Beyond rapid increases in capacity and density, the conventional hard drive hasn't fundamentally changed in years. A new generation of hybrid drive technology that marries non-volatile flash memory and the conventional magnetic disk promises improved performance and reliability. Add hybrid-based thinking to the client computing roadmap.

Hybrids Bridge the Solid State Gap

Ideally, hard drives would be entirely solid state-based flash memory. Flash drives are faster, more reliable, and more power efficient than conventional spinning disks. But until memory prices approach those of inexpensive disk, an interim solution is called for.

Hybrid hard drives add flash-based cache memory capability to a conventional physical drive. As operating systems (i.e. Windows Vista) and hardware (i.e. Intel's upcoming Centrino Pro) that can take advantage of these technologies establish their market position, the business case for going hybrid starts to take shape.

The non-volatile flash-based cache memory (usually up to 1Gb) has faster read/write performance than the spinning disk...