Do you think the flash drive will eventually replace the hard drive in computers?

Question

I did see a flash drive based lap top for sale at either Best Buy or Circuit City, I can't remember which. But the drive wasn't very big. So, once they are able to increase the flash system significantly, do you think the hard drive system will become obsolete? Or maybe something entirely different?

Answer 1

yes.

Answer 2

I think a hybrid is more likely.  Hard disks are just to cheap to ever be supplanted by flash, flash is 50x the price (disks are $0.10 per GB, while cheapest flash is at least $5 per gig)

I see going forward you have to portions, one large bunch of flash as a big buffer (maybe 20 GB), then the rest is TB's of disk space

You could also argue that you could have one with enough flash to hold the operating system, which would speed things up alot, with the rest being slower but much cheaper HD

Possibly on laptops they could be supplanted, due to power use more likely and that they are much more durable, but never on desktops

Imagine buying 1TB drive to keep all your movies on....$5k..yikes!  HD this size is less than $200 now

Answer 3

I am unsure because each computer requires an operating system.  And with technology changing so often, operating systems require much more space on hard disks.  And everything needs to load before doing any types of tasks.  I believe that flash drives are in irreplaceable tool because multiple files can be transferred from one computer to another very easily.  But at this time, I do not think that flash drives will replace hard drives.