Plummeting SSD prices are quickly closing in on traditional hard drives

The decision between solid state and hard disk drives should become a lot less agonizing over the next couple years as consumer SSD prices plummet.

Research firm DRAMeXchange projects average SSD prices to hit $0.24 per gigabyte in 2016, down from $0.39 per gigabyte this year, Computerworld reports. Those prices will see another dramatic drop to $0.17 per gigabyte in 2017. Meanwhile, HDD prices are projected to stagnate at $0.06 per gigabyte over the next few years.

In real-world terms, that means a 256GB solid state drive will cost about the same as a 1TB hard drive next year. And in 2017, a 512GB SSD will only cost about $44 more than a 256GB hard drive. These days, PC makers tend to charge around $100 for the same upgrade. DRAMeXchange’s Alan Chen expects SSD adoption in laptops to rise accordingly, from 26 percent this year to 42 percent in 2017.

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