Samsung to ship hybrid hard disk drives early next year

Samsung to ship hybrid hard disk drives early next year

South Korean tech giants Samsung have said that they plan to start shipping their first hybrid hard disk starting January next year. They would also be showcasing the prototypes of these disks at the upcoming Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) next week.

These drives combine Flash memory with traditional storage to give the benefit of both the worlds to the consumers. Samsung has been relatively quiet on this product since they announced this concept last year but are now expected to release more details in the coming days.

As per incoming reports, they have indeed finished the development of the first commercial hard disk drive. The aim of the company is to ship the drives just in time for the launch of the upcoming Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.

However, these drives are not expected to become popular from day one. Microsoft is expected to promote this technology with the arrival of Vista and might even make it a “hard requirement” for Windows Vista Premium on notebooks by the second or third quarter of next year.

The company is expected to exhibit drives with two different cache sizes, 128 MB and 256 MB. This memory would be faster than the drive itself and would help in faster booting and other tasks. Power consumption and drive wear would also drop down leading to a longer life for the drives.

Jon Kang, senior vice president in the technical marketing group of Samsung Semiconductor said in a statement on this technology: “We see the hybrid hard drive as the most advanced and cost-effective means of improving the performance of a notebook computer’s storage functionality. The Samsung HHD addresses the two biggest consumer desires: extending battery life and improving boot and resume performance.”