My prediction is that Solid-state drives (SSDs) will be the effective standard for all business and personal computing platforms within ten years.

With the new SATA 3.0 specification calling for link speeds of 6Gbps (effectively providing maximum data transfer speeds of 600 MBps) and devices capable of read and write speeds from 200-240MB/sec, solid-state drives will gain huge momentum in personal computer integration. With these fast speeds, installing essential operating system objects on these drives will contribute to significant decreases in boot time without machine state state saving options like sleep-modes or hibernate-modes, coupled together leading to almost instantaneous booting of the computer.

Utilizing the same technology that made USB-key drives so popular, internal SSDs are robust and integrate easily with SATA buses which allow for maximizing bus speeds, capacity (1TB), redundant data protection (i.e. RAID) and lower power demands than the PATA predescessor (250mV vs. 5-Volt), essential in mobile computing applications.