The little light goes out: End of an Era

When Asus announced the launch of their new PC I was interested to read that the specification included a 64GB solid-state disk (SSD). Clearly Asus are convinced that SSD technology has matured enough to be a reliable alternative to the magnetic hard drive that has been a part of our lives for so long. The problem with SSDs is that there is a limited "write endurance" beyond which the drive becomes unreliable.

So why are Asus so confident? Slowly the penny dropped. The little disk activity light on my Asus notebook only flickers when I boot up or save a file. A quick check of my modestly specified desktop PC running Linux showed the same, and then the silence hit me.

For years I have been aware of the chunter of the hard drive coupled with the flicker of the disk activity light. The distinctive sound told me my (excessively large) spreadsheets were recalculating and all was well with my PC. While running one particular research project, I kept the server in my office as I could tell by the disk drive chatter that all was well. On two occasions it was hacked. The changed sounds of disk activity were the first warning that all was not well.

But my Linux desktop computer sits there almost silent, with only a quiet whirr of the fan. Clearly write endurance is not going to be the problem it was, at least with Linux. Now the disk activity light has gone out, at least on some PCs, it is the end of an era. For me the hard drive has been one of the iconic images illustrating integration between, mechanical design, material properties, and electronic control. That is why we chose an image of a hard drive as our banner on the home page of the Integrated Products KTN. But it now looks like it is the beginning of the end of the hard drive, and soon the SSD will reign supreme.