Hard disk makers form Hybrid Storage Alliance

With the format wars going on in one part of the tech world, it is good to know that some companies can still see the benefit of coming together. Putting aside their competitive differences, hard disk makers Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba, and Samsung, have joined forces to form the Hybrid Storage Alliance, a group advocating -- you guessed it -- the use of hybrid drives. As you may or may not remember, these new storage devices combine the capacity of conventional platter drives with the speed of flash memory. Put that together with Microsoft's Windows ReadyDrive, and now you have longer battery life and faster boot-up times. While we appreciate the push the "Alliance" is making for the adoption of anything that makes laptop usage more enjoyable, we would rather see them create a group with SanDisk and push SSD prices down even more. Plus, where's Western Digital up in this piece?

[MearWolf @ Jan 7th 2007 4:29PM]

Cool, strength in numbers

[Giltronic @ Jan 7th 2007 4:54PM]

hybrid drives are going to be fricken sweet. when are we going to see these in consumer products? i don't know what the hold up is.

[joe @ Jan 7th 2007 5:51PM]

Are you people dumb, do you really think all these hyper competitive companies would get together to help you out? Strength in numbers, haha, I see two things in the future, Price fixing and may be seagate and toshiba trying to stop the onslaught of full solid state hard drives, because unlike the present hardrives we have now, SSDs should be much better in speed,reliability, and just about everything else!! No more buying new hard drives every 2yrs, cause the old one died!!

[CcntMnky @ Jan 7th 2007 6:53PM]

Why would hard drive companies want to help the progress of Flash-based storage again?

[CcntMnky @ Jan 7th 2007 9:10PM]

Response to "joe":

If you know anything about the hard drive industry, you know they operate on razor-thin margins, and price fixing is totally out of the question. As for SSD, better in every way? 32GB for $600 vs. 1TB for $400? Think about that.

[Matt @ Jan 8th 2007 2:06AM]

I like how the word "HYBRID" is becoming synonymous with half-measures that really don't solve problems.

Hybrid : Hydrogen :: Hybrid : MRAM

People need to get behind the ideas that will really change the world, not the ones that are easy.

[Lokheed @ Jan 8th 2007 8:17AM]

Western Digital is a the Matrox of hard drives. They go their own way, they lag behind, and they make pretty poor decisions about the future.

Far from being pioneers, they are certainly that strange kid in the cafeteria that sits alone and writes some really nice essays in English, but no one really hangs out with him...

[ConceptVBS @ Jan 8th 2007 10:03AM]

Kinda ironic that Samsung made this "alliance". They are the ones who first started making SSD's on the market, no?

[eshaq786 @ Jan 8th 2007 12:18PM]

Western Digital isn't on the list because they are now owned by Seagate therefore Western Digital are a part of the alliance simply because they are owned by Seagate.

[SOCOMRAIDER @ Jan 7th 2007 8:57PM]

Seagate did not buy or merge with Western Digital. Seagate bought Maxtor, a different company. Now Seagate's plan is comprised of Maxtor taking the low-end market, with Seagate taking a higher road. This is why they increased their warranty to five years.

Western Digital is still its own company.

[Remedy @ Jan 8th 2007 1:18PM]

Where did you get this information from? Because, according to Seagate investor relations, the only company in the last 12 months to be purchased was Maxtor. According to Western Digitals Investor relations page, They (WDC) have not been purchased nor have they been merged with Seagate Global Storage at all.

You might want to provide links to reference your statements.