Samsung Launches Hybrid Drives

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:13 am

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38053

More to follow, they have only just started shipping, so they might be on their way to reviewers.

The description of 180GB is a mistake on the Inquirere webpage it is 160GB.

This tech is very promising, but will only be brilliant when the quantity of flash increases a lot, 256MB is not enough.

Andy

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 7:31 am

Could this be the first laptop to hit the shelves with a hybrid drive.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38088
http://onlineelectronics.secure-shoppin ... ail_en.jsp

Andy

Richard9999 · Post by **Richard9999** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 3:04 am

I wonder if this technology will also be usefull for non-Vista users.
MS states that readydrive will be Vista-only.

Doesn't the application of usb-flashdrives provide more benefits then hybrid HDDs for temperal storage?

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 3:26 am

I wonder if this technology will also be usefull for non-Vista users.
MS states that readydrive will be Vista-only.

I dont really know, I havent looked into that at all.

Doesn't the application of usb-flashdrives provide more benefits then hybrid HDDs for temperal storage?

USB Flash Drives are only good to a certain point, they run into a performance AND an overhead barrier.

The idea ao having the Flash built into the HDD is fantastic.

You only have one device, the drive sorts out everything for you. The flash built into the drive is far quicker than the performance that USB can manage (a realistic 30MB/s) and has far lower CPU usage than USB, the Flash is also designed to have a much longer life as its designed for a huge amount of reads/writes accross a 5-year life expectancy (3-year warranty).

The only other way of implementing such a thing would be a seperate SATA drive using the same grade/performance Flash. This would have a much higher cost, as it involves another PCB and another controller so the overall cost would be much higher. I have no doubt that the devices will come to market AND will have a much larger amount of Flash - they will be an important development for 2007 and Vista, and will aid the future development of larger amounts of Flash in HDD's in the future.

I also understand that Intel has plans to incorporate Flash directly onto motherboards with a controller attached via SATA straight to the southbridge/SATA controller, or otherwise attach the Flash to the motherboard and integrate the controller into a future southbridge.

Andy

J. Sparrow · Post by **J. Sparrow** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 6:53 am

I wonder whether wear levelling techniques and other write strategies can really make a hybrid disk last as long as a tradional HDD.

Maybe they're just paving the road for widespread PRAM usage ?

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:45 pm

I wonder whether wear levelling techniques and other write strategies can really make a hybrid disk last as long as a tradional HDD.

Strictly speaking SSD devices should (now 2007) have much higher reliability than traditional mechanical HDD's, whether this is the case or not we wont really know for 12 months+ until we find out any kind of failure rate for SSD/Hybrid/HDD drives. Most SS devices are far more reliable than they were 3 years ago, the 10,000 write example is a nonsense now, I would expect it to be in the 1-10million range.

Maybe they're just paving the road for widespread PRAM usage

Maybe, but that tech has never taken off, and it might not either as the advances and gains that flash has made over the years has already compensated for all of PRAM's technology superiority, and already has the benefit that its a huge industry. PRAM is essentially a dead technology right now, and unless there is a major advance in PRAM at the same time there is some kind of problem with Flash, PRAM will never exist on a big scale.

I am looking forward to next year when we can expect a 1TB 3.5" SATA HDD with 2GB of Flash for Â£100

Andy

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 12:23 am

J. Sparrow wrote:Maybe they're just paving the road for widespread PRAM usage ?

Why do I have visions of thousands of maniacal babies racing down the information highway?

J. Sparrow · Post by **J. Sparrow** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 12:53 pm

andyb wrote:PRAM is essentially a dead technology right now, and unless there is a major advance in PRAM at the same time there is some kind of problem with Flash, PRAM will never exist on a big scale.

I've read somewhere Intel is readying mass production of PRAM within 2007. Quick googling and I found this one.

Well, in the meantime it's just vaporware, but who knows?

Devonavar wrote:Why do I have visions of thousands of maniacal babies racing down the information highway?

Too subtle for me, you have to put it more bluntily if you want me to understand...

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 2:11 pm

I am looking forward to next year when we can expect a 1TB 3.5" SATA HDD with 2GB of Flash for Â£100

but will it be quieter than current 3.5"? More capacity is all very well, but to give an example my hard drive is only 40GB and it's not even full. I would like to see as much progress being made on noise as on capacity, but I know it's foolish. The GB race is the MHz race for hard drives.

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:45 pm

jaganath wrote:
I am looking forward to next year when we can expect a 1TB 3.5" SATA HDD with 2GB of Flash for Â£100
but will it be quieter than current 3.5"? More capacity is all very well, but to give an example my hard drive is only 40GB and it's not even full.

There will always be those willing to sacrifice quietness for hard drive size, but I think the biggest challenge these hybrid drives will face is that the real McCoy (full flash drives of increasingly reasonable capacity) are being released around the same time. They promise to eliminate all the woes of moving parts and aren't restricted to Vista.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:26 am

J. Sparrow wrote:
Devonavar wrote:Why do I have visions of thousands of maniacal babies racing down the information highway?
Too subtle for me, you have to put it more bluntily if you want me to understand...

"paving the road" = the information highway
"PRAM" = something you carry a baby in

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 2:57 am

I have just read some more info on Intel's foray into NAND flash drives.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6434

Ther is one big problem, they arent anything like as fast as as the Flash thats being put into Hybrid drives, but the capacity is far larger.

but will it be quieter than current 3.5"? More capacity is all very well, but to give an example my hard drive is only 40GB and it's not even full. I would like to see as much progress being made on noise as on capacity, but I know it's foolish. The GB race is the MHz race for hard drives.

