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Topic: Storage

Good news for consumers: Solid state drive prices are dropping

Summary: With prices falling, hard drive manufacturers are giving consumers even more reason to invest in solid state drives.

Ricardo Bilton

By for Storage Bits |

The floods in Thailand did price-conscious hard drive buyers few favors last year. Fortunately, the news isn't nearly as bad on the solid state front.

According to The Tech Report, which used data from NewEgg price tracker Camelegg, prices for SSDs have dropped an average of 46 percent since early last year.

Tech Report graphed the prices of over two dozen drives, many of which are now priced at less than a dollar per GB.

On the high end is the 40GB Intel 320 Series drive, which costs $2.31 per gigabyte. The Crucial m4 is at the lowest end of the spectrum, with prices dropping more than fifty percent from their highest points in 2011.

As with most technology, SDDs have gotten cheaper as they've gotten more commonplace. Component costs have dropped, and manufacturers have been aggressively cutting prices in an effort to get more consumers interested.

In any case, the result is now clear: Now is as good of a time as any to invest in an SSD.

[The Tech Report]

Topic: Storage

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15 comments
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  • costly guts to 2/3 of Dollar/GB....

    lowest price recently was fathers day special at Big online trader, mere .66 cents GB for memory, has Sandforce new wrapper....

    drashek MD
    VONDRASHEK@...
    Reply Vote

  • Lower prices are good ....

    ... but that does not matter as long as the reliability continues to be bad.

    Only one model offers a 3 year warranty (can't remember the brand), with the rest offering a miserable 1 year warranty .... and users are actually catching on it. Put some real work on the drive and most would die by month 9.
    wackoae
    Reply Vote

  • no more internal hard drive

    This could become a boon for people who need to hide sensitive, classified information and are on a short budget, like a foreign spy, an identity thief, or a pedophile. Imagine, computers in the future aren't built with an internal hard drive anymore; instead, they require plugging in your own, with your own operating system, own files, and what have you. When the cops get to your house, they have nothing they can search because the information you hold is on an easily disposable key fob. No evidence makes for a happy criminal.
    Vapur9
    Reply Vote

    • They are called Flash Drives

      And you can get Flash drives of the same size as most SSDs.
      wackoae
      Reply Vote

  • SSD reliability

    Why aren't SSD's as reliable as HDD's? I'm being serious. Any ideas??
    Peej1958
    Reply Vote

    • SSDs have a limited number of writes

      If the OS or a program heavily uses swap memory (in an attempt to improve performance), even 10 million writes can be eaten in a short amount of time.

      One big problem about SSDs .... when they die, it is almost impossible (depending on the cause) to recover the data without spending some serious cash (if even that). When using SSDs, backups are a MUST, not a you should.
      wackoae
      Reply Vote

      • SSD's

        Thanks. I have a 120 gb SSD I am thinking about backing up on one of the Cloud services and/or a standard HDD. I need to use the SSD as a boot drive from what I have been reading... anyway thanks for the info.
        Peej1958
        Reply Vote

      • what?

        Are you serious? Haven't you read anything about SSD's? The swap file and several other things are disabled if you setup your SSD properly!! Don't make comments if you do not know what you are talking about. I have one that is now 2 years old and it is still running just fine and my other is almost 1.5yrs old. They are both running great still!!
        SteelTrepid
        Reply Vote

      • Recovering SSD data.. expensive?

        Ummm... when was the last time you tried to get data recovered from a regular HDD. They want an arm and a leg to get back that data (and they don't promise what they can get back off the driver either), so you shouldn't be making it sound like no big deal for a HDD versus a SSD.
        jefferyshall
        Reply Vote

      • Two types of computer users ...

        As the saying goes, there are two types: those who lost important data in a hardware crash, and those who *will.*

        Backups are *never* just a "should." HDD, SDD, doesn't matter: back it up. If you don't, you're playing with fire. And, unless the off-site/Cloud backup is for your *full* system (incl. OS, apps, etc.), it's not going to be nearly as much help as a full backup. Yes, Dropbox et al. are great to get you back up and running immediately with important docs, etc. - as long as you're able to access another system with the correct apps. But, if you *really* want to save yourself time and heartache when something happens to your computer, make sure you have a full backup of everything. Makes all the difference in the world ...
        twicker
        Reply Vote

  • SSD

    I'm running An FX Octa Core processor 8 gig DDR3, with a Samsung 128 gig SSD, and a 500 gig Seagate HD for backup. I have win 7 and Linux Mint 12 on the SSD. Mint boots up in 9 seconds, win 7 takes 21 seconds, to a usable desktop.
    ator1940
    Reply Vote

  • As price goes down, we need reliability to go up. WAY up!

    While SSD owners will provide testimony of how wonderful their experience is, the net is flooded with people who will tell you the opposite. Reliability is the biggest issue with SSDs that suddenly fail, from days, to weeks, to months after installation. Ditto with system crashes. The problems are too big to ignore at this time.
    SteveMak
    Reply Vote

    • No matter what, back it up

      Something I have learned, many times over. No matter what type of drive you use, you want to put your stuff in a secure backup or you will be crying about something you had some day in the near future. Whether you restore a single file you delete, or if it's from the whole hard drive crashing, I have learned again and again, multiple backups are a very worthwhile thing.
      Crash2100
      Reply Vote

  • Making Data Backups

    Everyone that doesn't back up their Drives raise their hand and move to the back of the line!!!! I have been doing some sort of Hard Drive back up for about a dozen years, and today with inexpensive external hard drives it is relatively easy. Every computer I have has a back up that it can use to restore the computer. SSD or HD, it is not rocket science, so it should be done, and I will not sympathize with anyone that looses their hard drive without a backup!!!!
    rgeiken@...
    Reply Vote

    • Backups? Missing the point!

      Several people have commented on how important backups are. Granted. The point they're missing is that SSDs have a reputation for being horribly unreliable. The web is flooded with people who have short failure times and system crashes. My point is that if one specific brand of hard disk had these same characteristics, people would avoid it like small-pox because it was so problematic. The lure of speed at the cost of reliability propels today's SSD sales. I very much look forward to the day when SSDs are as reliable as today's HDs, and maybe even more so!
      SteveMak
      Reply Vote
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