Worm Geek

Recently we have turned your attention to hybrid HDD, now the hardware developers made the next step: hybrid between optic drive and SSD. The novelty is introduced by Hitachi-LG Data Storage and is based on HyDrive optic disk with incorporated flash memory.

The idea of HyDrive is to have a small device with big potential in data storage and system performance. It could be considered as alternative to standard SSD devices and even of HDD in notebooks and nettops.

The first generation of HyDrive will have 32 or 64 GB memory and will be available in August. The plans for the next year includes models with 256 GB memory.

We are so used to associate the term “hybrid” with “cars”, that when I heard about “hybrid HDD” my first thought was “What? Electricity plus fuel!?!”

Actually the new Seagate hybrid combine the best sides of SSD performance and the low cost of classic hard disk drives. The new gamma is called Momentus XT and consist of 2,5″, 7200 rpm HDD plus 4 GB solid-state memory.

Task distribution between the two types of memory is implemented by Adaptive Memory technology, allowing to determine the file usage frequency so that most used files are moved to SSD part. This means that normally all files are stored on the hard disk, but if there are several requests for a file the system will automatically transfer it to SSD in order to achieve faster access.

There is yet another positive feature – Momentus XT does not require any additional programs. Estimations are that the performance of this type of hybrid drive would be about 4 times higher than the performance of standard 7200 rpm HDDs.

And of course the price of the hybrid will be most advantageous: 113, 122 and 156 USD for 250, 320 and 500 GB respectively. Asus has already announced that it will propose hybrid drives as an option in their Republic of Gamers (ROG) G73Jh notebook.