# Why are SSDs still so much more expensive than HDDs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 20, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252 "2016-05-20T19:51:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/1 "2016-05-20T19:51:26Z")
Just a random musing. I was always in awe what a terrific combination of mechanics and electronics a magnetic HDD is, the precision and speed with which it performs. OTOH, since SSDs are on the market it seems a little anachronistic to still rely on mechanical means for accessing storage. It’s been quite a while since SSDs became affordable, but they are still five times more expensive than HDDs, if I can trust my brief amazon research. Why is it more expensive to produce SSDs than HDDs with their many movable mechanical parts, while SSDs are just silicone, a little copper and a plastic case? Maybe the production of Flash RAM is exceptionally elaborate, I don’t know. So, what is the reason? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/2 "2016-05-20T19:58:43Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Just a random musing. I was always in awe what a terrific combination of mechanics and electronics a magnetic HDD is, the precision and speed with which it performs. OTOH, since SSDs are on the market it seems a little anachronistic to still rely on mechanical means for accessing storage. It’s been quite a while since SSDs became affordable, but they are still five times more expensive than HDDs, if I can trust my brief amazon research. Why is it more expensive to produce SSDs than HDDs with their many movable mechanical parts, while SSDs are just silicone, a little copper and a plastic case? Maybe the production of Flash RAM is exceptionally elaborate, I don’t know. So, what is the reason? They also tend to have a limited (though climbing) number of writes available before they stop working and are more prone to failures than spinning spindles/electro-mechanical hard drives. Why do they cost more? From [here](http://www.cnet.com/news/storage-talk-why-ssds-are-still-so-expensive/): > [@](#): > > The price gets progressively higher as capacities get larger. A 240GB–which is the “sweet spot” that enjoys the balance of relatively large storage space while remaining attainable for consumers–now goes for between $420 and $550. Starting at 512GB, SSDs can cost thousands of dollars, too expensive for most of us to afford or justify. > > Overall, you can easily find a budget laptop that costs the same or less than you’d pay for some SSDs. On the other hand, traditional hard drives are much more affordable, with 2TB drives costing just around $80. Basically, based on the cost per gigabyte, SSDs are about 5 to 10 times more expensive than hard drives. Obviously, the comparison stops here, as traditional hard drives offer very little else for you to fall in love with. But the question remains: why are SSDs still so expensive, especially when the prices of system memory and thumbdrives have gone down significantly over the past few years? > > To find out, I asked the makers of solid-state drives. Most are tight-lipped on the issue, at least publicly. But in the end, I was able to glean enough information to say that there are two major reasons. The first is the technology itself. > One of the reasons the new Macbook Pro is so expensive (and speedy) is that it’s equipped with a 256GB solid-state drive. > One of the reasons why the new Macbook Pro is so expensive (and speedy) is because it’s equipped with a 256GB solid-state drive. Dong Ngo/CNET > > According to Micron, maker of the Crucial m4, SSDs primarily use NAND Flash technology, which adheres to a completely separate pricing scheme than DRAM (used for system memory). SSDs, those that are used for computers, typically use higher-performing components, which sell at higher prices than the components used in USB drives and flash memory cards. > > In addition, an SSD requires a complex process of assembly for its components to work well together. For example, the controller and firmware must be carefully integrated to get the most out of the design. On top of that, SSDs are generally put through hours of compatibility and stability testing. These steps add to the cost of making them. > > The second reason is the general law of supply and demand. And in the case of SDDs this applies in two areas. The first one is the market itself. Since the demand for retail SSDs on the market is rather low, vendors make less profit–if at all–from them and therefore have to increase the price to cover the production cost. This is a catch-22, as the high pricing is also a reason why the demand is low, mostly because general consumers just can’t afford them. ETA: And another [source](https://www.maketecheasier.com/why-are-solid-state-drives-so-expensive/): > [@](#): > > 1: They Use a Sophisticated Form of NAND Flash Memory > > ssdexpensive-nand > > Flash memory is a very widely-used concept. It’s in your USB drive, your memory cards for video game systems, and your phone. Negated AND (NAND) logic gate flash is special in the sense that it maintains