While SSDs currently have limited capacity and are very pricey, at the rate flash memory is coming down in price and a growing number of manufacturers competing with each other to bring out better and faster versions, SSDs are going to become affordable in the next 12 to 18 months according to this Bit-Tech report. As a result, hard disk manufacturers are finally starting to realise the problem they will face in the coming years. It has come to the stage where hard disk capacity has been pushed to the point that consumers are becoming more concerned about performance than storage capacity, which is where SSDs have their advantage.
Western Digital, which is currently the only manufacturer to make 10,000RPM desktop SATA drives, aims to solve the latency and seek time issue of current hard disks by working on a 20,000 RPM drive. This is twice the spindle of its current Raptor series and nearly 3 times that of most desktop hard disks. Like its VelociRaptor, this drive will be a 2.5" drive built into a 3.5" housing, which will act as a heat sink and as a silencer. According to the article, Western Digital is apparently working on the drive's housing to make the drive silent, as the higher spindle speed will produce significantly more vibration and noise from the platters.
As this product is still in development, so far no expected release date has been announced. With such a high spindle rate, it will be interesting to see how much energy this drive will consume, particularly since energy efficiency is starting to become a factor when choosing a new hard disk.
