Samsung and Microsoft are collaborating to bring hybrid drives, which incorporate large flash memory buffers for superior performance, to market by the last quarter of 2006. These drives map entire hard drive sectors to flash memory, consume less power, generate less heat, and are expected to be fully compatible with Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista. They represent a step towards future flash drives that will do away with spinning platters altogether.
Hybrid drives are a new generation of hard disk drives that incorporate large flash memory buffers for superior performance. Samsung Electronics and Microsoft Corporation are collaborating to bring the first hybrid drives to market by the last quarter of 2006. Most computer users are familiar with flash memory from its application in memory sticks, also called key drives. Flash memory has several significant advantages over the spinning platter technology of conventional hard drives. Hybrid drives take advantage of these benefits.
By including a large-capacity flash memory buffer, hybrid drives map entire hard drive sectors to flash memory. Data transfer rates are higher because accessing information does not involve locating the data on spinning platters. Sectors are mapped to the buffer based on frequency of use, although user configuration can also be exercised.
Hybrid drives consume less power by keeping frequently accessed data in flash memory, extending the precious battery life of laptops and notebooks. The platters spin only when a requested file or program is not already in memory. When the buffer fills up, it is written to the hard drive and emptied, then made available again.
Another benefit of hybrid drives is that they generate less heat, since flash memory has no moving parts. This is particularly significant for notebooks, but will also benefit desktops and overclockers. Other key benefits of hybrid drives are that flash memory is non-volatile: the buffers require no power to hold their contents. In the event of a power failure, flash memory will retain up to the last keystroke. Hybrid drives should also reduce shutdown and startup time to about one second.
Hybrid drives are expected to be fully compatible with Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista. They represent a step towards future flash drives that will do away with spinning platters altogether. These units have already been demonstrated at trade shows, but are currently cost-prohibitive. Conventional hard drives are so cheap that flash drives can’t compete profitably until manufacturing costs come down. Some insiders expect this to happen by 2008.
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