Because they have no moving parts, solid-state drives tend to be

• A. Lower in price
• B. Not determined
• C. Similar in price
• D. Higher in price

Answer: (D)

The main idea here is understanding how the absence of moving parts affects cost. Solid-state drives use flash memory and sophisticated controllers instead of spinning disks, so the cost comes mainly from the memory chips and the controller technology. Flash memory is more expensive per gigabyte than magnetic storage, and the engineering needed to manage wear leveling, error correction, and fast access adds to manufacturing costs. Because of these factors, SSDs generally cost more for the same amount of storage than traditional hard drives. The lack of moving parts improves reliability and speed, but price is driven by the memory technology and fabrication complexity, not by the absence of moving parts alone. That’s why they tend to be higher in price.