Are Hybrid Drives Finally Coming of Age?

Hybrid Disk Drives, the marriage of a standard hard disk drive and NAND flash, were introduced in 2007 to an unreceptive market, so why are they making a resurgence today?

According to the new Objective Analysis report: Are Hybrid Drives Finally Coming of Age ($5,000), this technology was well conceived but poorly implemented in its first generation. Now that working versions have been implemented the hybrid drive promises to sweep the PC hard drive market.

"We expect the hybrid drive market to nearly double every year for the five years following its initial adoption, reaching 600 million units by 2016," said the report’s author Jim Handy. "This blazing growth will result from hybrid drives replacing standard HDDs in mainstream PCs."

The 54-page report is based upon the same methodology as other Objective Analysis studies, with projections derived from interviews with all levels of the supply chain, putting a special focus on prospective hybrid drive customers. The results of the survey are tempered by an understanding of computer architecture and data storage techniques. The study explains both what will become of this market and why it will develop the way that it will.

Objective Analysis’ Hybrid Disk Drive study explains hybrid drive technical principals, the technology’s potential market, competing technologies, and how the NAND, PC, SSD, and HDD markets will all be impacted by this new twist on an old technology. The report tells why the technology failed in the past, and forecasts its anticipated growth.