Hitachi, the hard drive manufacturer has announced plans to manufacture hybrid drives which will cut back on the energy consumption of notebook computers. It works by having a flash memory as part of the hard drive which acts as a buffer for data access, minimizing the need to spin up the hard drive to retrieve data. Other tech companies who have shown their support for this are Samsung, Microsoft and Seagate. The downside however is that it only works on the Microsoft Vista operating system.
Intel is voicing it’s support for Robson drives, similar in concept to the hybrid drive except that the flash memory is located outside the hard disk.
Hard disks have to be one of the most used peripherals of the computer age. Not only limited to the PC, it can now be found in cars and gaming consoles just to name a few. It’s great to know that they are doing their part to cut down on their energy intake, by this we can have more efficient use of our energy.
Original article here and here.
Category: Misc
