Hybrid hard drives (HHDs) shipping January: faster boots, longer battery

We've been wondering what impact those next generation hybrid hard drives (HHDs) for notebooks and PCs would have on performance and battery life ever since they were announced at WinHEC 2005. Well, Samsung just released some more details saying these new solid state NAND and platter spinnin' hybrids will save 8-25 seconds on boot and extend battery life by 8-10%. In other words, new HHDs will boot or resume up to twice as fast as conventional hard disk drives, last 20-30 minutes longer on battery and are up to five times more reliable. Yeah, big benefits and at only "minimal additional cost" according to Samsung's press release. Sammy will begin to "sample" these new HHDs to customers beginning July with full product launch expected in January, or whenever those Vista machines with ReadyDrive begin to ship. And yeah, it's official, these new drives will be on display at WinHEC in both 128MB and 256MB cache densities at WinHEC 2006 next week just like we heard.

[Thanks, Chuckles M.] 

[Mike Kurasz @ May 19th 2006 8:20AM]

We need 80 gig solid state samsung.. wtf..
Moving parts suck..

[paris @ May 19th 2006 8:30AM]

why only 256MB?! Thats mad. We can get retail 512MB flash memory for �15. Sticking a 512MB in them wouldn't cost samsung much more and neither would 1GB.

[Marc Mayor @ May 19th 2006 8:40AM]

128 MB is so nineties...

[Lux Aeterna @ May 19th 2006 8:44AM]

Thats the cache density, guys. Not the storage capacity.

[Clay @ May 19th 2006 9:16AM]

Considering I have 8 MB of cache right now, 256 MB is quite a bit larger. Unless this is a different cache I'm thinking about...

[El Froggo @ May 19th 2006 9:31AM]

Yeah I think the point is that 512mb of flash memory may be cheap but it'll have nothing like the perforance required for cache - don't forget this stuff'll have to be similar in performance to RAM and we know how much 512mb of that costs!

[Chris @ May 19th 2006 9:52AM]

"These new solid state NAND and platter spinnin' hybrids will save 8-25 seconds on boot". Yeah, like I boot my computer more than once per year! Who cares if it saves 8-25 seconds?

[tiuk @ May 19th 2006 9:54AM]

El Froggo - What, $40?

[oly va ha @ May 19th 2006 10:10AM]

yeah El Froggo RAM is so expensive...i didnt know 40 bucks for 512mb was expensive...if you think thats expensive you should't be wasting your money or time with the internet geez

[Alex @ May 19th 2006 10:24AM]

But try to cram 512mb of ram into a standard 2.5 laptop HDD case.

[Rob W @ May 19th 2006 10:26AM]

You really shouldn't abbreviate Samsung to Sammy - I spent a good thirty seconds trying to work out why a games company was marketing hard drives.

[Big Sam @ May 19th 2006 11:29AM]

Is this replacing the 2-16 MB cache that is currently used on hard drives? Isn't the current cache memory considerably faster (and more expensive) than flash memory? That's how they are able to keep the price comparable.

[Chris @ May 19th 2006 11:34AM]

Considering that the Intel Macs already boot in 25 seconds or less (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook.ars/5), I guess we're talking "instant boot".

[Skippy @ May 19th 2006 12:19PM]

So it gets like 55 miles per gallon then?

[Dubiousd @ May 19th 2006 12:52PM]

Anybody know when the all solid-state drive is going to ship?

[Josh @ May 19th 2006 1:11PM]

Rob W.,

Sammy = Samsung
Panny = Panasonic

[Jason @ May 19th 2006 3:20PM]

My God, people are stupid.

[EatingPie @ May 19th 2006 3:39PM]

Definitely need more technical info here. The NAND is very small if it's serving as a MRU cache (most recently used), or -- probably more likely -- given the boot times, holding boot sector.

Now if it ONLY holds the boot sector, then that (relatively) tiny 256MB is well good enough. But as a MRU cache? I'm very doubtful. Think of things like browser cache, Documents, E-Mail... Or in my case, a source tree that needs compiling.

-Pie

[Drifter @ May 18th 2007 8:10PM]

256MB is small only if you're caching entire files. But the intent of this cache is to help with seek/access time, so only the first few sectors of each file are actually cached. Beyond that things are read from the disk, the reason being that many disks these days have higher transfer rate than flash memory. Note that for a cache scheme like this to work, either the disk needs to understand the concept of files (instead of sectors, which probably wouldn't work through interfaces like SATA), or the cache needs to be manipulated by the OS. The reduced boot time comes from the OS instructing the disk to preload sectors during the shutdown process that would either wait for the disk to start spinning or would cause long seek times.

