[craig @ Apr 23rd 2007 12:28PM]

"Very quick flash memory" could be added anywhere in the system--there's no reason to assume that you can only put it in a hard drive or attach it via a slow connection like USB. Adding flash inside a hard drive is the worst place to put it since it's the furthest away from the CPU. Furthermore, flash doesn't need to be added in the hard drive to allow the drive to spin down. All that's necessary for that is to have enough. It's unlikely that 256MB of flash, like this solution provides, is "enough" for very many applications.

There is plenty of flash that is large enough, fast enough, and cheap enough to beat this solution and not require comprimises in drive capacity in order to obtain it. Hybrid drives exist because that's all drive manufacturers can do; not because they make technical sense. The sad thing is that there are people who believe that hybrid drives are somehow magically better and that I disagree because I "don't understand". Microsoft understands, they are the ones driving this solution, and they are not pushing hybrid drives.

[kfligg @ Apr 23rd 2007 2:33PM]

Putting the flash on the HD makes most sense because you can add an HHD to any computer and it will be able to leverage the advantages of very fast persistent storage.

Sure, you can put flash on the MB, and use it as a persistent cache for any HD, but that requires a new MB.

And, anyway, I thought that MS was pushing the HHD's along with Samsung.

[craig @ Apr 23rd 2007 2:50PM]

"Putting the flash on the HD makes most sense because you can add an HHD to any computer and it will be able to leverage the advantages of very fast persistent storage."

The same could be said for any number of other means of attaching flash. The difference is that a hard drive upgrade is more difficult, especially for notebooks, than any other means of adding flash. Microsoft says it will support hybrid drives. That doesn't mean it will push them.

Is a hard drive upgrade that lowers capacity really an upgrade? 80GB notebook drives are pretty boring especially when the flash they add is only 256MB. Have you priced 256MB of flash lately?

Of course, upgrades don't matter in this context since the machine discussed here is a new notebook. There's no reason flash couldn't be integrated on the MB in this case. For new systems, local bus attachment would be marginally faster than hybrid disks.

BTW, who says there are "advantages of very fast persistent storage" besides MS? I have Vista and I've tried flash acceleration. Yawn... Even MS will tell you that 256MB of RAM is better than 256MB of flash. That costs nearly nothing.