media-Model-Retail.htm

 

You noticed that that drive is 8Gb did you not?

You won't find a larger drive as cheap as that, unless you opt for the 32Gb right off ebay.

As for 64Gb, don't expect it to be under a grand stand alone anytime soon.

 

Its a shame that theres larger USB sticks out there for a lot less. Sure they are probably not as fast but still.

I'd wait until the 64GB drives are affordable, I'd have a hard time keeping even linux slim on anything smaller.

 

Like with all new technology give it 6 months to a year and it will become mainstream and better priced.

 

There is a significant problem that may keep prices up with the SSD. Nobody can figure out how to fit any more then 64Gb NAND flash into a 2.5" form factor SATA drive. It just cannot be done.

They can squeeze it into a 3.5 but not 2.5". This creates a huge problem for the industry and has been identified to me by every manufacturer I have spoken to.

 

Do they use standard flash die for these? Perhaps if demand increases, we'll start seeing manufacturers opting for large-area NAND die with some integrated SSD circuitry. That should promise to both drastically increase capacity and performance... And reduce cost! :-D

 

I know flash memory has a limited number of possible rewrites and deletes, which means one day anyone's USB flash memory stick, for example, will die. Does it also happen with SSD? I mean, can it be that in the future, using a SSD computer in a really bad luck day, the SSD simply die?

 

No, that's now how it works. Each cell in a NAND flash chip does have a limited number of writes. This is due to the floating gate of each cell, as well as a number of other things. In the simplest of terms, it just wears out. Electrons are pushed in and out of it, causing the dielectric to slowly wear down and also for there to be "memory" - electrons get stuck in the floating gate and can't be pushed back out...Eventually this causes the difference between "1" and "0" becomes muddied.

Each and every cell on the chip (every bit) will degrade at a different rate. The solid state drives make use of some pretty tricky logic to distribute write cycles evenly among all the bits, so lifetime is greatly extended.

Like I said earlier, if solid state drives become a commodity item like standard NAND Flash is, perhaps we will see the big guys making more "robust" designs with longer life cycle times and also using larger NAND die that are aimed directly at the SSD market. Right now, everyone is about shrinking to the smallest form factor possible, as NAND is currently the 'ultra-portable' non-volatile champion.