Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/30/toshiba_hybrid_disk/
Tosh flashifies disk in demo hybrid drive
Enjoys a Momentus moment
Posted in Storage, 30th August 2012 08:19 GMT
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Toshiba has demonstrated a 1TB hybrid disk drive at the Flash Memory summit; that's 250GB bigger than Seagate's Momentus XT.
The 2.5-inch XT [1] drive is Seagate's third generation hybrid drive and features a 2-platter, 7,200rpm disk drive fitted with either a 4GB fast SLC flash cache in the 500GB product or an 8GB SLC NAND cache in the 750GB model. This larger product comes with a 6Gbit/s SATA interface while the smaller one makes do with the slower 3Gbit/s SATA link. We understand that the larger model has a 32MB buffer and a sequential read bandwidth of approximately 135MB/sec. How does the Tosh hybrid compare?
Like the curate's egg, Tosh's 2.5-inch hybrid is good in parts. According to reports [2] it has an 8GB SLC NAND cache and the aforesaid capacity up to 1TB. It's bandwidth is just 80GB/sec, seemingly unimpressive.
We don't know the interfaces used, nor the buffer cache size, nor the spin speed, but El Reg imagines Tosh will match Seagate with a 6Gbit/s interface, SAS or SATA, we don't know which. There are Toshiba MQ01ABD and MK1059GSM 2.5-inchers spinning at 5,400rpm which have an up to 1TB capacity, and either could be the disk inside the hybrid. The company doesn't sell a 1TB, 7,200rpm 2.5-inch drive – yet.
We expect a Tosh hybrid drive for Ultrabooks to be announced by the end of the year [3]. Western Digital is probably busy with its hybrid disk development too and keeping schtum, as it usually does. ®