Tag Archive: SSDs

After downplaying the significance of flash-based solid-state drives in the notebook computer market earlier this year and then suing Stec for patent infringement over technologies used in SSDs, Seagate CEO Bill Watkins has told PC World that the company will roll out its first SSD drives next year—but Watkins still doesn’t see why anyone would be interested.

According to Watkins, solid-state drives just aren’t price-competitive in a market where storage prices are measured in price-per-gigabyte. And Watkins certainly has a point: solid-state drives are currently enormously more expensive than the equivalent amount of storage from a traditional hard drive…although hard drives eat more power, and are prone to mechanical failure.  Read more...

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are finally becoming feasible (if expensive) options for notebook computers, with mainstream computer makers from Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, Apple and more offering flash-based SSDs in place of conventional hard drives in some of their notebook computer offerings. But where SSDs are more reliable, consume less power, and start up faster than traditional SSDs, there are two areas in which (so far) they don’t compare to their platter-and-head ancestors: capacity and cost.

Although cost is likely to remain an issue until markets significantly re-align, companies are working to address the capacity gap. South Korea’s Mtron has just announced a 120 GB SSD that’s a drop-in replacement for standard 1.8-inch hard drives used in notebook computers.