X-bit labs

Hybrid Hard Drives – A Disappointment for Consumers, Say Hard Drive Makers.

Category: Storage

by Anton Shilov

[ 09/20/2007 | 11:35 PM ]

Even though the so-called hybrid hard disk drives (HHDs) have received quite a lot of hype, they could not deliver tangible performance improvements that consumers expected. As a consequence the demand towards is currently fairly low and some makers even do not think they need to add such products into lineup.

Hybrid hard disk drives feature additional flash cache of different capacity that can store certain continuously used data. Manufacturers promised that the hybrid hard drives would cut down power consumption, increase battery life, and, most importantly, speed-up boot-up time. However, the actual performance increases of HHDs is not crucial and customers are reluctant to pay extra for them, executives of hard disk drive makers reveald at Diskcon 2007 conference, reports Cnet News.com web-site.

“The initial versions haven’t delivered the performance consumers expected,” said Dr. Richard New, director of research for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

The problem might be correctable if drive makers put in more flash. Right now, hybrid drives have 256MB of memory, but if 4GB or so are installed, the flash could hold a lot more storage, which in turn would reduce power consumption and help boot-up time. However, that would raise prices, which may distract customers from the HHDs.

According to Fujitsu Computing Products of America claims that hybrid hard drives with small cache ensure boot-up time drop from 28 seconds with a standard drive to 21 seconds with a hybrid. However, the company believes that consumers are not going to pay for such a small advantage.