What is a Hybrid Hard Drive?
A hybrid hard drive combines traditional hard drive storage on magnetic platters with a compliment of flash memory for fast caching. This allows frequently accessed data to remain instantly available, even faster than resorting to random access memory (RAM). Flash memory is made from non-volatile memory chips, which means it stores data bits without the need of a power source. This is in contrast to RAM chips that lose all data when power is cut. A hybrid hard drive incorporates a kind of “personal cache system” or buffer, but instead of on-board RAM, it uses on-board flash memory. Operating system (OS) boot processes stored on flash memory within the hybrid hard drive means boot-up time can be significantly reduced. Also, depending on the size of the flash chip, frequently used programs and files can be instantly accessible without the drive needing to spin up. Hence, the hybrid hard drive spends most of its time idle, even while continuing to read and write to built-in flash memory.
A hybrid drive is a new type of large-buffer computer hard drive, currently in joint development by Samsung and Microsoft. It is different from standard hard drives in that it employs a large buffer (up to 1 GB) of nonvolatile flash memory to cache data during normal use. By using this large buffer for primary data storage, the platters of the hard drive are at rest almost all of the time, instead of constantly spinning as they are in modern-day hard drives. This offers numerous benefits, chief among them decreased power consumption, improved reliability, and a faster boot process. Hybrid drives are set to be released, primarily for notebook computers, in late 2006. At the moment, they are only known to be fully compatible with the upcoming Windows Vista operating system; Microsoft has given the name “ReadyDrive” to this technology. Source: Wikipedia Samsung Electronics has announced that its hard disk drive (HDD) featuring NAND flash cache will emerge on the market in large quantities
It’s exactly what the name implies, it uses two different storage systems within one box. Just like the Prius uses an internal combustion engine and batteries as necessary, the hybrid hard drive will use its spinning platters or non-volatile flash memory (just like the one in your digital camera or USB key) to maximize speed, performance and energy efficiency. The hard drive in my computer is constantly spinning at 7200 rpm. Western Digital Raptors spin at 10,000 rpm, and some specialty hard drives go to 15,000 rpm or more. Considering that 10,000 rpm is usually the redline for sportsbikes and a Formula One car will usually go around the circuit at about 15,000 to 18,000 rpm, you know that this is one crazy fast speed to have spinning metal flying around. If you could keep those platters spinning with the lid off, you could likely slice prosciutto hair-thin on them! I know… always thinking about Italian food… One of the advantages hybrids have is that most of the time the platters
In basic terms, it’s a merge between a normal Hard Drive and a Flash Drive, with the intention of reducing the number of times the Hard Drive disk has to spin. This is done by saving the temporary data that would normally be saved somewhere in the disk onto the flash memory, and when that memory is nearly full, the disk would start spinning in order to “empty” the flash. The pro’s of this new type of Hard Drive, is that it allows you to cut the power consumption a bit (Samsung claims that it will add an average of 30 minutes to a laptop’s battery life), and in some cases, will increase the performance, like, for example, during the boot of Windows Vista (which will supposedly load in half the time with these disks).
Simply stated it is a traditional hard drive that has up to 1 GB flash drive connected to it. Information is written and stored on the flash drive to help reduce spinning of the platter. Benefits • Decreased power consumption • Decreased heat generation • Decreased noise levels • Improved reliablity • Improved performance Drawbacks • Increased seek time for non cached data • Increased cost • Increased frequency of spin-up • Lower recoverability • Lower lifetime Conclusion: At this time, I do not think these drives are worth it. For some application, it will speed up your computing. For others it will slow down. I am also not a fan of lowering recoverablity of the drive. I have had to recover too many drives in the past to chance this (plug for always having backups). I will wait until the Solid State Drives have decent compacity and price points.
