Sekoyen’s

Samsung unveiled what it claims to be the first commercial prototype of a hybrid hard disk (HHD). Samsung will test the device with customers in the next quarter, and intends to ship the HHD in large quantities by January in conjunction with the Windows Vista rollout.

Hybrid Hard Disk (HHD) is said to be the next-generation drive for notebooks and PCs that integrates Nand Flash memory with modern hard disk.

What is the different between HHD and today’s hard disk?

Flash memory is a form of non-volatile memory that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. Flash memory is usually used in digital audio players, digital cameras, mobile phones and USB flash drives, which are used for general data storage. 

Today’s hard disk need to rotates it’s platters constantly to store the data, while the HHD using a large buffer for primary data storage, the platters of the hard drive are at rest almost all of the time.

The hybrid drive’s platters will spin up in only two situations:

1. When the buffer begins to near its capacity, the platters of the hard drive will spin up, and all of the data in the buffer will be cleared onto the hard drive, where upon the platters will again return to an off state, and the cache will be empty for use again.

2. The second instance is when the user must access a new file from the hard drive, that is not already stored in the buffer. In this case, the platters must spin up to access the file and place it onto the buffer, where upon the platters will once against return to an off state.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2006 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.