Toshiba to Deploy Hybrid Drive to Boost Share in Storage Market

The new drives—the 1TB MQ01ABD100H and the 750GB MQ01ABD075H—use hard disks to deliver high level capacity and 8GB NAND flash memory as a cache memory to support high speed data throughput. As a result, read and write times are about three times faster*2 than in Toshiba hard disk drives with equivalent capacities. In PCs, the new Hybrid Drive reduces application boot times by about 40%*3. With a 2.5-inch form factor and high capacity, the new drives are ideally positioned as a high performance alternative for portable and desktop PCs.

In operation, data is allocated to one of the Hybrid Drive's three memory layers: DRAM buffer memory, NAND flash memory or the magnetic disk media. This process is enhanced by an algorithm that dynamically learns the user's data access pattern and stores data accordingly to the appropriate tier. High speed access is achieved by storing frequently accessed data in the NAND flash memory.

Today's PCs must meet increasingly strong demands for storage capacities that can handle multiple HD videos and other data-rich sources and a read/write performance that can meet the demands of ever faster CPU and graphics chips. Through the synergy of state-of-the-art NAND flash memory manufactured with the latest generation of process technology and by leading-edge miniaturizing technique and high speed, high capacity HDD, Toshiba now offers business and consumers the solution of the Hybrid Drive, a large capacity drive that matches the capacity of HDD with data access speeds like the SSD.