Samsung announced order availability for their new hybrid drives which combine traditional mechanical drives with flash memory. Microsoft has been touting the efficiency of the new drives as part of their “ReadyDrive” initiative.
The concept makes sense. By adding a 256 MB write cache to the hard drive, the number of writes is minimized by only actually writing to the hard drive platters when the cache is completely full. By reducing the number of physical writes, the benefit is two-fold. First, there will be a performance improvement since the system will not be waiting for acknowledgment of the disk write. Secondly, and probably more noticeably, battery life on portable systems will improve since the drive will be allowed more power-off time while the 256 MB cache stores the data writes until it’s full.
One additional feature that the hybrid drives should add is a significantly shorter time for resumption of activity from a state of hibernation since a substantial portion of the system RAM may be stored in the hybrid drive’s flash memory. Samsung refers to this as “ReadyBoot”.
The 160 GB drive from Samsung fits a standard 2.5 inch bay and should list for around $299 at launch.
Microsoft’s ReadyDrive program is different than their ReadyBoost where Vista users can add specific USB drives to their system to effectively expand their RAM.
The only real controversy surrounding these hybrid drives revolves around the need for specific drivers. Some system builders are providing their own while drive manufacturers claim that there is no need for specific drivers for the hybrid drives. It is recommended that users do their homework with respect to their operating systems and the specific hybrid drive they select.
