The Benefits of Hybrid Drives

feminazi writes "Flash memory is being integrated with the hard disk by Seagate and Samsung and onto the motherboard by Intel. Potential benefits: faster read/write performance; fewer crashes; improved battery life; faster boot time; lower heat generation; decreased energy-consumption. Vista's ReadyDrive will use the hybrid system first for laptops and probably for desktops down the road. The heat and power issues may also make it attractive in server environments."

Comments

Re:Catastrophic Failure of Flash Memory

[servognome]

Hopefully, the engineer who designed this hybrid drive has, at a minimum, integrated an LCD counter and a tiny speaker into the drive. The counter shall display the running total of the number of writes to the flash memory. The tiny speaker shall beep like crazy when the total exceeds 99900.

It was in the original engineering design, but the lawyers said it would be cheaper to just include a warning in the fine print of the warranty.