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Enterprise Storage Forum’s Position on Solid State vs. Rotating Disk

30 July 2010 | Categories: Data Technology
Tags: HDD, Henry Newman, seagate, ssd, technology

The hype curve for Solid State Drives (SSD) has been very strong over the past several years. The promises and benefits of SSDs made by some vendors seemed to suggest that traditional hard drives (HDD) would soon become antiquated relics. It didn’t help of course that these messages were perpetuated by some of the newer and less-experienced SSD vendors out there (and just to be clear, this isn’t to say that there aren’t many strong SSD makers). Examining the vendor count though, it’s fair to say that are a larger number of SSD vendors in the marketplace when compared with the smaller, but established core number of HDD makers.

And it is not that Seagate is “anti-SSD”. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Seagate’s view is that SSDs will be complementary to HDDs and expand the overall storage market. Bottom line is it’s a good business for all of us. There are applications where SSDs fill an ideal role, while HDDs have advantages that are tough for SSDs to match in other environments. The cost/capacity comparisons are the obvious areas, but there is more behind this.

Henry Newman wrote a great story on the Enterprise Storage Forum site titled, “Why Solid State Drives Won’t Replace Spinning Disk.” I appreciate Newman’s piece because he presents a balanced view with regard to the challenges that 6a7c47f6b5SFLogo.jpg Enterprise Storage Forum’s Position on Solid State vs. Rotating Disk SSD technology itself has, and he takes the discussion beyond the surface-level hype. Let’s face it, any technology, especially one that is relatively new, will have technical challenges that engineers will need to face and hopefully be able to solve. And whether it’s an SSD or an HDD, good engineering and design will always be required if the technology is expected to progress!