Solid state drive prices to approach hard disk prices within years

Solid state drives: You've come a long way, baby!

For the uninitiated, solid state drives (SSDs) are replacements for spinning-platter hard disks which use flash memory -- much like the kind in your average thumb drive -- to store data. There are several advantages to using flash instead of a standard hard drive in your equipment (especially in laptops): SSDs require less power to run, they are completely silent, and they don't create heat (not much, anyway), all of which makes your laptop a much happier camper.

Alas, until recently, they've been crazy expensive: Upgrading from a 120GB hard drive to a 120GB SSD a few years ago would have added an extra $1,000 to the cost of your computer.

Today, that price differential is dramatically falling, and Cnet notes that, via an interview with Samsung's Brian Beard, it's only a matter of time before SSD prices hit the same level as hard drives of the same capacity. Samsung predicts we'll see price parity within "the next few years."

Economically, the two markets are fundamentally different. Hard drives have relatively high fixed costs due to the motors and circuit boards required no matter how large the drive is, but then prices don't change much as you add capacity, because really you're just jamming more data onto a platter. SSDs have a far different cost structure: Fixed costs are low (just a controller and a case to put it in), then you pay the same amount per chip for each gigabyte you want. So with a hard drive, a 500GB unit is generally only a few bucks more than a 250GB drive, but an SSD would cost about twice as much.

That actually works out for SSDs' favor in the end, because the price of those memory chips is what's falling so rapidly, and that means the prices of all SSDs are coming down while hard drives -- getting bigger, sure -- remain priced about the same.

Meanwhile, SSD capacities are finally reaching the level where they're big enough to merit serious attention. With a 256GB SSD (which started shipping this year), who needs a loud, hot, noisy hard drive? The next time you buy a laptop -- maybe you.