Laptop Vista Premium certification will require hybrid HDDs

Far from being a niche technology that just happens to fully thrive in Windows Vista, it turns out that those hybrid hard drives we've been following for some time will actually be required equipment for laptops wishing to sport the Vista Premium logo. TG Daily caught up with Microsoft's Windows Client Performance program manager Matt Ayres at TechEd 2006 to pin him down about recent updates to the Windows Logo Device Program Requirements, and sure enough, Ayres confirmed that the new wording does indeed mean that hybrid drives will be part-and-parcel of Premium-labeled mobile systems released after June 1, 2007. As you may or may not recall, these so-called ReadyDrive HDDs manufactured by Samsung, Seagate, and unnamed others offer up to 256MB of on-board flash memory for faster boot times and better battery life thanks to buffering that reduces the amount of necessary drive spinning.

[Thanks, Mack S.]

[Chris @ Jun 13th 2006 5:50PM]

All this new HW to run all of Vista's features!
I have one question:
Did Microsoft approach the OEMs or did the OEMs approach MS about this anti-consumer tactic to siphon more money from it's customers?

I'm sticking with Mac OS X, at least I know that Apple's new OS will use sllghly less system resources, opposed to MS' 4x as much.

[BklynKid @ Jun 13th 2006 5:57PM]

Either MS with high system requirements but choice in pricing, or Apple with overpriced hardware.

[E-Rock @ Jun 13th 2006 6:07PM]

You can run Vista on your laptop without these drives, but need it to have the marketing label of Premium ready.

Plus, why wouldn't you want your new laptop to have the latest technology? Users have been asking (bitching) for years that they want to bring their machine up faster. MS on the OS side and the OEM on the hardware side are working to make that happen.

[slyecho @ Jun 13th 2006 6:18PM]

Sounds like a good idea, 'cause right now some programs can take up to 20 minutes to launch in Vista Beta 2 on my machine.

[iyanic @ Jun 13th 2006 6:31PM]

Yeah make softwere slower so we can buy new hardware wright?? damn stupid money making thinking...
We should put i-ram "hdds" in our pc's than maybe windows will boot 8ms faster and than crash more often??
Put X86 platform in the junkyard and create somethig thats not win95 compatible...

[Ray @ Jun 13th 2006 6:58PM]

The more vista requires in new hardware the better. The shiney new laptop thats "vista ready" that I plan on buying will be blindingly fast when I install XP on it.

[spiritofseth @ Jun 13th 2006 6:58PM]

this is MS making a useful contribution to PC hardware developement, I hope this becomes standard on everything and leads to that solid state HDD I have been waiting for.

trust me premium runs on computers that are old right now, take mine as an example .
Athlon XP 2800+
MSI Nforce2 MB
1 GB 333 Ram
Nvidia 6600 256
200 GB
20 GB
80 GB
NVTV tuner

ultimate runs with full premium support and with insignifigant lag, and I have full use of the search feature, its faster than my powermac under tiger too.
the only problem I actually had was with media player 11 and its endless indexing. its probably because I need some SATA love.
My point is dont blow the system requirements out of proportion, my computer is at least 3 years old.

BETA

[Scruffy @ Jun 13th 2006 7:09PM]

I hope the companies realize that because of the massive read/write traffic of the flash memory, the hard drive is going to have a substantially lesser lifespan than most of its competitors, as the flash memory wasn't designed for this.

Or maybe I'm stupid and they took this into account.

[chuckle @ Jun 13th 2006 7:09PM]

Have you noticed that the closer Vista gets to launch and hence the more coverage, the more panicky posts by Mac owners - the exact same posts they claim the majority of PC owners make.

I'm really enjoying Vista. Just installed it on my laptop and it runs like a dream.

[iGotNoTime @ Jun 13th 2006 7:30PM]

Excellent theory and idea, a shame MS are the one's attempting first. If they do it right could be

[bob @ Jun 13th 2006 8:03PM]

"Either MS with high system requirements but choice in pricing, or Apple with overpriced hardware."
- you moron - are you still in the 80's? DUH, i dont know anything about the tech world so ill repeat something i heard somewhere jesus.

wierd that M$ do something like this then support ps2 plugs and not efi, i dont get that company

[bot @ Jun 13th 2006 8:03PM]

So it's basically a hard drive with a larger cache size. Why did it take so long for drive makers to think of/make this?

[cobalt @ Jun 13th 2006 8:06PM]

I think the issue has more to do with battery life. MS has mentioned hybrid drives in that context for notebook computers. I'm not looking forward to dealing with the multiple versions of Vista at all, especially the business vs. home vs. enterprise division. But I don't think this element of Vista is a big deal in comparison.

Why upgrade to Vista at all in the short term anyway. By the time the whole thing works out, maybe large capacity NAND flash drives will cost less than $2000.

