Chances are very high that other than USB sticks and optical discs, you’re using a fixed disk drive (a.k.a. the hard drive) that stores digitally encoded data on platters with magnetic surfaces.
The fixed disk drive you have is guaranteed to fail someday. I’m not saying this to scare you because it’s common knowledge. You already know you’re supposed to back up your data. What I’m getting at is that with all tech out there, it’s nothing short of amazing we still use these things considering how fragile they are and how easily they can break.
Watch this video below – it’s a bit old but it still brings home the facts:
At 4:45:
“Is it good for society to entrust so much data to something so delicate?”
“No …and frankly, I’m surprised we’re still in business. I’m surprised there are still hard drive computers.” (spoken by the DriveSavers owner himself!)
Needless to say I really champion solid-state drive tech. Granted, it’s still a very young tech that’s going thru its “growing pains” right now, but hopefully someday soon we can ditch the magnetic platter way of doing it and go with SSD.
Why does SSD have such better reliability? No moving parts. When there’s nothing moving, there’s nothing to break. This isn’t to say SSD is infallible (because it certainly isn’t), but it sure is better than what we’re using now.
Keep your fingers crossed that the prices for SSD will come down enough to where it’s affordable for everyone (it’s still way too expensive at present).
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You nailed it….unless we are as wealthy as Bill Gates, platter drives are our only option.
I look forward to the day, perhaps in a few years, that solid state drives are nearly as cheap as platter drives.
They are still ridiculously expensive. See here: http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives/solid+state/p/11/form_keyword=solid+state+hard+drive/st=sort/layout=list/sortby=priceD
One word sums it up: “money”…or at least lack there of.
This video played on CBS Sunday Morning January of 2006. I suppose one could consider that “old” in the world of computer storage but it is indeed still relevant.
I can think of numerous reasons why we don’t use SSD’s. Cost = too expensive, they can get quite slow at writing data and only last so long. Flash-memory cells will often wear out after 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles for MLC, and up to 100,000 write cycles for SLC. Cost being the number one reason of course.