What Comes Next?

We've already released our review of the first hybrid hard drive (H-HDD), which was not quite convincing. Sure, it is still early to come to a final conclusion, and Windows Vista might not become really interesting before Service Pack 1 anyway, but enthusiasts are sure to find more and more options in the form of Flash-based hard drives.

We don't believe that Flash hard drives will replace mechanical drives any time soon, but ultra-mobile users, who do not need a lot of capacity on the road, will certainly be happy to exchange their hard drives for Flash-based products. These are starting to be available at 16 or 32 GB; it won't take more than a few months until higher capacity versions become available as well. However, Flash will not be able to compete with high capacity requirements in the area of 200 GB and up, because even as Flash approaches these sizes, mechanical drives will offer even higher capacities rather soon, enabling 320 GB at 5,400 RPM in the notebook space.

Test Setup