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New hybrid hard drive aims to lighten load for laptop batteries

9 Oct 2007

Hybrid cars are all about energy efficiency, and Seagate is using the hybrid approach to achieve similar ends in the hard drive space. The new Momentus 5400 PSD line for laptops uses a small flash drive to accommodate boot-up data, then draws from a larger standard hard drive once it's up and spinning. The result, the company says, is a 50% reduction in hard drive power draw.

Rather than focusing on the relatively expensive and storage-shy all-flash hard drive movement, Seagate Technology is taking an intermediary step to mass produce a new line of hybrid hard drives - the Momentus 5400 PSD (Power Savings Drive). The new drives combine both flash-based memory with traditional disc drives to offer a combination of benefits.

Traditional disc drives for laptops tend to offer large storage capacities - 120GB and 160GB drives are now common. However, all that disc-based storage can suck laptop batteries dry.

"For notebooks, one of the severe battery power drains is the boot-up process - because you're basically starting the drive from scratch and bringing it up to full speed," Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT, told TechNewsWorld.

"There's some tricks to avoid that, like putting your laptop into sleep or hibernation mode ... but people generally feel it's better to power the system all the way down," he explained.

Read the full article here.