Hybrid hard drives

Has anyone seen the new hard drives from Seagate and Samsung? They have made
a hard drive with a jump drive on it. A hard drive with 256MB of cache.

Aren't HDs with large caches, in some instances -- like random requests -- actually slower, since,
if the requested data is not in the cache, then the cache has to be cleared, and re-written?

"Kirk" <Kirk@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:102C73B4-542D-499A-A00D-AB8A24573B71@microsoft.com...
| Has anyone seen the new hard drives from Seagate and Samsung? They have made
| a hard drive with a jump drive on it. A hard drive with 256MB of cache.

The technology that uses these new hybrid hard drives is called Windows
ReadyDrive.
You will generally have a faster system using this technology or at least a
better performing system, with longer battery life for laptops.

"DCR" <dcr@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:E0nch.43365$Fw5.27786@news-wrt-01.rdc-nyc.rr.com...
> Aren't HDs with large caches, in some instances -- like random requests --
> actually slower, since,
> if the requested data is not in the cache, then the cache has to be
> cleared, and re-written?
>
> "Kirk" <Kirk@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:102C73B4-542D-499A-A00D-AB8A24573B71@microsoft.com...
> | Has anyone seen the new hard drives from Seagate and Samsung? They have
> made
> | a hard drive with a jump drive on it. A hard drive with 256MB of cache.
>
>

"Gary Mount" <gary_mount@telus.net> wrote in message
news:B5A42390-628A-4E0D-873F-0025B43AAE7A@microsoft.com...
> The technology that uses these new hybrid hard drives is called Windows
> ReadyDrive.
> You will generally have a faster system using this technology or at least
> a better performing system, with longer battery life for laptops.

It will be interesting to see how well these work from a reliability
standpoint. Flash RAM typically has a limited number of write cycles
allowed (perhaps 100K-1M). I have heard of windows based controller systems
with flash memory instead of hard drives having problems after a few months
unless VM is disabled, the flash cards die in this time.

Regards,
Bob Headrick

These readydrives may not be as practical for 3+ raidsets. I've got my eye
on 2Gb of very fast USB flash memory to match with my 0+1 raid to see if it
goes even faster... Come-on Santa!

"Bob Headrick" wrote:

> "Gary Mount" <gary_mount@telus.net> wrote in message
> news:B5A42390-628A-4E0D-873F-0025B43AAE7A@microsoft.com...
> > The technology that uses these new hybrid hard drives is called Windows
> > ReadyDrive.
> > You will generally have a faster system using this technology or at least
> > a better performing system, with longer battery life for laptops.
>
> It will be interesting to see how well these work from a reliability
> standpoint. Flash RAM typically has a limited number of write cycles
> allowed (perhaps 100K-1M). I have heard of windows based controller systems
> with flash memory instead of hard drives having problems after a few months
> unless VM is disabled, the flash cards die in this time.
>
> Regards,
> Bob Headrick
>