storage without needing continuous electrical power. This is a requirement for SSDs, since there’s no residual energy running through them when you turn off your computer. There’s one problem with NAND: it generally has a finite number of write cycles, meaning that each transistor will wear out over time. > > If your hard drive wears out its NAND transistors, you may end up with anything from slight malfunctions to serious catastrophic data loss! To mitigate this, SSD manufacturers make use of very sophisticated processes that would prolong the lives of their transistors. They still will die at some point, but not as soon as they have been known to. One of their techniques consists of including more transistors to compensate for the dead ones. > > It’s difficult for manufacturers to get over the NAND transistor limitations, and they probably never will completely eliminate the issue. Writing to an SSD constantly will destroy it eventually. That’s why you should just store your operating system and core programs on it and keep everything else (documents, invoices, pictures, etc.) in a hard drive. > [@](#): > > 2: Device Assembly Is Complex > > ssdexpensive-manufacturing > > Aside from the whole NAND issue, the assembly process of an SSD is a highly complex process. The controller and firmware must both sit inside of a small space and then must be tested for hours for stability and compatibility with the computers they will be inserted into. This adds significantly to the cost of production. > > The manufacturing cost is also the reason why their prices get progressively higher per GB for higher-storage units. The opposite is true for HDDs, which have little problem storing more memory within a small space due to its mechanical function. > [@](#): > > 3: SSDs Are Low Demand > > While the demand for solid-state drives is increasing, as compared to the HDDs, it only occupies a very small market share. As more and more computer manufacturers include SSD as the default storage device in laptop and computer, we will definitely see a drop in the price in the future (in fact, the price has already dropped when you compare the price between now and a year back). But as of now, the price of SSDs remains high. > > There’s good news, though. The rise of mobile devices creates a larger overall demand for solid-state storage. This creates significant incentive to make these technologies cheaper. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/3 "2016-05-20T20:27:23Z")
> [@XT](#): > > They also tend to have a limited (though climbing) number of writes available before they stop working and are more prone to failures than spinning spindles/electro-mechanical hard drives. I don’'t think this is true. And the limited number of limited writes is taken into account in the deisgn (there’s actually more available space than is reported by the device, and algorithms spread out writes as much as possible as well). Pretty sure a good SSD is a lot more reliable than a spindle drive. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/4 "2016-05-20T20:31:23Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Maybe the production of Flash RAM is exceptionally elaborate, I don’t know. This is the primary answer. Flash is an integrated circuit, like CPUs, GPUs, RAM, and so on. Modern integrated circuits are unbelievably sophisticated. They start with a perfect crystal of silicon. They then go through hundreds of optical, chemical and mechanical processing steps, each one with nanometer precision. If any one of these steps is even slightly wrong, the entire unit is junk. “Wrong”, in this case, can mean literally just a few atoms off. And although some types of chips (flash is one) can handle some number of defective components (by turning off the defective cells), many billions of components must still come out perfect. Hard drives require care in depositing the magnetic layer on the platters, but it’s a uniform coating. The other pieces of a hard drive have looser tolerances, and to a large extent are self-correcting; the heads follow the tracks even when there is variation (they must, or else hard drives wouldn’t work if there was any external movement at all, or even thermal variations). ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/5 "2016-05-20T20:52:24Z")
> [@Kinthalis](#): > > I don’'t think this is true. And the limited number of limited writes is taken into account in the deisgn (there’s actually more available space than is reported by the device, and algorithms spread out writes as much as possible as well). > > Pretty sure a good SSD is a lot more reliable than a spindle drive. It is true, on both accounts. The manufactures will tell you up front that this is the case if you buy a shelf of SSD for SAN storage. The mean time to failure is higher than traditional drives and there are a limited number of writes you can do on the system before it’s junk. I can get you cites if you really want them and don’t know this. The gap is narrowing on this, and I figure eventually it will be what you say, but it ain’t there yet. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/6 "2016-05-20T21:03:15Z")
