“Flash SSDs are great – if you can afford them. Hybrids are the Next Big Thing in storage devices because they can give some of the key benefits of SSDs – such as fast boots and app starts – without sacrificing the capacity that our music, photos and videos gobble up…The disk drive is far from dead. Hybrid drives will keep them spinning for decades to come.”
Oh the music in my ears cannot be stopped.
That is a direct quote from Storage Bits writer Robin Harris in his latest post “Hybrid drives in your future?“, who I find to be one of the most open minded and knowledgeable bloggers in the storage industry (brown nosing implied). Of course I do…he just validated what Seagate has been saying since Momentus XT was introduced in May 2010. All kidding aside, I’m not about to keep hammering home the benefits of Momentus XT, I have been doing that for the last 12+ months, nor will I comment on any rumors about an enterprise hybrid drive in the future, as Robin states, nor any plans for a desktop hybrid which Seagate gets asked at nearly every customer event we attend. All I can say is that Seagate is on record saying we are “always looking at new technologies that will enable customer solutions that address the markets demand for high performance.”
What I will comment on is that hybrid drive technology makes the most sense. Competing technologies like SSD are more expensive to deploy in mass in the enterprise and in laptops given the capacity demand that still exists at a local level. Flash cache modules add complexity where complexity isn’t needed. Hybrid drive technology is virtually invisible to the host system, and given Seagate is only in its first generation, you can bet the capabilities for this technology will only improve as it creeps into other system types be they laptops, or even enterprise, or desktop systems.
Some love Momentus XT, some have had their fair share of issues with the technology, but one thing is for certain, hybrid is here to stay, and it will only get better.
Are you a believer?
Related Posts:
The many faces of “hybrid” technology. Which one will reign supreme?
What’s the best storage money can buy?
Momentus XT – what the experts are saying
Momentus XT Blogs: the past year
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