160GB solid-state drives coming from Intel - perhaps even in Q2 2008

[HEXUS]

Intel promises high capacity and aggressive pricing

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[finnrogers]

Yes I'd pay double. It seems inevitable that this is the next step in storage, unless hard drive storage capacities increase exponentially faster than SSDs. If this happens then I can see room in the market for both - SSDs for lower capacity (sub 1TB maybe) and HDDs for 1-5TB. At least until some new next-gen tech comes along and blows everything out of the water (holographic storage maybe?).

[nichomach]

If they really ramp up capacity and the cost is no more than double a conventional drive, hell yes, especially for laptops. Failed hard disks are a typical problem for these and that's largely "machine got good hard knock while running". Problem eliminated in a (you should pardon the expression) flash.

[dangel]

After experiencing SSD with the eee i would definitely like it for my OS drive on my main rig..

[TheAnimus]

or a couple, in striped raid, almost linear performance scaling :drools:

[Saracen]

Would you pay twice as much for an 160GB SSD drive, when compared to a magnetic model?

It depends, but probably not.

Firstly, if buying HDs, I wouldn't buy as small as 160GB now, with the possible exception of for a notebook, and my personal demands on notebook storage are modest anyway.

Secondly, it's a new technology, to the mass market at least, so what's long-term performance and reliability like?

And third, just how much difference do the "ultra-fast transfer rates" make to my real-world computing experience? There would have to be a very clear improvement in my personal user experience for me to justify it.

On the other hand, weight and lower power consumption are convincing arguments re: laptops.

So initially, because of reason two, I'm not likely to buy in whether they're price-competitive or not. Medium-term, it would depend on a mix of factors. But I can't say I'm terribly excited about it. And at twice the price ..... they're not at all appealing to me, at the moment.

[Moby-Dick]

oneof the big things that SSD's have going for them is their power consumption - Imagine running a SAN composed completly of SSD's - it would drop data centre running costs massivly.

I've seen them on some of the newer ESX servers - the hypervisor boots from a USB stick ( VMWARE 3i ) - and you have the swap file on SSD - fewer moving parts = long MTBF.

[Funkstar]

Other benefits are lower heat produced and no noise, perfect for HTPCs.

I'd buy one if they were only dowble the price, but I have no need for 160GB in my HTPC, all mass storage in in my NAS. The 32GB version sounds perfect

[finnrogers]

After experiencing SSD with the eee i would definitely like it for my OS drive on my main rig..

Ditto. Why not have the best of both worlds. A 160Gb SSD would be perfect for an OS drive and then have a couple of terrabytes worth of HDDs for file storage (either in the pc or as NAS).

Re: Laptops: Definately a massive improvement over HDDs for all the reasons mentionned already. The power consumption will also improve battery life on laptops a bit although the improvements in display technology will see even better gains in this area soon.

[[GSV]Trig]

My laptop's got a 60Gb drive in it, my boot drive in my main machine is a 74Gb Raptor so yeah, I'd pay more for faster performance the lack of size isnt so much of an issue to me, I've got a 2Tb NAS box so thats my storage needs taken care of, I just want faster load times

[TheAnimus]

And third, just how much difference do the "ultra-fast transfer rates" make to my real-world computing experience? There would have to be a very clear improvement in my personal user experience for me to justify it.

Yes, yes they do, the random access nature of these devices, combined with people like MTRON showing ludicrious speed.

You really do notice them the first time you use them, then when you go back to work PC which has but cheap-o 10k scsi drives. you feal sad, deap down inside.

seriously, these drives are good, quite, less power and you can RAID them to give awsome performance bottlenecked by the controller itself!

[Oobie-]

Great step in the right direction. I would want one for an OS install. But as it stands I think current magnetic drives will still prevail until price (and capacity) begins to match up.

[Saracen]

Yes, yes they do, the random access nature of these devices, combined with people like MTRON showing ludicrious speed.

You really do notice them the first time you use them, then when you go back to work PC which has but cheap-o 10k scsi drives. you feal sad, deap down inside.

seriously, these drives are good, quite, less power and you can RAID them to give awsome performance bottlenecked by the controller itself!

Interesting.

But I would point I said it relates to "my" real-world computing experience. Quite a lot of the work I do on PCs is not at all demanding. In fact, a lot of it is WP. The machine I'm currently typing on is still running dual MP1200's and 512MB of memory. Performance, a lot of the time, is not an issue.

[Betty_Swallocks]

TBH I'd have one just for the OS and program storage. Bootup and loading time must be massively reduced. That would be worth the money for me on it's own.

It all depends on what they call aggressive pricing though. I'd pay £120 for the 160gb but I suspect they may be more than that

[Whiternoise]

I would pay it if it was twice the price. Any more than that would begin to be unreasonable, especially given the markup that laptop suppliers are bound to slap on. *cough*Apple*cough

[vrykyl]

I too keep my OS drive small and fast, and have seperate big drives for storage.... Im really not bothered by speed advances in large capacity drives...hell my main storage drives are all still sata 1.0. If i could get a small capacity SSD (ie 160gb or less) for only twice the price of (for eg) a single 150gb raptor I would jump on it....

An SSD will probably be what I replace my two 80gb 7200.10 seagate drives in raid0 as my main OS drive.....