Samsung Begins Hybrid HDD Shipments

Samsung has begun shipments of the first hybrid flash memory hard drive to its OEM partners. Retail shipments are expected to begin soon, however the company has not specified a date.

The Korean electronics maker first announced its plans for such drives shortly before WinHEC in May of last year. It said that combining flash memory with a traditional HDD had numerous benefits, including faster boot and resume times, as well as increased reliability.

For notebook PCs, which these drives are primarily intended for, battery life is also noticeably better by 20 to 30 minutes.

Hybrid hard drives eliminate the need for the disk to spin continuously, which would contribute to a longer usable life, as well as less risk of data loss from dropping or jarring.

Using ReadyBoot -- not to be confused with the similarly named Microsoft technology ReadyBoost -- boot and resume times are cut by 50 percent, while a 70 to 90 percent reduction in power usage is realized.

Samsung's hybrid drives would also work with a new Vista feature called ReadyDrive, which would negate the need for frequent disc accesses. Right now, support for the technology is only available through Windows, meaning using the drive on other operating systems would show no significant benefit.

The first three drives would come in capacities of 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB. Pricing has not been announced. Samsung will not have the market to itself for long, however; Intel is working on a competing technology called Robson, and Seagate plans to release its own hybrid drives soon.