'Hybrid' HDD Technology To Allow Data Access Without Booting

jfruhlinger writes "You've got a file on your laptop that you need to access — but you don't want to wait for your laptop to boot up to get at it. New technology from the company Silicon Storage Technology will make the contents of a hard drive accessible via a computer's USB port even when the computer is powered down. 'FlashMate combines hardware, firmware and software in a system application subsystem that manages a notebook computer's hard drive. It is based on SST's expertise in NAND flash controllers and memory subsystem design with Insyde Software's expertise in PC BIOS, system software and power management. FlashMate can work in conjunction with features such as Windows Vista ReadyDrive and serve as nonvolatile cache for the hard disk drive, thus enabling a standard hard disk drive to function as a hybrid drive.'"

Comments

Hey, what a great idea!

[Megane]

Too bad that Apple has supported HD access without booting for years. Firewire target mode, and SCSI target mode before that.

Re:Hey, what a great idea!

[Tobenisstinky]

I think what megane was trying to point out was that this was being touted as "new and revolutionary" while Apple has been doing it for years. As for why we do it, it's great for data recovery if the OS goes bye-bye or a laptop screen gets smashed, we can copy the drive over to another laptop and contiue working. Because Apple builds the OS and hardware, it all plays nice together, and you can boot a desktop with a laptop in target disk mode. (Provided you have your architectures in sync - or have built a "universal" system. It's great for diagnosing hardware vs software problems.

Re:Hey, what a great idea!

[demon]

Mostly because you'd need a dedicated USB port - FireWire/i.Link/IEEE 1394 is a *peer to peer* bus, so all ports work the same, whereas USB ports have *host* ports and *device* ports. It makes it much more difficult to implement. On the older NewWorld PPC systems, FireWire target mode was simply implemented by a little bit of Forth that talked on the FireWire bus, accepted commands, and read from/wrote to the system's internal disk as directed - it's so dirt simple. (I understand the Intel based systems have it as well, and I'm sure it's implemented similarly, with a small EFI program.)

Macs

[MBCook]

That's odd, all the Macs I've owned in the last 7+ years have done that though FireWire Disk Mode. Boot, hold a key down, in 5 seconds or so you have a oversized, way overpowered, external FireWire disk. It's about time the rest of the computer world started getting this ability.

Of course, since I just put my computers to sleep I don't have to worry about boot time.

It's a useful ability though. I've used it a few times on my Macs. Plus, it makes getting a new Mac and transferring things over (using the installer's transfer wizard) trivial.

Re:Macs

[gEvil (beta)]

What's even more fun is connecting two Macs together using firewire, setting the first one to boot into target disk mode, and then having the other one boot off the first machine's hard disk. Great way to diagnose disk problems without ever opening a case.

Re:Macs

[tlhIngan]

That's odd, all the Macs I've owned in the last 7+ years have done that though FireWire Disk Mode. Boot, hold a key down, in 5 seconds or so you have a oversized, way overpowered, external FireWire disk. It's about time the rest of the computer world started getting this ability.

Actually, the feature is much older - dates back to the early 90's on the 68k Macs as well. Though, they didn't have Firewire ports, they did have SCSI ports. You could set them into "SCSI Disk Mode", and they'd appear on the SCSI bus as a disk (with the SCSI ID you set).

Heck, the SCSI logo that bounced around the screen while this went on even displayed the SCSI ID in case you forgot to set it properly (and thus can do some black magic to get your SCSI bus working again).

Was a great way of transferring files from my old Macs (one of which didn't have Ethernet!) to my new Powerbook about 4 years ago. (Admittedly, another neat thing was the fact that the old Mac with Ethernet didn't do AppleTalk over IP (which unfortunately, is all OS X supported natively). But OS X Classic could be booted and Chooser (remember that?) could find it, and it still magically appears as a mounted disk in OS X. I don't think I want to know how many layers of software was used for that to happen.

USB is much harder though - you can't just plug a USB Host port into another USB Host port - that's an illegal USB topology. (There can only be one host on a USB bus since it's a master-slave bus, unlike Firewire/SCSI which are peer-to-peer).

Re:Macs

[0100010001010011]

Because the feature first showed up in 1991. Starting first with SCSI Disk Mode and evolving into Firewire Disk Mode in 2000. Here are a list of other features that I wish my XP laptop had that Mac has had as long as I've run them (Since system 7.1).

You can rename a file while it's open.
You can move a file while it's open. (Mac programs track it accurately, stuff like jEdit doesn't).
You can rename a program while it's running.
You can open a folder that is in the trash and move a file out of it without having to restore the folder, get the file and then delete the folder again.

Re:Macs

[Corporate Troll]

You do realise that all the "features" you list are a direct result of having a sane filesystem? (Apart from the last one, not sure about that) Most, if not all Unix operating systems can that and did that for ages.

Re:Limitations of the target mode -my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like your problem was caused by Windows XP because it doesn't understand GPT. Bootcamp sets up a GPT/MBR hybrid disk partition, and thats what Windows boots from on your Mac.. Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X can understand GPT. 64-bit Win XP supposedly can, but from here it sounds like it might not expect GPT on an external disk. I don't think Windows would be able to boot off a target mode disk either unless you had another EFI machine to put it on. 64-bit Win XP or Vista on two different Macs would be a great experiment.