We were told that SSD orders have rapidly increased since the HDD supply issues emerged a few weeks ago and many SSD manufacturers might see record selling numbers in the last quarter of 2011. Yes, SSD capacity and price ratios are laughable compared to mechanical drives, but SSDs are a lot faster, power efficient, reliable and simply make PCs run faster.
Many users won’t have much other choice other than to go for SSD alternatives in order to get new high-end notebooks before Xmas. The capacity will be a problem, but nothing that external storage cannot solve, and most consumers already have big external drive to store family pictures, videos and other valuable, yet space consuming content.
In Europe the price of Western Digital Caviar Green 2000GB, 64MB Cache, SATA II (WD20EARS) went from € 67 on October 22nd to roughly €150 euro for a drive with shipping. It is certain that HDD prices will go down, but it might take a few months before supply stabilizes and the prices go down reasonable levels, i.e. a pretty affordable €67 for a 2 TB drive.
In the meantime, SSD’s look pretty tempting. They are faster and more affordable than ever and in some cases, the only option.