Hae-Yu
05-08-2006, 02:22 AM
I haven't heard much of these new Samsung Hybrid Hard Drives (http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200605/kt2006050116405310160.htm), but they promise substantial speed improvements. Basically they are hybrid magnetic disk drives and flash memory drives combined which feature a 1 Gigabit write and boot buffer. This huge buffer dramatically reduces disk accesses thereby increasing speed, using less power, prolonging the mechanical life of the drives, improving reliability and providing near-instantaneous boot times. The HHD drives are due in quantity later this year.
In addition, this has been a joint venture between Samsung and Microsoft (http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/news/HardDiskDrive_20050425_0000117556.htm). The drives have been designed to work with Vista and new ATA commands will take advantage of the buffer. If MS can exclusively have a drive provide near-instant on, even for a short while, well, they would have a significant mindshare victory over competitors.
At first I was skeptical about a single improvement that boosted so many critical factors, but taking a second to think about it, the claims aren't outlandish at all. Since the disk isn’t spinning as often, it follows that the drives will last longer, consume less power, and operate cooler. Less power usage equals longer battery life. Boot times can be served by the simple expedient of caching the current state or the boot state on sleep or shut down. I don't believe it will be an all-out speed improvement in many tasks since it would have to predict what you will do in many cases.
As for fast right now, can a large capacity flash player be modded to serve as a real drive? As in, install the OS and drivers to a flash-based drive and use that as the boot drive. A gamer could have games and maps installed on it and they'd have instant load times. I've heard that thumb drives have a r/w limit of several thousand cycles and after that they die. USB would be too slow, so it would have to work in a SATA or ATA slot. Hmmm, things to look into.
In addition, this has been a joint venture between Samsung and Microsoft (http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/news/HardDiskDrive_20050425_0000117556.htm). The drives have been designed to work with Vista and new ATA commands will take advantage of the buffer. If MS can exclusively have a drive provide near-instant on, even for a short while, well, they would have a significant mindshare victory over competitors.
At first I was skeptical about a single improvement that boosted so many critical factors, but taking a second to think about it, the claims aren't outlandish at all. Since the disk isn’t spinning as often, it follows that the drives will last longer, consume less power, and operate cooler. Less power usage equals longer battery life. Boot times can be served by the simple expedient of caching the current state or the boot state on sleep or shut down. I don't believe it will be an all-out speed improvement in many tasks since it would have to predict what you will do in many cases.
As for fast right now, can a large capacity flash player be modded to serve as a real drive? As in, install the OS and drivers to a flash-based drive and use that as the boot drive. A gamer could have games and maps installed on it and they'd have instant load times. I've heard that thumb drives have a r/w limit of several thousand cycles and after that they die. USB would be too slow, so it would have to work in a SATA or ATA slot. Hmmm, things to look into.