Samsung, Seagate show off ReadyDrive HDD prototypes

No surprises here: we've known since last WinHEC that Samsung was working on a so-called ReadyDrive hard drive that sports a 128MB flash buffer for enabling lower laptop power consumption, and just as we suspected, they've unveiled a working prototype of the technology at this year's conference. Also on hand with their own ReadyDrive was Seagate, who, like Samsung, plan to release their model when Vista finally starts shipping, as only the next-gen operating system will have the proper ATA driver command sets to allow for such a large buffer. PCMag was on the scene for one of Samsung's demos, and claim that a laptop running an office apps script only needed to access the hard drive every three to four minutes, which could result in ReadyDrive-equipped laptops sipping up to 40% less juice than models with those outdated, perpetually-spinning HDDs.

[Arsenio @ May 24th 2006 12:28PM]

Um, spellcheck?

[morcheeba @ May 24th 2006 12:34PM]

Argh! There's no technical reason that this feature requires OS support. It might make the usage-determination a little easier, but I'd rather it be transparent so that if the OS crashes, no additional data is lost.

Also, 128MB is a bit small - they have 4GB flash chips that are the same physical size as the 128MB chips.

[Bobgorila @ May 24th 2006 12:47PM]

Only Vista huh? I wonder if Apple's Leopard will be able to play with flash-enhanced HDs.

Or maybe it'll be another feature left oddly by the roadside by the boys from Cupertino coughA2DPcough

[DT @ May 24th 2006 12:52PM]

Sweet....like Bobgorilla, I wonder if Apple will incorporate support for these drives when they are released. If not with Leopard, at least with a minor OS update. With drives like these on the horizon, I have no problem ordering my Macbook with a stock 60GB drive. I'll just replace it when these come out.

[Mack Swift @ May 24th 2006 12:59PM]

I'd be very interested in seeing this tech integrated into desktop hard drives. THe notebook tech seems more geared towards battery life then anything else, but could we see a performance boost in desktop hard drives?

One thought could be these 400GB, 500GB, and 750GB drives that more then likely are used for multimedia storage (pictures, all kinds of video formats, and even srtaight DVD rips). Playing a movie clip from the NAND flash buffer as opposed to the spinning drive (on a SATA II controller) could result in performance increases. Althought the NAND flash buffer would need to be 1GB-2GB in size, and maybe even upgradable (a microSD slot?).

[Scabies @ May 24th 2006 1:04PM]

ATA, GO AWAY
:D

[jon @ May 24th 2006 1:06PM]

My only question is why only 128mb??? Why not just throw in 1 Gig? That way with 1 Gig of Ram storing Windows paging file and 1 gig of Flash HD memory...the Hard disk could be used very little at all. This will be great. Reduced usage of the Hard drive might just offset increased GPU usage with the new Aero interface of Vista.

[Brendan @ May 24th 2006 1:16PM]

Can any apple enthusiasts out there tell me which company apple recently changed some of its iPod chips too?? I just can't seem to remember (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Getting cosy with Samsung are we apple? I wonder why?? :P

[bob @ May 24th 2006 1:29PM]

"Or maybe it'll be another feature left oddly by the roadside by the boys from Cupertino coughA2DPcough" - yeah, unlike vista, the 'imaginary os that has just been delayed again till...'early 2007 lmao' enjoy next years od today, with an upgrade this side of christmas!

[Jason @ May 24th 2006 1:30PM]

If only there was some kind of Random Access Memory in computers that would do something similar for everyone...

[SjG @ May 24th 2006 1:57PM]

Duty Cycle?

I know that flash memory is getting better, but an awful lot of data goes back and forth through that hard drive interface. My memory (admittedly faulty, no pun intended) was that a given bit in a NAND Flash chip coul donly be rewritten a few million times. For digital camera "film" that's fine, but for a hard drive buffer?

Or has technology left my feeble remembrances in the dust?

[SpacePirate @ May 24th 2006 2:28PM]

It probably IS a 1GB chip in actuality, set to cycle through 128MB sectors to improve the drive's total lifespan. As for Apple using these, it's pretty doubtful, every Apple computer out there now uses SATA.

Though a 160GB flash-buffered drive would be nice. ;)

[Jordan @ May 24th 2006 2:28PM]

#1 - Honestly, people complaining about Engadget's grammar and/or spelling is a lot more annoying than their occasional errors.

