Hybrid hard drives use standard hard drive technology but complement it with a chunk of flash memory bolted on as a cache. This makes drive access faster, more reliable and more power efficient. However, the roll-out of this technology has been slow, since flash memory is still relatively expensive.
Windows Vista is designed to play nicely with these drives and can even use USB memory keys as performance enhancing dongles. But by adding standard DDR RAM to a hard drive, DTS hopes to hit on the right mixture of price and performance – cheaper than solid state hybrids, but performing just as well.
Hybrid Hard Drives Could Feature 1GB DDR Memory
Hybrid hard disks have been a hot topic over the last year or so, and a company called DTS plans to release a drive that could have up to 1GB of DDR memory on-board. It is a 2.5″ drive, so current capacities are limited to 160GB.
