Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Storage
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Samsung and Microsoft to 'flash' hard drives

The 'Hybrid Hard Drive' is aimed at laptops running Longhorn

April 25, 2005 12:00 PM ET

IDG News Service - Samsung Electronics Co. today plans to show a prototype hard disk drive that includes flash memory, promising lower power usage and less hard disk drive trouble for laptop users.
The Hybrid Hard Drive, developed by Samsung and Microsoft Corp., is meant for mobile PCs running Longhorn, the next version of the Windows operating system. Writing data to flash memory eliminates the need to spin up the hard disk drive, saving power and sparing the drive, said Ivan Greenberg, director of strategic marketing at Samsung.
This leads to a reduction in power consumption of 10% and can also help prevent problems that occur when the drive is moved while in use, Greenberg said.
"The failing item in a returned notebook is typically the hard disk. If we keep that drive spun down, we believe that will have a huge impact," Greenberg said.
When the flash memory is full, the hard disk drive is spun up and the data is written to disk. The prototype contains 128MB of flash memory, Greenberg said. Longhorn will also minimize reading from the hard disk drive by storing more data, including application data, in main memory, he said.
With 64-bit technology, Longhorn can support up to 128GB of main memory. A user could keep all of a PC's data in the main memory, Microsoft Windows chief Jim Allchin said in a recent interview. "Let's suppose you had 10GB of primary memory, probably everything that you do could fit in memory," he said.
A prototype of the hybrid hard drive will be shown for the first time this week at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle. Commercial versions are planned for release in late 2006, the same time as Longhorn, with the first samples due by the middle of next year, Greenberg said.
The hybrid disk drives may cost more than regular hard disk drives, but Samsung believes that increase will be mitigated by the lower maintenance costs and power savings.


Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

Storage

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.

White Papers & Webcasts

Data Manager Report Excerpt: File System Inventory
Cut storage costs and boost operational efficiencies.  

Key Strategies for Managing Data Growth
What are you storage challenges?

Reducing Storage Costs with F5 ARX
Save money- deploy ARX Solutions.  

Data Protection is not an insurance policy -you cannot buy-back lost data
Find out why you need to maintain access to critical information to run your business and remain competitive.

Strategic ECM Webinar
Learn what new strategic business benefits can be realized through ECM!

5 Architecture Issues that Impact BES performance
Register to attend this LIVE Webinar to learn 5 Architecture Issues that Impact BES performance!