[Dispraiser @ Jun 13th 2006 8:08PM]

I, for one, am very glad this change is bieng made. For the people without the new hardware, I'm sure vista will still work. This upgrade, though, will make using the computers much better for anyone who cares to upgrade. Writing critical files to it could be very nice. It's called progress, guys. I wonder what people had to say when computers moved from being disc operated to having Hard Drives in the first place?

I think if they engineered vista correctly, they could put the more permenant files on the flash portion (DDLs that are rarely ever updated) it would negate a lot of the problems holding back flash technology. The problem now is windows borrowing GBs of my HD (8 GBs in my case, AMAZING!) and constantly writing and rewriting over the area like it's RAM.

Also, just looking at the hybrid name, I'd like to suggest the idea that maybe it's redundant? Some critical files are loaded on there for fast loading, but ther eis also a copy on the HD, esentially making some kinda of Mega-Cache or something?

Dunno, but either way I'm excited to see steps being taken to get rid noisy, breakable HDs.

[BklynKid @ Jun 13th 2006 8:12PM]

I'm the moron, but you can't seem to spell or use proper grammar.

Oh how I love the internet.

[Alex @ Jun 13th 2006 8:25PM]

Can someone explain to me why this is the requirement for vista premium? Sure the current hdds aren't as fast and consumes more power, but why do you NEED hybrid drives for Vista premium?!

And... I would also like to know if 256MB is sufficient to store all the drivers and what not for booting up Vista and/or OSX.

[M E G A @ Jun 13th 2006 8:27PM]

Having read-up on everything I can regarding H-HDD (Hybrid-Hard Disk Drives) technology, this is definitely the way to go in the mobile space for years to come (at least until SS drives come WAY down in price). The price to value ratio is hitting a home run with me.

It's not so much Microsoft is pushing new hardware reqs to sell Vista, rather, trying to push the industry to up the performance of HDDs in general (anyone can see the HDD has been the bottleneck in PC performance for some time now)--which benefit us, the end user. What's to gain? Better performance, more power on the mobile platform, and improved reliability due to the fact the disk is spun-down even more. What's not to like? :o)

I'm not a MS junky, I'm a techie. And if you read up on the alternatives, you'll see the Hybrid is the very-much needed gap in technology we all need and is the safest in terms of data integrity.

Here's some useful links if you care to read up for yourself:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1901955,00.asp
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/9/5b97017b-e28a-4bae-ba48-174cf47d23cd/STO008_WH06.ppt

Kudos to Seagate & Samsung for jumping aboard the MS train to new heights in HDD technology!

[evo @ Jun 13th 2006 8:42PM]

Like M E G A said, what you're seeing here is Microsoft exerting gentle pressure on the industry to ultimately make things better for the user. By requiring a hybrid drive in order to get Vista Premium certification, they gently incent manufacturers to use higher-priced parts that otherwise might not be successful in an otherwise price-driven commodity market (the assumption being that consumers and name-brand manufacturers will opt for certified hardware over non-certified hardware).

Of course, there's a selfish reason here too. When the computer is slow, users invariably blame Microsoft. They really are the face of the entire computer industry as far as most users are concerned. It makes sense for them to improve user experience by exerting pressure beyond just what they control, and the result is better for everyone.

[Pinkerton @ Jun 13th 2006 8:55PM]

iyanic stated, "Yeah make softwere slower so we can buy new hardware right??"

Yup, that's what the software / hardware treadmill is all about :) I'll pass on Vista, but a nextgen HDD would be nice in my 1GHZ laptop if it's ATA100 compliant.

[Mike @ Jun 13th 2006 9:07PM]

While I agree that hybrid hard drives are eventually going to be the standard, I'm still apprehensive of vista for a lot of reasons.... the least of which is the system requirements. I remember hearing some time back that M$ will be including many different "drm friendly" features in vista. Now, I'm not a pirate, but I do have problems with the drm technology I've seen to date. We've got songs that will work on one device and one device only, sony had to recall cd's because the drm in them was crashing people's computers and apple's facing legal action overseas for their iTunes terms of use for the downloaded mp3's. The last thing I want in my life is more DRM. I can manage my own digital rights just fine thanks.

Aside from all that, it seems like vista needs twice the horsepower to get the same job as tiger or suse linux 10.1 done. I plan to migrate away from MS.

[Thom @ Jun 13th 2006 9:11PM]

Recent Apple convert here. Note that I'm not posting in any sort of panic of frenzy.

I still use XP at work and on the old machine at home, so I'm completely open to Windows improvements... But I've yet to see any incentive to upgrade to Vista. The few features I was looking forward to--WinFS, and heck, I forget the others--were among the first features axed when Longhorn became Vista. Sure, GPU-rendering of the GUI will be nice, but what's it matter when the GUI itself looks like it was designed by Fisher Price?