I would think so, and its mostly because of the Flash, Flash is vastly more expensive per MB/GB than HDD's traditional platters and it will be for years to come. My 1TB/2GB drive is an estimation for 12-months from now, although I would love to see a super quiet 2.5" drive with 400GB platter storage and 8GB of Flash, the drive would spend most of its time not spinning and would be far quieter overall.

Platters will rule the roost for mass storage for years to come, but Flash will have a greater market share in the future, and will eventualy dominate the small capacity drive market in a few years, but for now we have a fraction of a drives overall capacity as Flash and 99.9% of the data on platters - the is the start of Flash drives/storage becoming mainstream and it all adds up to a quieter, lower power, cooler PC.

Andy

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 8:52 pm

A lot of the HDD's activity is read-only,dealing with the OS,Apps,and this stuff can be handled by the flash part. The concept works if the flash is doing the frequent reads and no large writes. Most of the OS is read only,as is the core of most apps. If I DL a 600 mb concert in FLAC,and scan up some jpegs--that's stuff best suited to the "mass" rotating discs. There's a lot of small writes,under 1 mb,and the Flash can handle that.

Vista will have the ability to boot from USB,Flash,so it's easy to adapt,but I expect the next gen drives to be transparent to W2k,XP,to look like a regular SATA.

fresh · Post by **fresh** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 8:57 am

Correct me if I'm wrong, but reading through articles I noticed that one of the problems that NAND flash drive is presenting is its slow read time. I think, almost guessing due to too much data stored in brain recently

that it's around 30MB/s. Of course it has no latency times for searching, but still its pretty slow for large files. What I'm trying to say is, that integrated flash memory on discs may proove effective in small chunks, but if one would have lets say 2GB of flash on HDD, system could read data of full 2 gigs slower from FLASHY than from a platter drive.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 8:50 am

Correct me if I'm wrong...

OK

The reason why those devices top out at 30MB is thats all USB 2 can do, likewise it wouldnt be fair to test a brand new PATA HDD using an ATA-2 Interface that maxxes out at 16.6MB/s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_T ... Attachment

The problem is not the Flash, its the interface, the Cache on current HDD's ofter tops 100MB/s the Flash could hit really high speeds as its using a very fast SATA interface, so the overall speed will be down to the Flash performance itself.

Andy

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 11:42 am

yes but realise that its only now, and only the fastest flash, that is starting to be limited by (ie exceed the sustainable speeds of) the USB interface.
Sandisk's extreme IV CF card for example is 40MB/s, and, afaik, the fastest u can buy. Theres not going to be a sharp jump in flash speeds by putting them through a sata interface.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:39 pm

Sandisk's extreme IV CF card for example is 40MB/s, and, afaik, the fastest u can buy. Theres not going to be a sharp jump in flash speeds by putting them through a sata interface.

Oh yes there is

Its mostly down to the controller, each individual "fast" Flash chip is getting a good performance on its own, but if your controller is not a $2 controller, its an $8 controller, and can run 4 Flash chips in parrallel

This is essentially the "Hybrid" concept, add good "fast" Flash to a HDD with a new controller chip that can read/write to several Flash chips simultaneously what do you get, $8 worth of controller for an extra $2 cost, wher you have to make a sacrafice is the quantity of Flash chips as a 2.5" HDD's circuit board is half the size of a 3.5" circuit board.

Where things will get interesting for the SPCR crowd is when Hybrid drives start hitting the 3.5" market, they have twice as much circuitboard space to play with.

Andy

fresh · Post by **fresh** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:40 pm

Nice point there Andy. I'm glad you prooved me wrong, so now we can all win

. Can't wait too see those SSD to hit bigger capacities, so that smaller get cheaper.

cloneman · Post by **cloneman** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:21 pm

Taking HD's to solid state or hybrid is the final step in making non-DUI silencing inexpensive & easy.

The question remains: when will mnfr's start taking coil whine seriously, in terms of guaranteeing real zero DB.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 7:57 am

Now shipping.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39141

Here is a pic and spec.

http://pcjoint.com/samsung-r55-hybrid-h ... -launched/

Andy

cloneman · Post by **cloneman** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 5:45 pm

nice - but where can we get the drives alone (without the notebook?)

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 5:06 am

Like most brand new products they will filter out slowly, Samsung are probably keeping the first batch or 2 for selling to OEM's to be put into laptops, and not for re-sale. This doesnt mean that drives wont fall into reviewers hands before they are actually available to buy.

They could be weeks before they are available to buy on their own - their manufacturing will be very slow to start with as this is not a new drive, this is a new market segment. Hopefully the drives wont be too expensive and Samsung can ramp the production up in a big way.

Andy

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 11:13 am

Ready-Boost USB thumb drives are Vista only...act more like a fast access swap file.

There ARE small,solid state IDE drives now-and they act like a regular IDE,which is not limited to Vista.

While in the Hybrids-It appears Samsung intends to have things pretty seamless,optimized and have the Flash part speed things up while reducing the seeks.

skj · Post by **skj** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 6:05 pm

They're finally available at Newegg!

80GB HM08HHI

160GB HM16HJI

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 9:16 pm

SPCR should do a head to head analysis. Get a samsun 5400 sata notebook drive, one with the 256mb nand, and an older one without. Let us know what the REAL benefit from the extra memory.

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 9:22 pm

The price penalty seems to be about $50 (or 50%/100% depending on whether it's the 80 or 160GB) so it's somewhat borderline in value terms. I agree a comparative test would be great, for that matter throw in an SSD to the mix!

Capsaicin · Post by **Capsaicin** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:07 am

Is there any benefit with these without Vista? Last I heard there wasn't.