“On September 29, 2011, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a next generation Hybrid Drive that includes both a hard drive and [NAND] flash,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“Intel will be pushing their Smart Response hybrid drive systems for consumer systems in 2012 and Apple’s patent would indicate that they intend to have their own solution for future hardware,” Purcher reports. “Uniquely Apple’s twist to this drive is that it will handle different types of storage media based on an environmental state of the hybrid drive.”
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Purcher reports, “If the drive undergoes temperature, vibration or acceleration variances that could cause the hard drive to temporarily fail, the system would save the volatile data to the Flash drive.”
Much more in the full article, including Apple’s patent application diagrams and illustrations, here.
I’d love to see some large capacity hybrid drives. Currently, they’re too small on both the SSD and the HD side. Give us an affordable fast 1TB 2.5″…please!
Flash on its own is great, but its still about $2/ GB which can be quite expensive. I think everyone would love to start seeing more Hybrid HDD/SSD’s
If the firmware is done right, it could work like the Momentus XT where information is copied over to the flash memory if it’s used frequently enough.
Ah hell, for a minute, I thought Apple was going to compete with Toyota. Never mind.
Nice one!
The iPrius: available in any color you want as long as it is brushed aluminum.
Can you carve a car chassis out of single block of aluminum?!
3d printing with droplets of molten aluminum, yeah baby!
If this is truly and advantageous method, Apple needs to license this patent. Apple has gotten into trouble in the past by diverting to proprietary systems requiring purchases of Apple only components. License the hybrid technology to Western Digital, Seagate and the like so production quantities can be high enough to keep cost down.