Samsung has put a lot of energy into developing and marketing its Solid State Disk technology and that non-mechanical harddrives is the future. But Samsung also has another alternative known as HHD. Hybrid Hard Drive is just what the name implies; a hybrid between a mechanical harddrive and SSD. It has basically taken a regular harddrive and integrated a big buffer at 128MB or 256MB, considerably more than the cache that is used with regular hardrives where we can find 16MB at best. It’s not just the size of the memory buffer which is differet from the one used in regular harddrives.
“This new buffer differs from the existing cache buffer on hard drives not only in size but also in structure, composition, and qualities. Conventional cache is made out of volatile memory that is erased when the drive is powered down. HHDs add another layer of cache consisting of Flash memory that is non-volatile and can be accessed quickly when the drive is powered on.”
Just as SSD, HHD units will offer faster access times and lower power consumption. The startup will go twice as fast with a hybrid harddrive compared to that of a regular harddrive. Those who wants to know more about Samsung’s HHD technology should head over to The Future of Things where they’ve published an article with a lot of interesting information about the harddrives, which is completed with an interview with the head of Samsung’s memory division.
