Samsung Begins Shipping Hybrid Hard Drives

[Damion Chaplin]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.digitaltrends.com/article12428.html' target='_blank'>http://news.digitaltrends.com/article12428.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Samsung has announced that its has begun commercial shipments of its MH80 line of hybrid hard disk drives, making itself one of the first companies to roll out a hybrid hard drive unit to OEM customers. Samsung's MH80 line will initially be available in 80, 120, and 160 GB capacities; the drives themselves are 2.5-inch units with either 128 or 256 MB of onboard OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft's ReadyDrive software. Drive manufacturers and Microsoft have been touting the potential performance benefits of hybrid drives for some time; the basic idea is that by combining flash memory cache with a traditional hard drive, a hybrid drive can enable power-sensitive systems (like notebook computers) to start up and resume operations more quickly, since they'd be accessing vital data out via flash rather than the platters. Hybrid drives would also use less power (since they'd have to spin up less frequenly) and be less vulnerable to damage from shocks and drops (since the drives wouldn't be spinning as often)."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/SamsungHHD.jpg" /> <br /><br />Well, it's sure a step in the right direction, and if they let me I'll probably replace my laptop's drive with one of these, but I still can't help but ask why we don't have fully-flash drives yet. Sure, a hybrid drive will allow faster response times, but imagine the speed one would get with your entire OS on flash. 8) Look for these hybrid hard drives (HHDs) to appear in laptops and in retail stores soon.

[Felix Torres]

Well, it's sure a step in the right direction, and if they let me I'll probably replace my laptop's drive with one of these, but I still can't help but ask why we don't have fully-flash drives yet.

We do.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/20/conventional_hard_drive_obsoletism/index.html

They're just not cheap enough to be practical.
Samsung is shipping a version of their Q1 UMPC with 32Gb flash but it runs $1000 more than the HD version if you can find them.

http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/Samsung_Q1/NPQ1V004SEA/K90791/froogle/

Right now, 1Gb flash cards run $10 at retail so there is no reason a 32Gb HD-equivalent can't go for $300, but volume production has to ramp up first and a market has to develop.

Give it a year.

[whydidnt]

I'm pretty surprised that these only come with 128 or 256 MB of flash memory. That seems pretty small for me, and I wonder what the difference in performance would be if they included 1 or 2 GB's. Couldn't the OS then use that for ReadyBoost instead of requiring a separate flash card? As Felix mentions 1 GB is extremely inexpensive today, so what am I missing.

Of course it's still rare to see more than 256 in our PDA's, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Theres obviously something more than cost going on in the decision to keep the amount of flash RAM to a minimum in our devices.

[mcsouth]

This looked really exciting, and I was already thinking of checking one of these drives as a replacement for the 60GB drive in my Fujitsu S7020D, until I noticed the caveat in the article - the one that states this allows Vista computers to take advantage of the flash. Reading between the lines, that would seem to imply that my Win XP Pro laptop isn't going to be able to make use of the flash in this drive?

Thanks, but no thanks - this isn't enough to convince me to drop several hundred dollars to buy bloated software that from what I've seen, doesn't offer me any distinctive advantages over the software that I'm using now.

Maybe in a year or so, when I'm ready to replace my laptop, and the inevitable kinks are worked out of Vista........

[Jason Dunn]

Reading between the lines, that would seem to imply that my Win XP Pro laptop isn't going to be able to make use of the flash in this drive? Thanks, but no thanks - this isn't enough to convince me to drop several hundred dollars to buy bloated software that from what I've seen, doesn't offer me any distinctive advantages over the software that I'm using now.

I find it kind of funny that Vista has a feature that you want, that XP can't offer you (working with these new Flash drives), yet in the same breath you call it bloated software that doesn't offer any "distinctive advantage". The advantage is using the new drives! It takes OS-level support to work with a drive that has two storage mediums, control the caching, the spin-up of the drive, the sleep state, etc. XP doesn't have it, Vista does. Score one point for Vista.

I think that some people look at Vista hoping to find ONE KILLER THING thing that will make them want to upgrade. Operating systems are rarely like that - they bring 100's of new things to the table, and some will be more valuable than others based on what each person needs. Here's one that you want. For others, it will Direct X 10 support for the new games. For me I dig the new start menu where I can just type what I want to launch or find and it shows me - that's killer!

[ctmagnus]

OT: One other killer thing for me: A few days ago, I rebooted and got a blue screen right away (before Windows even loaded). So I turned the machine off and tried again. It made it into Windows this time, but blue-screened almost immediately. I hit the power button and tried again. Third time lucky. ;)

I've never seen XP handle BSODs with aplomb like that.