I think is worth mentioning that only Vista currently benefits from this type of cache.

[MD @ May 20th 2006 12:31AM]

Having NAND flash in harddrives worries me. NAND has a limited amount of times it can be written to before it becomes unusable. Having that form of memory in a harddrive could greatly decrease it's lifespan compared to convential hardrives. Even if the NAND is rarely written too, it is still a obvious limitation compared to conventional harddrives. I'll take the slightly slower boot times and the slightly less battery life for a harddrive with a greater lifespan.
This hardrive type is just a short answer to a larger issue, rechargable battery tech needs to improve. If the battery technology improved fast enough to keep up with our mobile tech demands, then such things would not be needed.
That's just my take on it.

[187 John Doe @ May 20th 2006 5:53AM]

How about mashing this technology up with perpendicular recording?

[dnl2ba @ May 20th 2006 2:24PM]

Josh:
http://www.sammy.co.jp/english/

Anyway, I suppose the "why not 512MB?" commenters are assuming Samsung isn't aware of higher capacities of solid-state memory, even though they make it themselves. It must be that Samsung found 128-256MB to be the sweet spot between performance and price.

Adding $40 to a hard drive that costs $100-250 is a big difference when you're trying to look enticing to lots of consumers who don't really understand the benefits your product offers over the competition anyway.

Also, maybe there are diminishing returns for increased cache size in today's hardware, and they had to draw the line somewhere.

[phreaki @ May 20th 2006 3:07PM]

With all the multiple USB/Firewire ports I see on all new computers, a FlashDrive Raid makes more sense than ever.

Maybe these new flash drives are better suited for that type of task. Can't help but think that it's all gonna end back in the same failure rate as spinning platters.
The write failure after X amount is bound to be killed when ram starts swapping up to 15,000 times a day.

[El Froggo @ May 21st 2006 11:57AM]

Well excuse me tiuk and oly va ha ;-) This side of the Atlantic a decent 512mb of RAM is more like 100 of your "bucks"! I can feel everyone's jealousy already.

I like Alex's point though - it's got to be small - especially for the laptop drives.

[Kroneage @ Jun 20th 2006 2:57AM]

Well these will be nice and may steal some momentum from Satas unless that's the connection they'll be running. But frankly I'll prolly just wait till Solid State hard drives arrive later next year.

Solid State drives setup in RamSan Disc Array will make boot time non-existent and access will be at lighting speed!

Eve Online Servers are running Dual "Cell" Blade servers with Solid State RamSan Disc Array! They've broken every server record there is. Over 25,000 simutaneous gamers online worldwide with NO server lag whatsoever! All from a server cluster in one location! That means everybody is aware of everyone else at one time. Not just your neighbors or those closest to the servers!

The "Cell" kicks butt, but with Solid State RamSan Discs it burries any and all competition! ;)

[Kroneage @ Jun 20th 2006 3:00AM]

Well these will be nice and may steal some momentum from Satas unless that's the connection they'll be running. But frankly I'll prolly just wait till Solid State hard drives arrive later next year.

Solid State drives setup in RamSan Disc Array will make boot time non-existent and access will be at lighting speed!

Eve Online Servers are running Dual "Cell" Blade servers with Solid State RamSan Disc Array! They've broken every server record there is. Over 25,000 simutaneous gamers online worldwide with NO server lag whatsoever! All from a server cluster in one location! That means everybody is aware of everyone else at one time. Not just your neighbors or those closest to the servers!

The "Cell" kicks butt, but with Solid State RamSan Discs it burries any and all competition! ;)

[Kroneage @ Jun 20th 2006 3:01AM]

Well these will be nice and may steal some momentum from Satas unless that's the connection they'll be running. But frankly I'll prolly just wait till Solid State hard drives arrive later next year.

Solid State drives setup in RamSan Disc Array will make boot time non-existent and access will be at lighting speed!

Eve Online Servers are running Dual "Cell" Blade servers with Solid State RamSan Disc Array! They've broken every server record there is. Over 25,000 simutaneous gamers online worldwide with NO server lag whatsoever! All from a server cluster in one location! That means everybody is aware of everyone else at one time. Not just your neighbors or those closest to the servers!

The "Cell" kicks butt, but with Solid State RamSan Discs it burries any and all competition! ;)