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Samsung Ships Hybrid Hard Drives

Posted by kdawson on from the not-for-you-yet-binky dept.

writertype writes "ExtremeTech reports that Samsung has become the first company to begin shipping hybrid hard drives as discussed last fall on Slashdot. (Some photos here.) Unfortunately, there's no word yet (beyond 'soon') on when retail shipments will begin, or when (or if) 3.5-inch models will be available. Note that these hybrid drives are different than the ReadyBoost USB flash drives optimized for Vista; hybrid drives contain a smaller amount of flash, and work as a write cache for your notebook drive, extending battery life."

1 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Different than the drives designed for Vista? Not. by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not sure what is more screwed up the article linked to about the drives or the Slashdot comment.

    ReadyDrive is NOT ReadyBoost, but it IS STILL a MS Technology and is designed to work directly with Vista.

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv ista/features/details/performance.mspx

    Also why does the linked article and Slashdot dismiss these drives as having nothing to do with Vista, when in fact they were DESIGNED Specifically to be used with Vista and employ MS Vista technology in the hardware?

    Is Slashdot trying to become the misinformation site of the Internet?

    http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070307PR201.ht ml

    http://www.channelinsider.com/article/Samsung+Ship s+Worlds+First+Hybrid+HDD151or+Is+It/202621_1.aspx

    "Optimized to work in Windows Vista-capable notebook PCs, Samsung's MH80 is a 2.5-inch hybrid hard drive with 128 or 256MB of flash memory. It combines a hard disk drive with a OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft's ReadyDrive software, offering faster boot and resume times, increased battery life and greater reliability compared to traditional magnetic media technology, the spokesperson claimed. "

    Sorry slashdot, but these drives are designed for Vista. Sure they may offer performance improvements in other OSes, but will see the majority of performance gains in Vista. Also even when used with other OSes, the way the Drives internally manage the Flash caching is from MS, so thank them the next time you boot your Linux laptop with one of these drives.

    As for the other questions people have about the limited write times of Flash RAM, etc, go lookup MS Superfetch technology which specifically addresses these issues by writing to various locations in the Flash space, since this this is also how these drives work to ensure the same bits don't always get used, giving the flash cache the equivalent or greater lifetime than the HD platters.

    I know this is SlashDot, but someone could get the fact right once, right?