Seagate Launches Hybrid Hard Drives

Seagate has officially launched its new hybrid hard drives. The Momentus 5400 PSD 2.5-inch hybrid drive has been shipped out to OEMs including four that will feature the new drive in lap tops. The drive uses both a magnetic disk platter for storing data and flash memory which is used as a cache memory, allowing data to be dumped onto the disk en masse. The disk can be kept in an idle mode, saving power and extending the battery life of the notebook.

Unfortunately, the new Seagate isn’t quite living up to its remarkable performance claims as of yet. The drive suffers from problems stemming from first generation non-tuned drivers for the Vista operating system.

However, experts say not to discount the hybrids yet.

“By the second generation products will see the system benefits” that were originally promised, Melissa Johnson, a product manager for the company said.

via ExtremeTech