Boffins claim that there is life in the HDD technology yet with the costs falling and drive sizes increasing. A new study claims that by 2020, hard disk drives will likely be less expensive on a cost per terabyte basis than any of the competing technologies. The study gives the thumbs down to boffins who are developing nonvolatile memory (NVM) technologies, saying it is unlikely to replace HDDs within the next decade.

According to the popular engineering magazine IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, which we get for the spot the ball competition, Professor Mark Kryder and PhD student Chang Soo Kim of Carnegie Mellon University have investigated 13 up-and-coming NVM technologies to see whether one of them might outperform HDDs on a cost-per-TB basis in 2020. They reasons that if HDDs continue to progress at their current pace, then in 2020 a two-disk, 2.5-inch disk drive will be capable of storing more than 14 TB and will cost about $40.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16133/38/