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Why SSDs Won't Replace Hard Drives

Posted by Soulskill on from the infinitely-small-infinitely-fast dept.

storagedude writes "Flash drive capacities have been expanding dramatically in recent years, but this article says that's about to change, in part because of the limits of current lithography technology. Meanwhile, disk drive densities will continue to grow, which the author says will mean many years before solid state drives replace hard drives — if they ever do. From the article: 'The bottom line is that there are limits to how small things can get with current technology. Flash densities are going to have data density growth problems, just as other storage technologies have had over the last 30 years. This should surprise no one. And the lithography problem for flash doesn't end there. Jeff Layton, Enterprise Technologist for HPC at Dell, notes that as lithography gets smaller, NAND has more and more troubles — the voltages don't decrease, so the probability of causing an accidental data corruption of a neighboring NAND goes up. "So at some point, you just can't reduce the size and hope to not have data corruption," notes Layton.'"

4 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Lets wait and see by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While the reasoning is interesting, and valid for all I know, why are we trying to say some bit of technology isn't going to work out ever? What's the point? Either it won't work out and that will be something the market will handle independent of whether you foresaw it or not, or a solution will be found and you'll just be wrong.

    I'm reminded of an Arthur C. Clarke quote: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

  2. Correct. by esrobinson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The bottom line is that there are limits to how small things can get with current technology.

    They're right, SSDs won't replace hard drives with the current technology. If only we had a way to improve technology over time!

  3. Solid state densities by by+(1706743) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many of these could you fit in the space of a standard HD case?

    I know, someone's gonna lecture me on how this isn't at all a fair comparison...

  4. Re:Do we always need more space ? by tacensi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, we always do. Don't underestimate the space needed to store pr0n.