Hybrid Hard Drives Just Need 8GB of NAND

judgecorp writes "Research from Seagate suggests that hybrid hard drives in general use are virtually as good as solid state drives if they have just 8GB of solid state memory. The research found that normal office computers, not running data-centric applications, access just 9.58GB of unique data per day. 8GB is enough to store most of that, and results in a drive which is far cheaper than an all-Flash device. Seagate is confident enough to ease off on efforts to get data off hard drives quickly, and rely on cacheing instead. It will cease production of 7200 RPM laptop drives at the end of 2013, and just make models running at 5400 RPM."

Comments

Re:Of course! And you never need more than 640K RA

[lightknight]

In other words...if you are conditioned to using a 5400 RPM HD, then the spinup / access times seem normal to you. If you've had better, and for only a few dollars difference (7200 RPM) or more (SSD), then it's the difference between getting something done, then getting your morning coffee, versus making a doughnut run, as your machine will still be loading up the desktop by the time you get back.

The thing is...while you may be conditioned, as well as others, to believe this slow access time is 'normal'...the rest of the world, that has upgraded, will just continue on without you. It took your sales guys 15 minutes to log into their desktops...my guys logged in in 3 minutes, and are already making their second or third calls. My guys have the potential to do a little more volume, in the same time, than your guys...and the cost to my business would be minimal (who cares about saving $80, when the sales guy is bring in a contract worth many times that amount, even accounting for costs?).