Flash vs. Hard drives

Flash memory is gunning for the premier job in personal computers: Storing important data.

Flash, the memory chip technology that retains data when powered down, has been grappling for an opportunity to take over the data storage duties from hard drives in music players and, increasingly, computers.

But, despite offering advantages such as small size and offering customers as little or as much capacity as they need to buy, flash chips are not likely to replace hard drives as the primary data storage medium for mainstream PCs during 2006 or even in subsequent years due higher costs and lower potential storage capacities, experts said.

Hard drives, which range from a 1-inch models of about 4GBs to a 3.5-inch, 500GB models and sell for about $40 to $200 or more, still offer the best bang for the buck in storage, the experts said.

However, thanks to efforts by Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics and others, the two technologies will begin to coexist in devices during 2006.

I think we're gonna see flash memory and hard drives duking it out for storage in your computer. Flash could be faster, and more reliable, but I doubt we'll see one half terabyte drives of flash anytime soon. However, in notebooks, flash promises to use less energy, extending battery life which is the current allure.

From eWeek.