How about you keep it to yourself, as the people who didn't notice it weren't bothered until they read your comment. You took the annoyance factor of the spelling errors from 50% of the readers being affected to 100%.

Now, everyone, please critique my spelling and grammar.

[Sean @ May 24th 2006 2:42PM]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I always thought the spinup cycle of CDs/DVDs and HDs were the main source of power consumption in these types of devices.

For anyone who is constantly saving/reading files (ie me as a graphic artist), I don't see the advantage since the buffer would always be emptied. The only people I see this helping are people running the Office type programs and ONLY when using these sorts as the pagefile/VM is always being accessed.

Does anyone know the maximum bandwidth of NAND memory chips?

Or just maybe Samsung is looking to sell more NAND memory.

I anxiously await some real world tests, or if anyone knows of any lemme know.

[Andy @ May 24th 2006 2:44PM]

What about HDD based mp3 players? An improved battery life there would be lovely.

[morcheeba @ May 24th 2006 4:27PM]

SjG - the flash memory would only be updated once for every drive power cycle, because once the drive is spinning, you might as well write it directly (the OS already caches it in RAM, so there would be virtually no speed gain). Surely, at that rate, the flash will last longer than the mechanics.

[rafael @ May 24th 2006 7:55PM]

ur telling me you can fit 2 GIGABYTES of data on a card teh size of a stamp (literally MINISD) and only put measly 128mb on this? its about time we had 300 gig harddrives out of pure flash anyway. get that write speed up and of course deal with the limited life on it hehe..

[... @ May 24th 2006 9:21PM]

I would have to agree on the 128mb limit... Seems really pointless, considering that if you are running vista you are gonna want at least 10x that in your system ram--which is far more useful to the computer since it is orders of magnitude faster than anything on a sata bus. You would be far better off just making a 128mb ram drive and do the write caching there.

Also, are you guys sure that this is nand? I really doubt that it will, as nand is quite slow (which is fine for mem sticks and mp3 players) but if you are going to use it in a write buffer... That is just plain stupid. That is what DRAM is for, as it can take (virtually) unlimited write cycles, and is really fast. I would bet that that is what they are using, which would also explain why it has such a small buffer. I think that the biggest (storage wise) DRAM chips currently available are 128mb, so in order to increase the capacity they would have to up the number of chips of the drive, which probably didn't fit on the board (or just couldn't be used efficiently). This would be an ideal case for DRAM since it is just a buffer, so you don't have to worry about the data loss on power off, you just copy it back to where it belongs on the hardware part.

I still don't see why vista doesn't just support shutting down the disk and write caching in the system ram... It would really help system performance (since you have a 5GB/s link to that 128 (or whatever it sets up) chunk of data...

Really the only time that this would be useful would be in hdd based media players... As you go it puts the next 100mb of the disk in the cache and spins down the drive for the next 2 hrs or until you decide to seek to a song on a different part of the disk. That would help much more than using it in a laptop.


I too am waiting for fully solid state drives, the only problem is cost. Hdd's are ~$.3/gb. NAND is about $30/gb, has a very limited number of write cycles, and is very slow (imagine having a computer that had a hdd as slow as a flash drive) Unless they striped the data across all of the chips it would be useless, and if they did it would still fail quickly due to the huge amount of write cycles created by an os. The ideal solution, DRAM, is about $80/gb, and requires the data to either be backed up on a separate static device (hdd, nand flash, whatever) or constantly be run from an external power source to refresh it (and doing that requires quite a bit of power). But the advantages would be awesome... Even if you don't stripe the data you had a 5000mb/s link to your hard drive XD Even with a battery big enough to last a days and support circuitry I bet we could fit 100gb worth in DRAM in a 3.5" drive... If you are willing to pay the $10k pricetag for the chips...

[Dantheman @ Jun 30th 2006 1:10AM]

To Jordan, the hybrid hard drives with flash, will do write caching as well. Stuff that gets sent to the Hardrive will probably first go to the cache instead of spinning up the platters if possible...

As for max speed I heard samsungs Flash memory they are putting on it will be at ~106MB/s == very fast write speed is something between 15-20MB/s. The article that has this information is somewhere in cyberspace..

[Dantheman @ Jun 30th 2006 3:48PM]

read=~106MB/s write=15-20MB/sec I heard.