We’ve covered this kind of tech before HERE and HERE. Hybrid flash/platter drives are definitely here and are going to show up in more and more products. Samsung held an event this week in NYC to show off its current crop of drives, both hybrid and optical.
Samsung’s new 2.5” family includes the 160-GB MH80 Series, the Spinpoint M5 Series (using Perpendicular Magnetic Recording technology) with single-disk capacities ranging between 60 and 160 GB, and a dual-disk model provides up to 250 GB of storage space. All of these models are shipping now. One of the nice things about hybrid drives is that they can record data while idling, not only giving much longer operating times due to power savings but also a longer operating LIFEtime because the disk isn’t spinning up and down nearly as often.
This is the F1 One-Terabyte 3.5-in drive, available with a 16- or 32-MB buffer. Image and video storage needs alone will create a demand for big drives, especially as the computers become more and more of a multimedia entertainment device in the home.
Not a hybrid drive, the external slot-in DVD writer is a really nice alternative to the clunky portable DVD writers currently available.
Samsung also had their new 32-Gig flash-memory-based Q1U tablet PC and thin Q30 laptop. I’m not a big fan of the smaller tablets, but I can see where some applications would appreciate the size and functionality. I’m more hot after the silent flat laptop.
When are we gonna get 20gig flash hard drives soldered to the motherboard and just do away with the separate hard drive altogether?
When they become perfect and never need to be replaced or serviced.
I would be very happy to find a 80Gig flash drive in a standard 2.5 disk enclosure with standard Pata or Sata connectors I could use on any lanptop.
The tricky part, I guess is to arrange the interleaving internally in a way to make it as fast as a HD when recording data. On the up side, doing away with seek times would make it almost perfect.
Alix, any pricing info on some of these? I found $400 for the new Samsung F1 with 32Mb cache, but can’t find much more. Thanks.
I’ll see what I can dig up. BubbaRay.
I can’t wait for a mac user to say all of these is a waste of time because Apple doesn’t sell them.
Do you have a price on the slim laptop Alix? That looks really cool.
Unfortunately the laptop isn’t available in the USA yet. Damn. I’ll ask about availability of that laptop too when I check with Samsung on pricing Monday.
That slot-in DVD writer looks really slick. Is that commercially available now?
Angel – you gotta get past some of those Apple hangups – at least enough to read what’s going on in the world. They’re already talking about using production hybrid drives before the year is out.
The samsung, unless I am mistaken, spins at 5400 rpm…ugh….I don’t use my laptop for unplugged endurance competions and the selling point is you can write when it has spun down…that is not a feature that moves me. The 256mg buffer…so what…couldn’t they put in a gig? I will stick with my 7200rpm drive in my laptop and keep the 10000rpm Western Digital in my home unit and wait for this technology to mature. Just my opinion…I could be wrong.
#8…SmartAlix….thanks Alix…appreciate that.
#10
And then they’re going to say OSX handles hybrid drives better than Vista 🙂
#1 – Never mind replacing the HD with it, replace the DRam with NV Flash Ram, first. Then the OS doesn’t have to be reloaded every friggin time you switch the thing on, unless it needs a critical refresh. This technology will certainly increase the battery life of Laptops.