Enlightening and very interesting answers so far. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/7 "2016-05-20T22:19:45Z")
> [@XT](#): > > It is true, on both accounts. The manufactures will tell you up front that this is the case if you buy a shelf of SSD for SAN storage. The mean time to failure is higher than traditional drives and there are a limited number of writes you can do on the system before it’s junk. I can get you cites if you really want them and don’t know this. The gap is narrowing on this, and I figure eventually it will be what you say, but it ain’t there yet. You’re operating under some very old information (in computer years anyway) and it isn’t correct anymore, on either account. SSD’s today offer MTBF rates of 1.5 million hours and higher and cost about 1/3 as much per gigabyte as what you quoted in that 5 year old article. [This article](http://www.storagetechguide.com/?p=738) is a little more current. > [@](#): > > Some SSDs enjoy a Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of up to 1.5 million hours for consumer drives, high-quality consumer HDDs offer a MTBF of only 0.5-0.7 million hours. Some types have the lowest Annual Failure Rates (AFR) thanks to their perfect quality and their fully automated advanced bin sorting processes. Here is just one example of a drive available today with that kind of MTBF and a price less than 1/3 what you quoted. [http://www.corsair.com/en-us/force-series-lx-256gb-sata-3-6gb-s-ssd](http://www.corsair.com/en-us/force-series-lx-256gb-sata-3-6gb-s-ssd) Besides MTBF there are other ways storage could die much sooner - drops, falls, vibration can kill a HDD quickly and SSDs are essentially immune to those things. No moving parts means less things to fail, and less power consumption. When you really add up all the numbers and don’t just look at gross cost per gigabyte, SSD’s aren’t even very much more expensive than HDDs anymore. [This endurance test](http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead) (already 2 years old since when it first began) hammered 6 SSD’s for 18 months with nonstop writes greatly exceeding the amount of data most average users would write in a lifetime, and all of them, even the earliest ones to fail, outlasted their official endurance specifications by hundreds of terabytes. The longest lasting of the group in the end failed after writing more than 2 \*petabytes \*(two million gigabytes) of data. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2016, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/8 "2016-05-21T09:03:45Z")
Another point about SSD versus HDD. SSDs have been coming down in price, but rather more slowly than we might have hoped. Part of this is that they really only came a major player in the storage space when the continual reduction in process feature size had already slowed down, and Moore’s law was already failing. During this time HDD drives have not stood still, so a HDD has significantly better capacity for the dollar than now relative to one of five years ago as well. The question is more “why hasn’t the capacity for the dollar _ratio_ gap shrunk” and the answer is basically that both technologies are being developed still, and there is no reason that the ratio between the two should reduce. It could get bigger. Some of the justifications cited earlier are close to bogus however. Sure SDDs need more sophisticated controllers than a simple USB flash drive, but that complexity scales with production volume and improved process, just like anything else. Investment in software for the controllers is a one time cost and, like all software, once written is essentially free. It isn’t as if HDDs don’t contain very sophisticated controllers themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2016, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/9 "2016-05-21T09:32:37Z")
The law of supply & demand kicks in here, and it hits you on both ends. SSD’s used to be expensive because they were a lower-demand item than hard disks, thus less competition & higher prices. Now SSD’s are more expensive because they are a high-demand item (in computers, cellphones, game systems, DVR’s, cable boxes, anything wireless, high-end appliances like stoves, washers, sewing machines, etc.). So demand is outstripping supply, thus the price stays high. The manufacturers are rushing to build more factories to produce memory, but they are expensive, take months or years to build, and need a while for workers to reach high-productivity skill levels (whil hard disk factories are already built and staffed with experienced workers). Eventually production of SSD’s will bring the price down, while declining demand for hard disks will cause their price to increase (though as yet, that demand seems to be holding steady). ---
