Hi there,

Was reading about SSD's last night and found some info regarding Hybrid-Hard Drives.

Why haven't these taken off better?

From what I could tell (& I could be verrry wrong) it's a HDD with something LIKE a small SSD or flash based drive added into it.

That would allow windows to boot off the mechanical HDD then load all the programs your going to use & main windows files (Windows Ready Drive) into the small SSD/flash based drive so the HDD can spin down (save power) and surely response times would be a lot quicker.

Perhaps I don't know enough on it but even if the read/write times wern't faster than a standard mechanical HDD the access time would be instant so the PC would 'feel more responsive' surely even if it would be slower reading and writing massive files to it... which you wouldn't do, you would spin up the mechanical HDD to read & write massive files...

Could a 3.5 7200RPM drive not be put into a 5.25 box that contains a flash based drive that is 'around' 8-16gb that is around the same speed as the HDD? Like I said surely if the response time is quicker along with access times and even if the read/write speeds take a hit it would be quicker.

This seems to make sense when you think of Ready Boost having the page file on a flash memory drive. Althought it doesn't speed up on the first load, after that it helps the PC (PC's with lower RAM benifiting more) feel like it is running quicker as the files are loaded off the Memory stick Page File instead of the HDD which would have to seek etc...

I guess if the above is too big then a 2.5 drive into a 3.5 box with the flash based drive. This idea in would work the best in laptops so eventually getting down to putting it inside a 2.5 drive.

Just looking for someone to say 'No, you have it all wrong' or 'Yes but it doesn't offer a decent speed/response time increase / Not fiancaily viable'

Sorry for going a rant but just wondering really...

Cheers, Doug.

OCUK do stock a range of Seagate 2.5" hybrids but they're based on 5400rpm drives so while the access time for the flash portion (which is only 256Mb) will be decent the rest of the data is going to come off slowly. Given that they're the same price as the equivalent sized 7200rpm part I don't see there being much benefit.

The flash portion needs to be several Gb and attached to a decent speed physical drive for them to be worth using over a normal HDD.

Taken me forever to come back this!

I did not know that OCuk did H-HDD's.

What I don't get is there are new 64GB SSD coming out. Why can't they just make a 4-8GB version and couple it with a 250GB HDD? Surely it would be quicker than a Raptor & if it is then I would happily pay £200 for it!

If you work on that a 32GB SSD costs £320 so a 16GB should cost around £160 and a 8GB should cost £80. Say £100 for SSD & £70 for the HDD and an enclosure to put it all in. £50 more than the 150gb Raptor & surely would be quicker.

Also, if it was a SSD then all the data in it would be saved so in the event of a power outage data in the SSD could be saved. This also means that instead of putting Vista into 'Sleep' & keeping everything in RAM (which if there is a power cut will load like Hibernation) it could load off the SSD everytime which would be a lot quicker. This could even mean that if everything you wanted was already on the SSD then the HDD wouldn't even need to spin up.

With this Vista-Ready-Drive thing it should load everything & anything you need into the 4-8GB SSD and then the HDD can spin down etc. From what I have read about the Vista-Ready-Drive it will even load programs you use often into the SSD & if you use COD4 at 6pm every day it will load it into the SSD at around 5:30pm so it is already in there and will load ni-on instantly.

I mean 4GB of RAM is ~£65 so why can't they make slower stuff (but still faster than a mechanical HDD) and couple it with the HDD. I guess the current FLASH memory we have is to slow to replace a mechanical HDD so not as easy as just adding one of them & RAM is too fast/expensive/volitile but there must be a middle ground... Current SSD tech?

I mean would the memory even need to be non-volitile? If it wasn't then the above would not be possible but is volitile memory cheaper than non-volitile? Isn't the current memory/cache on a HDD volitile?

If the maximum rate of Sata2 is 300MB's then it would only need to be that fast but that is still a hell of a lot faster than current HDD's.

I know that massive file transfers would still be done to the HDD and it would need to load most things off the HDD first but once it's all on the SSD everything would FLY along.

Im going to guess that none of what I have said is do-able as I guess it would already be here but it just seems silly that no-one seems to have tried properly. (or not that I can see) I mean a SSD atm is stupidly expensive with not a lot of space but very fast, what i'm thinking is linking current tech with 'future' tech so there's a stepping stone.

Long ass post again so sorry about that but i'm so confused