Hybrid solid state drive – The SSD Guy Blog

Toshiba Announces its Hybrid Drive

Now that we have seen announcements of hybrid drives from Western Digital and Seagate, Toshiba arrives with a formal announcement of the product that was on display at last month’s Flash Memory Summit. Two 2.5″ Toshiba hybrid drives are starting to sample at 750GB and 1TB capacities. Both have 8GB NAND caches, 6Gb/s SATA 3 interfaces, and 5,400RPM spindle speeds. They are both built using 32nm SLC NAND, Toshiba’s “generation before last” technology, preceding the 24nm and 19nm nodes shipping in high volume today.

More importantly, both are 9.5mm in height, a thickness that renders them difficult to incorporate into the 18mm maximum thickness of the smaller Ultrabooks – a notebook form factor that Intel is heavily promoting.

How is this whole market Continue reading “Toshiba Announces its Hybrid Drive”

Western Digital CEO: Hybrid Drives “Strategic”

During Western Digital’s April 26 earnings call (as transcribed by Seeking Alpha) CEO John Coyne disclosed that Western Digital has ongoing development efforts in hybrid HDDs: “In addition, we are continuing investments in strategic growth areas such as SSD, hybrid drives and the digital home.”

It’s encouraging to see a second entrant into this market.

After a false start that was synchronized with the ill-fated launch of Microsoft’s Vista operating system, hybrid HDDs have been a technology that is rarely ever mentioned. So far the hybrid HDD has been the sole domain of Seagate Technology with Continue reading “Western Digital CEO: Hybrid Drives “Strategic””

New Seagate Hybrid Drives: 2x the Flash, 2x the I/O Speed

Seagate has just announced an upgrade to the company’s Momentus XT hybrid HDD family. Seagate announced in August that the company had already shipped over one million units of its first generation Momentus XT since its May 2010 introduction.

For those unaware of what a hybrid HDD is, the short answer is that it’s a way to get HDD capacities and SSD speeds at a price marginally higher than that of an HDD. Continue reading “New Seagate Hybrid Drives: 2x the Flash, 2x the I/O Speed”

Seagate’s Barracuda to Add Hybrids

On Tuesday, November 1, Seagate announced improvements to its flagship Barracuda line of 3.5″ HDDs for the desktop.

The 5,900 RPM Barracuda Green will be discontinued in February
The 7,200 RPM Barracuda XT will be re-named the Barracuda (without the XT designation, which indicates a “top of the line” speed)
A new Barracuda XT line will be introduced at a later date and it will incorporate the hybrid design Seagate pioneered in the popular Momentus XT.

Capacities will range from 250GB-3TB. Continue reading “Seagate’s Barracuda to Add Hybrids”