Hybrid Hard Drives Explained

We are all familiar with the conventional hard drive. It has several magnetic platters that spin when reading or writing data to the hard drive. There is a motor in the hard drive that spins the platters and this takes energy, in a laptop, it can reduce battery life. Several companies have introduced the hybrid hard drive.

What are some of the advantages of a hybrid hard drive? In a conventional hard drive, information is stored in RAM (Random Access Memory) while waiting to read from or write to the hard drive. If there is a power loss, the information stored in RAM is also lost. The hybrid hard drive uses flash memory. There is no motor involved with flash memory so there is less power consumption. Flash memory gives instant access to commonly used programs where it stores information frequently needed. It allows the computer to boot up more rapidly.

There are different sizes of flash memory chips. This is especially important in a laptop. With the hybrid hard drive not needing to spin up to read and write to the disc, battery life can be increased by 8 to 20% resulting in approximately 36 more minutes of battery life according to claims of the manufacturers.

One of the concepts of the hybrid hard drive is that the OEM can pin the most frequently used application data on the non-volatile cache and turn it into a temporary read/write buffer and application cache. There is quicker access to the applications and the drive spindle motor can stop during idle times, which will reduce energy consumption. By utilizing the non-volatile cache instead of immediately writing to the hard drive, the spindle motors can stop which in turn reduces power consumption and prevents the drive from heating up. One problem with OEM pinning is that the average user does not know which applications he will use more often.

One of the drawbacks of a hybrid hard drive is that you must use Windows Vista. ReadyDrive is a feature that a hybrid hard drive needs to be able to work and is only available in Windows Vista. ReadyDrive extends caching over a non-volatile Flash/cache memory. It stores core Vista files and frequently used application data on the Flash memory, which speeds up boot time and application launch time that is OEM pinned.

Several sites have tested the hybrid hard drive against the ATA hard drives and have found that the expected test results given with the introduction of the hybrid hard drive is not necessarily true. Although the Windows Vista operating system does indeed boot faster, 24 seconds compared to 32 seconds with the ATA hard drive, the 10% improvement in applications does not ring true. The actual figure is more like 3%.

Many of these test sites for noticeable improvements in performance recommend waiting for the Flash-only hard drive. Adjusting power-saving options on your laptop will make just as much improvement as the hybrid hard drive now. Getting the newest device on the market is not always the answer. Waiting for the right test results is. By then the price has also come down.