Hitachi plans hybrids, encryption for notebook drives

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Flash management

You're not totally wrong. I hope I'm not either. From what I know of flash drives, their write limit is now up of 1 million write cycles. wear leveling mechanisms are a moot point with this usage. Anyway, it should last several years for most people.

Now I'm going to conjecture. Since the hybrid option is supposed to only benefit people with Vista, I'm guessing that the hard drive electronics do not manage the flash device, rather, management is done by the OS, perhaps via a proprietary driver required for writing directly to flash. This way, Vista can decide what file(s) get written through flash and what goes straight to the HDD. It may be that it sets itself up for a hibernate file on the flash, and the rest of the space, if any, is used only for frequently accessed files, but not so frequently written to as would shorten its lifespan (so for example, okay for temp space, reg files, common dll's, etc., but not the swap file), making it act kind of as a permanent cache. This would speed up load and run time significantly, perhaps not to full potential, but would maintain the lifespan of the flash extension. When used as temporary write space, perhaps for a document you're working on, it can make incremental saves to the flash space like lightening, and not update the magnetic platter until you're idle, space is full, or you exit the app. In the space (is going to be) full scenario, writing to flash can still take place while the sleeping drive spins up, then be flushed while still writing to the drive. The time saved and performance gain is well worth it.

You are right as in it will NOT work long if the swap file is used on the flash, maybe a month or so, but with the operating system managing the flash usage with some intelligence (hopefully), the flash should last a few years under typical usage.

I would hope though, since even a slash used sparingly often only lasts about five years or so and a hard drive can hold out for over ten, that they use a modular design so the flash can be upgraded/replaced easily; I wouldn't hold my breath too long on that though... it's cheaper to just stamp a chip on.

>>8-D

Posted by: D-cat   Posted on: 11/01/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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