Hitachi Blu-ray disc drive comes with built in SSD
Solid state storage mashed into optical drive
By Martyn Williams | Published: 09:45, 04 June 2010
Hitachi LG Data Storage Korea is presenting a first-of-its-kind product at Computex this week, an Blu-ray Disc optical drive that combines a solid-state drive.
A solid-state drive is made from flash memory chips and can deliver an overall boost in performance compared to a hard-disk drive. But flash memory chips are expensive so SSDs typically have a lower capacity than HDDs. The SSD in the new drive has a capacity of 32GB.
LG Hitachi expects the drive, which it calls the "Hy Drive," will be used in laptop computers alongside a traditional hard-disk drive in a laptop, said Philip Cho, senior manager of the company's overseas sales team, at the Computex trade show in Taipei.
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If the operating systems and programs are installed on the SSD and the hard-disk used for data, users should see a performance boost over a conventional laptop with a hard-disk drive.
Hitachi LG plans to begin mass production in August this year. The drive will be offered to laptop makers for use in their products.
