Hybrid Hard Drives

[Shagster]

As soon as three or four years from now, most of the latest PCs will blend hard drives with flash memory in a new type of hybrid drive, says Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate (STX), the world's top maker of hard drives. It was the first time I've heard an industry executive give an estimate for when the technology will go mainstream.

Watkins said he expects the hybrid drives to come with between 8 and 10 gigabytes of flash memory.

Several major hard drives makers have announced plans to sell hybrid drives. Samsung began shipping its MH80 hybrid drive last month with 128-256 megabytes of flash paired with 80-160 GB of hard drive storage.

http://blogs.business2.com/utilitybelt/2007/04/seagate_extreme.html?source=yahoo_quote

A decade from now the only moving parts of a computer will be its fans.

[Andrzej]

:D
Samsung Solid State Disk (MCAQE32G5MPP-0XA, ATA/66, 32 GB, flash-memory)
Avarage Read Transfer Performance
in
Tom's Hardware Gude > 2.5" Hard Drive Charts
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25.html?modelx=33&model1=405&model2=394&chart=142 link

[morbidpete]

amazing the ata66 beats the ata100 and the sata150

[YARDofSTUF]

amazing the ata66 beats the ata100 and the sata150

Not really. The drives arent limited by ata66 or 100. the solid state drive can give a steady tranfer. all ATA100 does really is allow higher bursts.

[Addict]

Why hybrid drives though? What would make that much different from adding a larger buffer to a hard drive?

[Shagster]

Why hybrid drives though? What would make that much different from adding a larger buffer to a hard drive?

It's a lot faster and allows the spindle of doom to turn off when all needed data is loaded onto the flash.

[jeremyboycool]

I heard about those they sound cool. But I thought flash had limited number of erase and re-write cycles. Is this a problem?

[morbidpete]

i think that might be volatile (sp?) flash, thinking this would be kinda like ram, where it only keeps the memory with voltage. just a guess tho

[jeremyboycool]

Flash is non volatile memory but that means it keeps its data even without power. :)

[Addict]

It's a lot faster and allows the spindle of doom to turn off when all needed data is loaded onto the flash.
Hmm. That would seem like the spindle would be switching on & off a lot. Guess we'll see what happens next eh.

[morbidpete]

Flash is non volatile memory but that means it keeps its data even without power. :)
:thumb:

fixxed thanks :D

but ya get my thought process on this?

[jeremyboycool]

Well I have been thinking about it.

I was thinking that maybe they just decided that a person would never reach the maximum number of cycles (erase and re-write cycles--using cycles for short) before the hard drive failed and had to be replaced. I remember reading the most commercial flash memory has over 1 million cycles.

I also was thinking that for most purposes this would be fine. But what if someone decided to put their internet temp folder on the flash portion of the drive. How long would it take a person to reach 1 million cycles than? And what about virtual memory/swap? So I was thinking that it would not be a good idea to use a hybrid drive on xp, but vista should be suited to handle a hybrid correctly. I wonder if windows is gonna patch xp for use with hybrids? If not I will probably just give up on windows and move on to a more flexible OS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive

http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips-pr.php/3425

Maybe it is nothing to worry about just was thinking about it.

[jeremyboycool]

Here is some more info

http://ask-leo.com/can_a_usb_thumbdrive_wear_out.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hybrid_drive

[morbidpete]

well there' goes my idea. maybe almost instant on comps soon if with those buffers

[YeOldeStonecat]

Why hybrid drives though? What would make that much different from adding a larger buffer to a hard drive?

It's kind of what they're doing. Right now..the cache on a drive helps when you're working with the same file(s) a lot, or working with individual large files. (like AutoCAD users)

Don't forget the I-RAM drives which have made brief appearances....
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=iram&page=1

[Andrzej]

:D
| Gadgets > Samsung Announces Q30 Notebook With Hybrid HDD
| Brandon Hill (Blog) - April 23, 2007 9:42 AM
| http://www.dailytech.com/Samsung+Announces+Q30+Notebook+With+Hybrid+HDD/article7020.htm link
| Samsung's Q3 notebook gets an 80GB/256MB hybrid hard disk drive

[Shagster]

Does anyone know who samsung is working with on this project? Like what brand of flash memory or they using in their drives...assuming they aren't making their own.

[Rivas]

What about the new raptors X.
They are hella faster then same ones with 16mb cache, yes it's looking nice because you can see the HDD spinning but they are fast like hell. (comparing it to same raptor with 16mb cache).

[YARDofSTUF]

The Raptor X 150 is the same speed as the Raptor 150, only difference is that teh X has a window, the 150s are faster by a bit than the 74 and the same for the 74 over the 37.