

Western Digital sees future written on disks, not clouds - astrec
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/15/wd_on_flash_and_cloud/print.html

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13ren
The article has no discussion of "disruption", when HDD vs. SDD looks like a
classic case of it. The key empirical data of "The Innovators Dilemma" (which
coined the term "disruptive technology") was on the evolution of the HDD
market.

The article's analysis is correct - for today. It doesn't take into account
the trajectory of improvements: all three technologies are improving (HDD,
STEC and thumb drives) at a greater rate than the _need_ for those
improvements. Although HDD will still be _better_ for some features, the other
technologies will be _adequate_ for the user need for those features - and
will supply other valued benefits, that HDD lacks.

Specifically:

(1). USB flash drives will eventually have _enough_ capacity for most needs -
while staying at about $20. HDD will have much more capacity but it's not
needed, and it simply can't match the per-unit price.

(2). STEC will eventually get cheap _enough_ for most needs - but keep the
high performance. HDD will be even cheaper but it's not needed, and it simply
can't match the performance.

HDD will still have advantages that make it preferable for some usages - for
one thing, I think it will probably become the new archive tape. It has cheap
capacity and fast sequential writes and reads (I saw two brands of 500GB USB
HHD for backup today in a mainstream retail outlet (post office), for about
$150 AUD).

And perhaps new approaches will become more popular, that fit this well - such
as journaling file-systems. If capacity becomes cheap _enough_ , why not store
everything and never delete? (like Gmail).