But anyhow, I digress. I kinda dig the idea of these "hybrid disk drives". I question the use of NAND as a buffer for all writes to the drive, but imagine the implications for start-ups and hibernation/safe-sleep modes could be terrific.

To my Mac brethren: I'm willing to bet the next-generation MacBook Pros will sport hybrid drives.

[Thom @ Jun 13th 2006 9:17PM]

Oh, I should be a bit more specific: Apple will use this technology, albeit not necessarily these exact Samsung/MS branded drives.

[grolff @ Jun 13th 2006 9:21PM]

Gentle pressure, that's funny.

[Rick @ Jun 13th 2006 9:22PM]

Why do more with less when we can do less with more?!

[elmer @ Jun 13th 2006 9:28PM]

Like Scruffy said, as far as I knew, most flash memory is limited to like 100,000 reliable writes. That's plenty for a camera memory card and saving the odd bit of data on a usb stick. Heck it's probably fine for mass data storage in general, but asking it to act as cache makes everything screwy. It's not RAM! This is another one of those plans to keep us buying electronics like they're a commodity.

[Biofusion @ Jun 13th 2006 10:37PM]

I just bought my first Mac several weeks ago and to be honest, I can mostly agree with MAC people. Having used Windows 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP SP1, XP SP2, and several versions of Linuxes, I have to admit that Apple makes the transition almost painless. Don't get me wrong, I am excited about Vista as well and will get a copy to test it out. I hear many good things about Vista, but the minimum requirement to run it is ridiculous. And I am not that positive about user interface either. XP is relatively stable after 1-2 years of continuous patching and debugging. I am expecting the same from this version of the Windows. I have just used mac for 3 weeks and I am almost as confident as I am with windows and believe me I have been using windows for a long long time. I have been working as a web developer and multimedia producer since 2002 and bought my first computer in 1997. I would suggest people who want to get Vista to wait for several months so it can be tested and fixed (or at least the problems addressed) then decide if you want a copy or not. It's cool that you are all hyped up because of the new interface and some nice features that Vista promises to deliver, but I am sure that behind all these promires there are also tons of bugs and stability issues in the first release.

On the other side, Apple will release the new generation of IntelMac with Core 2 Duo processor, which will run Vista without any trouble and at the same time the long expected OSX Leopard.

I understand that many of you complain about the Apple's pricing policy, but think about it. For the pric you pay, you get a very usable computer bundled with almost anything of software that you will need for everyday use. And Apple computer last for more than 3 years until you need to upgrade. One of my co-workers at The New York Times owned a G3 !!! for 7 years and he can still run OSX tiger and do 3d works on it. Of course he has updated the poor machine to maximum, but still 7 years and 3D.

Anyway, I used to be very sceptical about MAC because you have limited choice for software, the mac is more expensive, and etc. But now most of these problems are gone with the new IntelMac. And the good news is Mac is not that much more expensive than PC anymore. Some of you may not agree, but I bet you have never used osx and just speculate.

Hey, I hope I didn't offend anyone. I just want to give you my own impression on the matter being an user for almost 10 years.

Good luck with your choice.

[Biofusion @ Jun 13th 2006 11:04PM]

I just bought my first Mac several weeks ago and to be honest, I can mostly agree with MAC people. Having used Windows 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP SP1, XP SP2, and several versions of Linuxes, I have to admit that Apple makes the transition almost painless. Don't get me wrong, I am excited about Vista as well and will get a copy to test it out. I hear many good things about Vista, but the minimum requirement to run it is ridiculous. And I am not that positive about user interface either. XP is relatively stable after 1-2 years of continuous patching and debugging. I am expecting the same from this version of the Windows. I have just used mac for 3 weeks and I am almost as confident as I am with windows and believe me I have been using windows for a long long time. I have been working as a web developer and multimedia producer since 2002 and bought my first computer in 1997. I would suggest people who want to get Vista to wait for several months so it can be tested and fixed (or at least the problems addressed) then decide if you want a copy or not. It's cool that you are all hyped up because of the new interface and some nice features that Vista promises to deliver, but I am sure that behind all these promires there are also tons of bugs and stability issues in the first release.

On the other side, Apple will release the new generation of IntelMac with Core 2 Duo processor, which will run Vista without any trouble and at the same time the long expected OSX Leopard.

I understand that many of you complain about the Apple's pricing policy, but think about it. For the pric you pay, you get a very usable computer bundled with almost anything of software that you will need for everyday use. And Apple computer last for more than 3 years until you need to upgrade. One of my co-workers at The New York Times owned a G3 !!! for 7 years and he can still run OSX tiger and do 3d works on it. Of course he has updated the poor machine to maximum, but still 7 years and 3D.

