The major hard drive manufacturers have all decided to back Hybrid drive technology which employs NAND flash memory as an enhancement to their rotating media devices. All spurred by Microsoft's ReadyDrive initiative for the Vista operating system. They've formed the Hybrid Storage Alliance .

The objective of the technology is to provide near instantaneous booting of a PC. The 2 to 5 minutes it takes for a PC to boot and the operating system to be ready to accept commands has long been a deterrent for integrating the PC into a home entertainment system. It's also been a dream of many PC owners as well as software and hardware manufacturers.

Hard drive technology has changed over the years in terms of speed and capacity through variations in recording methods, heads, rotation rates, mediums and interfaces. But the actual technology has remained curiously the same. Media rotates. Heads ?fly? over the media to charge and discharge properties of the media. We need a motor to rotate the media and a mechanism to move the heads across the media. The technology is over 50 years old and is such an archaic system in comparison

Hard disk drives are deeply entrenched in the technology we use. Not only are they used in personal computers, but you'll find them in digital video recorders, cameras, and media players. It may surprise some to know they can be found in ATM's and various other odd places. Hard drives are so entrenched in technology it's akin to the automotive industry and petroleum. The vicious cycle of support and reliance can blind and bind an industry.

Further, hard drive technology is inherently flawed. The actual media itself contains defects that are ?mapped-out? during the manufacturing process. Hard drives consist of moving parts that are subject to failure. We all know that if it moves, it'll wear-out eventually. Hard drives are the weakest link in PC technology. They fail with age or mishandling and are slow compared to other available technologies.

It's past time to advocate a change in storage technology that will support longevity, reduce fragility and increase speed. Hybrid drives are a step in the right direction, but they don't eliminate the problems associated with hard drives. The step the manufacturers are taking this year could lead to a completely NAND based storage device. It's nice to hope anyway. Will it also be the death of rotating media in hard drives? In the long-run, maybe. Will we miss it? No!

Evolution in technology is an inevitability. Processors get faster and smaller. USB has replaced serial and parallel ports. DVD's are replacing CD's, which will soon be replaced. We weren't this slow in replacing card readers and magnetic tapes! Replacing hard drives that use rotating media seems to be a logical progression in the evolution of technology that no one should miss when it's gone. That is unless you miss XT's, monochrome monitors, DOS, or dinosaurs.

Labels: hard drive info, tech news