Seagate is now shipping a second-generation drive that combines chip-based flash memory with a mechanical hard disk. The combination results in a high-speed, high-capacity drive for laptops and the fastest personal computers.
The hybrid technology is innovative because it combines the speed of flash chips with the low-cost and high storage capacity of hard disks.
And Seagate uses software that is smart enough to disguise the storage from the user, who will never know if their data is store on a chip or the hard disk. It means that everything from games to music, video, spreadsheets, and documents will run faster.
The new drive is three times faster than a typical hard drive, said Joni Clark, product marketing manager at Seagate, in an interview.
“The user doesn’t have to worry about where the memory sits,” she said. “It can be used in any kind of situation.