Anyway, I used to be very sceptical about MAC because you have limited choice for software, the mac is more expensive, and etc. But now most of these problems are gone with the new IntelMac. And the good news is Mac is not that much more expensive than PC anymore. Some of you may not agree, but I bet you have never used osx and just speculate.

Hey, I hope I didn't offend anyone. I just want to give you my own impression on the matter being an user for almost 10 years.

Good luck with your choice.

[bot @ Jun 13th 2006 11:19PM]

Why are they using flash memory? It has limited number of writes, and even the fastest kind of it is slow in the hard drive world.

Why couldn't they use the same type of RAM we use for system memory? Even the slowest of DDR is way faster than any hard drive, and cheap. Who cares if it's volatile, I doubt Vista's gonna be advanced enough to store critical files on the hybrid drive's flash to use over and over, especially during booting. It seems to me it's just a glorified chunk of cache. More cache is nice, yes, but 256MB of flash RAM doesn't seem very helpful, except maybe on MP3 players.

It would -very- cool to have a player that used a hybrid drive with advanced enough firmware to use the drive efficiently. For example, you load a playlist and it loads as much of the playlist into the flash part of the drive as possible and the mechanical part spins down. When there's a song or two left in the cache the drive spins up to add more files, etc.

[tank @ Jun 13th 2006 11:31PM]

Thom, I'm one of your Mac using brethren and I hope to God hybrid drives are supported by Apple very soon. I'm not fond of Microsoft's tactics with this one but hopefully hybrid drives will someday morph into all flash storage. This is just a stepping stone to better computing.

Cheers.

[Wry Cooter @ Jun 14th 2006 2:13AM]

Would this keep Vista from loading on currently available MacBooks? Either because of the form factor of the drives (not being able to fit in MacBooks), or some other means of using that hard disk flash for firmware rights management?

[Reg @ Jun 14th 2006 3:14AM]

> "Would this keep Vista from loading on currently available MacBooks?"

No, because you can do it right now.

The www.osx86project.org dual-boot forum has tips, and there is even a Microsoft Developer Evangelist running Vista on his new MacBook:

http://blogs.msdn.com/hans_vb/archive/2006/06/02/614799.aspx

[Ayrkain @ Jun 14th 2006 4:35AM]

According to this article, using Flash management software, M-Systems expects something like 5 million write/erase cycles, thereby making solid state drives much more feasible.

[Racekarl @ Jun 14th 2006 9:03AM]

There is a *lot* of ill-informed conjecture floating around here...

First, these hybrid HDDs use the flash memory as more than just a cache. The idea is that they can store data in a non-volitile manner so it's available on as soon as the drive powers back up. This would not be possible using the type of memory used as RAM since that requires power to maintain data.

Second, the requirement is tied to marketing dollars, not the ability of Vista to run or not. This is *not* about MSFT conspiring with OEMs to require customers to buy new hardware, it's about MSFT gilding the lilly to make sure customers know they had a hand in this cool new feature. If an OEM complies with the requirements for Vista Premium labeling, they get a marketing allowance ($$) from MSFT. If they don't, they get no loot, but Vista will still run.

Finally, this will likely require the OS working closely with the HDD, so forget about getting these benefits under XP, at least for the time being.

[The Jeremy @ Jun 14th 2006 3:56PM]

My only question has to do with the speed Apple begins deploying these hybrid drives into the existing Mac lines.

I would think Apple would want to make as many of their machines with the hybrid drives as possible if only to keep BootCamp current by maintaining the ability to load Vista once the final version is released.

Then again, Apple prior to the Intel switch was not exactly pressed for keeping-up feature-for-feature with the rest of the PC industry. They certainly dragged feet in terms of shipping burners that were dual layer compatible...not that there was any blank media available at the time, but I digress.

[Fim Jorbes @ Dec 8th 2006 8:02PM]

Wait till you see all the USB drive suppliers launch and try to convince you that their 2GB DDR flash drives are needed for "optimum performance" of Windows Vista applications. I've been pitched this idea twice in tghe last month as a lead-up tyo the products launches at CES in January.
Vista wants and needs memory and I'm opdenly wondering how long it will take portable makers to launch machines with two more open memory slots. Anyone for 8GB noteboks?

Fim Jorbes

[purezerg @ Jun 7th 2007 11:29PM]

yap. hybrid HDD are meant for vista as only vista only as the 'readydrive' technology. mac users wouldn't be able to use it unless leopard uses the similiar approach. having hybrid HDD means the laptop has just increase it's battery lifespan for as much as 20%.

i've been waiting for this product to hit the market for a very very long time. like many have said. quit announcing new product release and start saying available at your nearest store.

side note, PC last as long as mac, i have got a dual CPU AMD(2 phyiscal CPU)that i build since 1998, and it's still running. (9 years now) havent rebooted it since 2004. oddly it's running W2k adv svr. and heck the SCSI drives havent failed yet.