Samsung Starts Shipping 'World's First Hybrid Disk Drive'

World leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., on Wednesday announced that it has started shipping its much-awaited hybrid flash/hard drive to the commercial marketplace, providing computer and other equipment makers with a option to save power consumption and cut boot time.

The MH80 Series hybrid hard drive, which according to the company is the "world's first hybrid hard drive" that mix conventional magnetic storage with flash memory, will be available in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities.

The 2.5-inch hybrid hard drive that features up to 160 GB in hard disk technology combined with as much as 256 MB of flash memory incorporates a standard hard disk drive with solid state OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft's ReadyDrive software, under which the flash memory acts as a temporary random access memory enabling the number of disk accesses to be cut.

With such a combination, the drive offers faster boot and resume times, increased battery life and higher reliability and faster read/write access compared to traditional magnetic media technology. The drive consumes 70% to 90% less power than traditional rotating storage drives, the Seoul, Korea based Samsung said.

Samsung's ReadyBoot technology enables MH80 drive offer up to a 50 percent reduction in boot and resume times from traditional magnetic media technology and extends the battery life by 30 minutes before a recharge is needed.

"As a leader in both hard drive and flash memory technologies, Samsung brings to market a unique hybrid hard drive that is sure to revolutionize the notebook computing experience," said Albert Kim, national sales manager, Storage Systems for Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. "The MH80 hybrid hard drive provides the ideal solution for two major issues that notebook PC users continually face: faster boot and resume performance and extended battery life."

Moreover, the drive is much less susceptible to shock damage, resulting in less data loss and fewer needed repairs, and operates at a lower temperature than a regular hard drive, reducing the likelihood of damage and hard drive failure.

But, as the software support ReadyDrive that exists in Windows Vista only so PCs running on any other operating systems would not be able to take advantage of this technology.

At present shipping to only selected OEM customers, the MH80 hybrid hard drive, optimized to work in conjunction with Windows Vista capable notebook PCs, will soon be available in retail and commercial outlets, company’s spokesperson said.

World’s largest software company, Microsoft began working with drive manufacturers a few years ago when its Vista operating system was called Longhorn. Samsung has worked with Microsoft since 2003 to develop the hybrid drive to save power consumption and slash boot time for the Redmond company's new operating system.