'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!

[peragrin]

Why it's cool that's easy

my powerbook died. the graphics chip stopped working, so the display was all screwed up. I bought a new Mac Mini, plugged in my firewire cable into both computers. I booted the bad powerbook into target disk mode, and turned on the mac mini for the first time.

As OS X initaized it gave me the option of importing settings and applications from another computer. It mounted my poor powerbook as a fire wire drive, copied everything over including passwords and user settings. two hours(20 gigs of stuff to copy) I had a nearly identical system up and running. I had to change things like the computers network name, change the resolution, but I was up and running fully. No reinstalling software for a day. it just worked.

I took the powerbook back to apple for repairs. when i got it back I repeated the process in reverse restoring the powerbook to what I had before in just a couple of hours, not days of reinstalling software like windows requires.

Yes I said days as windows software installs don't like being transfered in such ways.

Wow.

[EveryNickIsTaken]

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. Damn... and I thought I was fucking lazy.

alright!

[snark23]

Now I don't even have to boot to steal sensitive information. This will save so much time!

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

[clickclickdrone]

Now why the hell don't reviews ever mention stuff like that? I'd have bought a Mac for that feature alone.

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.

Best tag ever

[Jesterboy]

I don't really even care about the article, but I have to say, "flashyourcache" is the best tag I've ever seen.

Who cares?

[goodmanj]

Who boots a laptop? I just close the lid on my Mac, and it goes to sleep. I open it up and there's my stuff, in less time than it takes to plug in a cable. It'll sleep happily for weeks without running out of juice. The only time I ever reboot it is when it needs a software update.

TFA is an elaborate solution to the wrong problem. The right problem is, "how can we make laptops that don't need to be booted every time they're used?"

So OS security be damned, eh?

[mr_mischief]

TFA doesn't say a thing about authentication, authorization, or accounting. How does this know who's checking the data? How does it decide to allow them? Where and how does it store the facts about who accessed what and when? The AAA process is a cornerstone of security -- computer or otherwise.

Yes, I know physical security is paramount. A building needs more than one cornerstone, obviously. ;-) But other systems require the drive to be taken out or the machine to be booted at least. It's a lot easier to make sure no one can boot your machine (startup password, bootloader password, no booting from CD etc.) than to make sure they can't hook up a USB cable to it. It's also a lot harder to catch someone hooking up a cable for a couple of minutes than tearing down your laptop and taking the drive (or sliding the drive out if it's easily removable like some are -- taking it to another system and hooking it up are still time-consuming and conspicuous).

BTW, the other cornerstones are secure design (again, in software/hardware or outside computers altogether) and data hiding (encryption, shredding paper, window shades, closed doors, setting proper permissions so that AAA actually matters, etc).