One of the most repeated mantras is that hard drives are much cheaper, however, despite the fact that this statement is true, it is not true from a certain point of view and the reality is that an SSD is cheaper than a hard drive. How is this possible when in the store a 1TB HDD costs less than a solid state drive of the same type? Well, it depends on the context and we are going to show you why this statement is not nonsense.
One of the reasons why certain components disappear from the world of hardware is not because the public accepts or rejects them, but because manufacturers decide to do without them at any given time. When does the phenomenon occur? When a replacement technology not only out-specs it, but also becomes good enough and costs less money.
An SSD is cheaper than a hard drive
We have decided to take a look at PC Components to see if an SSD can be cheaper than a hard drive. We have decided to dispense with specifications such as the number of gigabytes of storage, the transfer interface, the form factor and different elements. Rather what we want to know is whether the cheapest SSD costs less money than the lowest priced hard drive. And what have been the results?
So we find that the lowest priced SSD costs less than the cheapest hard drive. This is because the number of components required to build a basic solid state drive is less and costs less to manufacture than making an HDD. Another thing, and this is totally apart from the cost per gig of storage.
What is the reason for such a price difference?
Well, due to the simple fact that the cost curve is different in both types of devices, even though their utility is the same. The reason why an SSD is cheaper than a hard drive is due to the fact that the basic elements to build a solid state drive are the following:
- A chip that serves as a flash controller.
- At least one NAND Flash memory chip for storage.
- You can put a RAM memory chip as it supports the flash controller, but it can also be DRAM-Less and use system memory. Obviously, the performance will not be the same.
- Finally we will need a PCB or printed circuit where to place all the elements.
Instead, on a hard drive we need:
- A controller chip
- With a RAM memory that serves as an intermediate data buffer.
- Obviously, the PCB where all the previous two elements will go.
- The head that will read the disk.
- The motors that move the mechanical parts.
- The dishes where the data is stored.
Not to mention that the process of manufacturing a hard drive is much more expensive than manufacturing a solid state drive because more stages are required. This leads to the paradox that an SSD is cheaper than a hard drive. Which will have long-term consequences for the PC component industry, especially when storage capacity is good enough. Actually, this is one of the reasons why many manufacturers stopped using the 1.8 inch HDD on your very low power laptops to replace them with flash memory in eMMC format.
Due to costs, SSDs will replace hard drives
Among the first digital cameras were the SONY Mavica, they had lousy image quality and are so old that they used floppy disks, but digital photography got better and better until it became good enough to eventually displace conventional photography . Well, the same process will occur with respect to SSDs and hard drives, and although it will be true that the latter will always have the cheapest gigabyte, when it comes to assembling a computer for manufacturers it will be much cheaper to throw away for an SSD .
What will happen when the storage capacity of SSDs is good enough for the general public? If we take into account that the time to manufacture an SSD is cheaper than a hard drive and we extrapolate this to the need for an assembler to manufacture hundreds of thousands, if not millions of computers, this translates into incredible cost savings. on a large scale.
