Samsung begins shipment of its first hybrid drives to select OEMs, and claims that retail shipments would begin soon. The new MH80 2.5-inch hybrid drives for notebook PCs will be available in 80-, 120-, and 160-Gbyte capacities, with either 128 Mbytes or 256 Mbytes of onboard flash memory, for caching purposes. The drive will feature what Samsung called "ReadyBoot" technology that speeds up boot up time as much as 50 percent comparing to traditional drive. There is more to that. They claim that the drive consumes 70-90 percent less power. This is a big boost for notebook users as it can extend their battery life to over 30 minutes. This is an interesting technology. It has been a while since SATA2 that there is any advancement in hard drive technology. This may pave way for more and more research of hybrid and faster hard disk drives.
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