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Looking at the speed and durability of SSD, and the price of it going down, will all computers (particularly laptops) come with build in SSD one day?

People's been predicting hard drive sizes and processor speed before, so there can be a reasonable answer with valid reasonings.

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This is no way for us to predict the future. Who knows what new technologies may come out that would be even better than SSDs, and who knows where prices will go. Furthermore, hardware buying recommendations are off-topic for Super User. As such, your question is likely to be closed. – nhinkle♦ Jan 24 '11 at 0:34
superuser.com/faq -> it says computer hardware is ok – Enrico Susatyo Jan 24 '11 at 0:36
"and it is not about... a shopping or buying recommendation". I think your question is interesting, but I don't think it's on-topic. If you edit it to make the question into something we can actually answer, then it's quite likely it won't be closed after all. – nhinkle♦ Jan 24 '11 at 0:45
i do really not understand the objective of the question? will it influence you in some way your own purchases of SSDs? is somebody asking if BR drives will be standard one day as well? – icelava Jan 24 '11 at 3:20
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closed as not constructive by nhinkle♦, Doug Harris, Sathya♦, random♦ Jan 24 '11 at 3:45

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3 Answers

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Probably. The reliability that SSD disks provide are excellent for laptops because they aren't prone to damage by bumps or movement.

HDD disks will still be used for some time for media storage mainly, at least until SSD prices per GB reach them

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Limited SSD writes are currently a problem too. – slomojo Jan 24 '11 at 0:36
@slomojo - that's a myth. Decent controllers spread the writes over the drive, such that an SSD should outlast a traditional drive by a large margin. – Joel Coehoorn Jan 24 '11 at 0:38
@Joel Coehoorn, you're not dispelling a myth there, you're simply stating that there is a workaround which is in place. Fact is, if you are doing a large number* of writes to a SSD *(non-trivial) it will fail. Where a regular magneto HDD will suffer instead from mechanical failure of moving parts, the platters themselves do not have a write limit. It is unlikely to bother a trivial user, however for high load server systems, SSD's are a risk. Be more cautious with the word "myth". – slomojo Jan 24 '11 at 2:44
@Joel, yep, if you like to thrash the SSD for 6 months continuously 24/7 with totally random incompressible data, you might be able to exhaust the write cycles on Vertex 2 or X25-M. – Mircea Chirea Jan 24 '11 at 4:38
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Yes, if the price comes down enough. More likely though, especially in the short to medium term, we will see both SSDs and HDDs in the same machine. That way you can store some data (applications) on the SSD, which usually do not need so many writes.

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Why would you need to put things that don't need so many writes on an SSD? – Wuffers Jan 24 '11 at 1:04
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One of the drawbacks of SSD is that each block has a limited number of writes. It's a limit which most users will never reach, but if you put data on the drive which is less likely to be written it is a plus. – Jason Jan 24 '11 at 1:16
@Mark S, The usual things that don't require many writes are media files (video, music), application/game binaries. etc. Heavy data applications are still risky on SSD's (although unlikely to bother the laptop/home user.) – slomojo Jan 24 '11 at 2:48
@slomojo: Ah, ok. Thanks for the info. – Wuffers Jan 24 '11 at 3:31
Keeping disk paging off a general use SSD is a good idea too, as that can be a write heavy operation, if you want the speed benefits of SSD, then it is worth exploring the idea of having a dedicated SSD to use for paging/vm. – slomojo Jan 24 '11 at 4:06
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Inevitably all computers will use technology which is not even conceived today. I would guess that SSDs will replace HDDs unless something else appears which is better. But it's all a guess. There is no real answer to your question except time.

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