Seagate, Toshiba to Make SSD + HDD Hybrid?

We all know that for the absolute best throughput of storage available to us today, it's in solid-state-drives. The problem with SSDs is cost and the limited storage capacity in comparison to the magnetic solutions. But upcoming solutions from Seagate and Toshiba may be able to come up with something in between.

Seagate is now sending out press notices of a "game changing" device that'll be revealed next week with Asus that can boost your system performance by up to 150 percent. Engadget was told that the product will be 20 percent quicker than a 600GB 10,000rpm SATA drive, 80 percent faster than a conventional 7200rpm HDD and able to boot "within six seconds of an SSD drive" and "learn about its user to dynamically decrease disk time, boot time, and application load time."

According to a German report from Computer Base, Seagate has paired 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB HDDs with 4 GB of SLC NAND flash. If this proves to be true, then frequently accessed files would be moved to the NAND area for ultra fast access while the larger files will be relegated to the magnetic storage area.

Toshiba may have similar ideas at work. The company was quoted by Tech-On as saying, "The hybrid of HDD and SSD enables to save energy … It enables to save energy by about 80% compared with a storage device consisting of only HDDs" – though it's unclear if Toshiba was referring to a singular device or combination inside a computer.

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Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.