Thai floods should boost SSD

SSD should be considered at least to dam up HDD supplies in the wake of flooding in Thailand, argues Dave Stevinson

Prices for hard disk drives (HDD) are inflating rapidly as an after-effect of the floods in Thailand. The floods are the worst in Thailand for 50 years and seem to be constricting HDD supplies until at least the first quarter of 2012.

About 25 per cent of the world's hard drive production facilities are in Thailand. Western Digital produces roughly 60 per cent of its hard drives there, and 50 per cent of Toshiba's hard drive production is also in Thailand.

However, the biggest impact from the floods could be on Nidec, a company which makes about 70 per cent of the world's hard drive motors in Thailand, including motors used by Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi GST, Toshiba and Samsung.

Amid possible uncertainty around future production and panic-buying of remaining HDD stock which could spike up the prices, is now a good time to look at SSDs?

SSDs have been traditionally characterised by the technology of the Flash memory on which they are built. Some SSDs feature single-level cell (SLC) memory technology, where one bit of data occupies one cell of the Flash memory, optimised for performance and data reliability.

Other SSDs feature multi-level cell (MLC) technology, in which four bits of data occupy one cell of the Flash memory, for greater capacity.

As more users migrate to 20nm-class processes, which are improving performance and reliability in MLC-based SSDs, NAND Flash contract price is expected to fall in November and December – thus making SSD cheaper.

Before the floods, one GB of SSD was about 10 times more expensive than a GB of HDD. If the price per GB of HDD skyrockets, PC OEMs may consider switching. Already, SSD is now just over three times more expensive.

I believe that SSD should be considered as an option, even temporarily.

If the HDD inventory shortage continues into Q1 2012, the proportion of SSD-equipped models may increase.

Also, as demand for data continues to increase, there is an opportunity to make use of SSD alongside cloud-based storage in notebooks and netbooks. This will offer the best blend of performance and capacity for the mobile customer, in my opinion.

I believe that the floods, while unlikely to trigger widespread adoption, will increase the growth of this category.

Dave Stevinson is sales director at VIP Computers