Seagate recently announced availability of its first hybrid hard drive.
According to Seagate, this hard drive is 100% faster than “conventional” 2.5-inch 5400 RPM hard drive, and 80% faster than a 7200RPM laptop drive. What makes this a hybrid drive is the 4GB of solid state storage on board. The drive is able to learn about frequently performed actions and move relevant files into the solid state portion of the device for quicker access.
With solid state drives still quite costly as compared to their more common predecessors, this new technology will make a highly cost-effective upgrade to any Intel-based portable Mac. You’ll notice vastly improved boot times, applications will launch more quickly, and you’ll notice that copying large numbers of small files will be faster than before.
I’m going to install one in my new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro and will let you all know my findings in an upcoming Tech Tails.