HybridHdd
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Western Digital builds 5mm-thick hybrid hard drive, Ultrabook makers sign on early
Those 7mm-thick hard drives you've seen in some Ultrabooks are already looking a tad on the chunky side. Western Digital has started producing sample versions of a hybrid hard drive (you're not yet looking at it here) that measures just 5mm (0.2in) tall, even as it crams in both flash and a 500GB main disk. If you think the slimmer drive is just the ticket for a best-of-all-worlds laptop that's both fast and capacious, you're not alone: Acer and ASUS have mentioned their collaboration in the same breath, which may be a strong clue as to where future Aspires and Zenbooks are going. The remaining question is when they arrive. Sampling isn't the same as mass production, which could leave us with months to go before the 5mm drive lands in future extra-skinny PCs.
Seagate outs second-gen Momentus XT: a 750GB hybrid laptop drive for $189 (update: actually $245)
Seagate was quick to jump into the hybrid HDD/SSD fray last year, with the decently priced and capable Momentus XT. Now we have a successor with identical branding, but with the HDD upped to 742GB, NAND storage slightly increased to 8GB, plus a faster SATA III 6Gb/s interface. The 'flash-assisted drive' promises to cut boot-up and lag times compared to a standard laptop hard disk, by gradually learning which of your files are popular enough to deserve a spot in that solid state VIP lounge. We're looking at a price of $189 $245, including a five-year warranty, and availability from today. Read on the full PR. Update: The press release sent to us stated $189, but the one that's now live on Seagate's site (at the source link) says $245, so we're switching to that. Thanks to everyone who spotted this.
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid merges 100GB SSD with 1TB HDD for $499
We heard about OCZ's clever crossbreed a few months ago, but couldn't be sure about pricing for this premium model. Turns out, it's significantly less than we'd guessed: $499 for a 100GB SSD and 1TB HDD happily united on a single PCI Express card. Yup, that's still a heck of a lot more than the $300 or so it'd cost to pick up a SandForce-controlled 120GB solid state beauty along with a separate 1TB SATA 6GB/s hard drive. The comparison isn't entirely fair, though, because OCZ claims its combo boosts overall performance by caching both "hot" and "cold" data, which is automatically organized between the SSD and HDD, on a single card with up to 910MB/s bandwidth and 120,000 IOPS. Nevertheless, it'll take some real-world benchmarking to determine whether the promised speed gain is worth our wages. More details in the PR after the break.
Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard drive review
Earlier this year, Seagate promised to flip the 2.5-inch HDD industry upside-down, but it wouldn't do so by using an SSD in sheep's clothing. Rather, it'd be doling out a new breed of hard drive, one that actually has a pinch of pure, unadulterated NAND inside for picking up the pace in certain scenarios. The idea of a hybrid hard drive isn't totally new, but the Momentus XT is one of the first hybrid HDDs to actually make it out of the lab and into the hands of consumers. The most intriguing aspect of the drive is the price -- at around $130, it's just under half as pricey as Seagate's conventional 500GB Momentus 7200.4. That uptick in price isn't nothing, but it's still far less than what you'd pay for a 2.5-inch SSD with half the capacity. We've already shown you the benchmarks, so we figured we'd slap this bad boy in our main rig for a few weeks to see if we actually noticed any real-world performance increases to justify the cost. Head on past the break for our two pennies. %Gallery-99124%
Seagate pairs 7200RPM HDD with 4GB of NAND in 2.5-inch Momentus XT hybrid drive
Just as we surmised, Seagate is taking the wraps off its new hybrid drive, with OEM shipments of the Momentus XT starting today. Hailed as the fastest 2.5-inch laptop drive on the planet, this here device marries a 7200RPM hard drive (250/320/500GB) with 4GB of SLC NAND flash memory and 32MB of cache, and the company's Adaptive Memory technology allows it to store frequently used information on the latter for ultra-speedy access. It can boot up to 100 percent faster than a conventional 5400RPM hard drive, and thankfully for us all, it utilizes a standard 9.5mm-high form factor that the vast majority of laptops use. Seagate also affirms that the drive "operates independently of the operating system and the motherboard chipset," but we're going to hold tight until we see the first real benchmarks (it'll soon be an option in ASUS' ROG G73Jh gaming laptop) before getting all hyped up. In related news, the outfit also announced the world's highest capacity 7200RPM drive at 750GB, with the Momentus 750GB boasting SATA 3Gbps support, an NCQ interface, 16MB of cache and "silent acoustics." No price is mentioned, but you can bet a hefty premium will placed on something this capacious. The full presser, another image and a specs sheet awaits you beyond the break. Update: The reviews are already pouring in, and at just $155 for the 500 gigger, it's receiving a fair amount of praise.
Seagate's 'game-changing' storage tech coming to ASUS ROG G73Jh laptop
Well, well -- what's this? Wouldn't you like to know. What it is, fine people, is the "device that becomes you, so you become faster." Seriously, that's the teaser line that Seagate's feeding the press this fine morning, inviting us to join the company as it reveals the next "game-changing" device meant to boost system performance by a staggering 150 percent. Judging by the image above and the fact that ASUS' ROG G73Jh gaming laptop will be first to house it, we're guessing it's a breed of SSD this world has never seen. We're told that the mystery product will be 20 percent quicker than a 600GB 10,000rpm SATA drive, 80 percent faster than a conventional 7200rpm HDD and able to boot "within six seconds of an SSD drive." It'll also be able to "learn about its user to dynamically decrease disk time, boot time, and application load time," and if you're lucky, it may just cleanse that work coat of yours, whip up a nutritious breakfast and convert your clunker into a hovercraft. We'll be finding out a lot more come May 26th -- till then, try not to gnaw your nails past the cuticle. Update: Sounds like Seagate may finally be ready to launch that "pie in the sky" mutant hybrid SSD technology that we first caught wind of back in 2008. Dare we say, the Momentus XT Hybrid? Thanks, Sneakz and Khattab! [Thanks, Michael]
LG's 13.3-inch E300-AP75K laptop packs a 160GB hybrid HDD
LG's E300-AP75K isn't the first laptop this year from the company rocking a hybrid hard drive within, but it's just hard to gloss over a new machine with 160 gigabytes of HHD under the hood. Reportedly, this 13.3-incher sports a WXGA panel, a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 processor, 2GB of RAM, a DVD burner, 1.3-megapixel camera, HDMI output, WiFi and ATI's Radeon X1250 handling the graphics. The unit shouldn't weigh you down much at just 2.86-pounds (um, for real?), and it's supposedly ready to launch in Korea for around $1,700.
