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With CES just days away, a group of leading hard-drive manufacturers announced the formation of what they're calling the Hybrid Storage Alliance, an industry group that aims to increase consumer awareness and accelerate market adoption of hybrid hard drives.
On Thursday, the groupâwhose board is made up of representatives from Seagate, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung, and Toshibaâsaid it will be starting a new campaign to promote this technology.
"In general, we're coming together to educate the public through whitepapers and demonstrations, to explain why we think this will be a very good technology for end usersâand how it's going to extend the capabilities of notebook computers," said Joni Clark, product-marketing manager for Seagate.
A hybrid drive, or one that uses integrated flash memory as opposed to the buffer for cache memory found on traditional hard drives, will primarily be used in Vista-equipped laptops using Vista's ReadyDrive technology.
A hybrid drive uses "non-volatile flash memory" so that data can be written while the platter is spun down so that it can readily store frequently used files even when the drive is powered off or put to sleep, explained Marc Noblitt, senior interface market development manager for Seagate.
This data can either be written to the flash memory or the mechanical hard drive, depending on which applications are used most frequently. The benefits of using flash memory, according Noblitt, is that users will see an immediate boost to laptop battery life, faster transfer speeds, and better durabilityâbecause spinning the drive down creates less mechanical movement and increases drive reliability.
"You get the robustness of flash and capacity of normal disc drive," explained Clark, "all in one drive."
With CES just days away, a group of leading hard-drive manufacturers announced the formation of what they're calling the Hybrid Storage Alliance, an industry group that aims to increase consumer awareness and accelerate market adoption of hybrid hard drives.
On Thursday, the groupâwhose board is made up of representatives from Seagate, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung, and Toshibaâsaid it will be starting a new campaign to promote this technology.
"In general, we're coming together to educate the public through whitepapers and demonstrations, to explain why we think this will be a very good technology for end usersâand how it's going to extend the capabilities of notebook computers," said Joni Clark, product-marketing manager for Seagate.
A hybrid drive, or one that uses integrated flash memory as opposed to the buffer for cache memory found on traditional hard drives, will primarily be used in Vista-equipped laptops using Vista's ReadyDrive technology.
A hybrid drive uses "non-volatile flash memory" so that data can be written while the platter is spun down so that it can readily store frequently used files even when the drive is powered off or put to sleep, explained Marc Noblitt, senior interface market development manager for Seagate.
This data can either be written to the flash memory or the mechanical hard drive, depending on which applications are used most frequently. The benefits of using flash memory, according Noblitt, is that users will see an immediate boost to laptop battery life, faster transfer speeds, and better durabilityâbecause spinning the drive down creates less mechanical movement and increases drive reliability.
"You get the robustness of flash and capacity of normal disc drive," explained Clark, "all in one drive."
