Instant Booting Comes Close to a Reality

Samsung Electronics and Microsoft will next month show off the ready-to-market version of a hybrid hard drive (HHD) which can greatly reduce boot-up time of laptops and desktop PCs.

The new product will be introduced along with Microsoft’s Windows ReadyDrive feature at the U.S. software maker’s annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference on May 24 in Seattle. ReadyDrive refers to software technology that supports the HHD.

The HHD is the convergence of a flash memory chip and a conventional platter-type magnetic disk drive. To save the time and energy spent spinning a metal disk drive it is designed to use static flash memory when starting a PC,.

Samsung and Microsoft have been co-developing the product and revealed the first prototype at the same conference last year. But this year’s model will be almost identical with what will be sold in the market later this year, though the basic concept of the product was unchanged, Samsung said on Monday.

``This one will be more fitted to Windows Vista as Microsoft plans to release the new operating system within this year. We have tailored the hybrid disk to Windows Vista,’’ said Samsung’s public relations official Lee Seung-han.

The Hard disk drive is the most used data-storing device of a PC. The hard disk drive market is becoming more lucrative year by year. According to market researcher iSuppli, global hard drive sales increased 23 percent from 305 million units in 2004 to 376 million in 2005.

Samsung is the sixth largest maker in the world, with a 7.2 percent share in 2005.

The HHD has been developed at Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor division. The company hopes the HHD will be the gap-filler between the traditional hard disk and next-generation flash-driven hard drives, which Samsung aims selling as early as next year. [Hankooki]

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