This type of storage device consumes less power, increases battery life and shortens system boot time. However, so far, people have not seen many of these products on the market.

In 2005, Samsung and Microsoft introduced a technology that manufacturers care about: flash memory drives act as a data cache.

But, " the first versions didn't achieve the performance that customers expected, " commented Richard New, research director at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

The advantages of hybrid hard drives are not attractive enough images 1 According to New, this problem can be overcome if the manufacturer adds more flash in the product. Low flash capacity makes the boot time unmistakable, ranging from 28 seconds to standard hard drive to 21 seconds when using hybrid drive. " I don't think customers will spend money buying flash drives just because of that, " said Joel Hagberg, vice president of sales at Fujitsu Computing Products.

Besides, the new "sleep function" feature in Windows Vista also reduces the need for hybrid drives. Western Digital (USA) compared Vista's boot time in normal mode and in "sleep" state. Vista Home Premium is the slowest operating version with a boot time of up to 70 seconds. However, when you "sleep", the systems that install 7 different versions of Vista only need about 4 seconds to be ready to work. With that time, the advantages of hybrid drive are no longer meaningful.