While Fujitsu may have snagged the headlines on Monday for
its 7200RPM 160GB
SATA/300 2.5" hard disk drive (HDD), Samsung is looking to make a few
headlines of its own with the availability of the world's first hybrid HDDs.
Samsung new MH80 Series hybrid HDDs will be available in capacities of 80GB,
120GB and 160GB.
Samsung new MH80 HDDs will be fully compatible with Windows
Vista and will offer OneNAND Flash onboard in capacities of 128MB or 256MB. The
onboard flash allows for up to 50% faster OS boots, quicker resume times and
increases in battery life of up to 30 minutes.
"As a leader in both hard drive and flash memory
technologies, Samsung brings to market a unique hybrid hard drive that is sure
to revolutionize the notebook computing experience," said Albert Kim,
National Sales Manager, Storage Systems for Samsung Semiconductor. "The
MH80 hybrid hard drive provides the ideal solution for two major issues that
notebook PC users continually face: faster boot and resume performance and
extended battery life."
Samsung claims that the MH80 Series offers five times the
reliability of traditional HDDS while consuming 70-90% less power.
Hopefully, Samsung's claims will pan out in real world
testing. Internal
testing by Lenovo engineers has shown that hybrid HDDs aren't all they're
cracked up to be.