**Author:** ![joema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9adbd/32.png) [@joema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joema)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2016, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/10 "2016-05-21T11:50:27Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > …since SSDs are on the market it seems a little anachronistic to still rely on mechanical means for accessing storage. It’s been quite a while since SSDs became affordable, but they are still five times more expensive than HDDs, if I can trust my brief amazon research. Why is it more expensive to produce SSDs than HDDs with their many movable mechanical parts, while SSDs are just silicone, a little copper and a plastic case?.. One answer is both HDD and SSD cost per megabyte constantly improve. SSDs are cheaper per MB than HDDs _were_ – around 2004. However HDDs keep improving. This can be seen in this graph: > **[hblok.net](https://hblok.net/blog/storage/)** > > Freedom, Electronics and Tech Another answer is storage demands are ever increasing, so it is often economically impractical to use all-SSD storage. E.g, each raw photo from a Nikon D810 or Sony A7RII camera is about 40 megabytes, and it’s easy at an event to shoot 1,000 stills – 40 gigabytes. That is just still photos, no video or anything else. Re reliability, in general SSDs are more reliable but they can unpredictably fail for no known reason. Just like a HDD they must be backed up. In some studies SSDs at certain points in the life cycle had higher failure rates than some HDDs: > **[Toms Guide](https://www.tomsguide.fr)** > > TomsGuide est un média dédié a l'actualité des nouvelles technologies, retrouvez les tests de nos experts, nos guides d'achat et les bons plans pour économiser MTBF or Bit Error Rate (BER) is often misunderstood. It is _not_ a typical error rate but a worst-case error rate. E.g, many HDD manufacturers list a spec of 1 failure per 10^14 bits reads. 10^14 bits = 12.5 terabytes. So by that spec you might expect a failure on average every 12.5TB. We know from actual experience this does not happen, see Empirical Measurements of Disk Failure Rates and Error Rates (Gray, 2005): > **[Empirical Measurements of Disk Failure Rates and Error Rates - Microsoft...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/empirical-measurements-of-disk-failure-rates-and-error-rates/?from=https:%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fapps%2Fpubs%2Fdefault.aspx?id=64599&type=exact)** > > The SATA advertised bit error rate of one error in 10 terabytes is frightening. We moved 2 PB through low-cost hardware and saw five disk read error events, several controller failures, and many system reboots caused by security patches. We conclude... The BER is more akin to a 60,000-mile automobile warranty. It doesn’t mean the car breaks at 60,000 miles, rather the manufacturer guarantees the car to work _at least_ that long. There have been a couple of recent papers summarizing SSD reliability studies. Overall not much has changed since earlier studies. In general SSDs as a class are more reliable per drive than HDDs as a class, but SSDs can have significant failure rates, e.g, 20% uncorrectable failure rate for SSDs over a four-year period: Flash Reliability in Production: The Expected and the Unexpected (Schroeder, 2016): > **[Flash Reliability in Production: The Expected and the Unexpected | USENIX](https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast16/technical-sessions/presentation/schroeder)** A Large-Scale Study of Flash Memory Failures in the Field (Meza, 2015): [A Large-Scale Study of Flash Memory Failures in the Field | Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGMETRICS International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2745848) ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2016, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/11 "2016-05-21T13:17:11Z")
What can one do to reduce the odds of an SSD failing? > [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > Another point about SSD versus HDD. > > SSDs have been coming down in price, but rather more slowly than we might have hoped. From what I understand, 3D NAND is starting to make a real difference in terms of cost reduction, right? How much potential do the “skyscrapers” of 3D NAND have to keep increasing in height? Anything that looks promising in the next few years? > [@joema](#): > > each raw photo from a Nikon D810 or Sony A7RII camera is about 40 megabytes, and it’s easy at an event to shoot 1,000 stills – 40 gigabytes. That is just still photos, no video or anything else. RAW doesn’t use any compression, even lossless? ---
**Author:** ![joema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9adbd/32.png) [@joema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joema)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2016, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-ssds-still-so-much-more-expensive-than-hdds/755252/12 "2016-05-21T14:22:55Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > …RAW doesn’t use any compression, even lossless? The previous-stated sizes were for compressed RAW. By default RAW on the D810 uses lossless compression and the A7RII uses visually lossless compression. They both allow non-compressed RAW which are very roughly 2x the size.