Update: with more real-world testing under our belts, Seagate's Momentus XT is receiving our rare Best of Tom's award for excellent performance. This new hybrid hard drive combines up to 500GB of storage and 4GB of flash memory to maximize performance.
The idea isn’t particularly new: why not combine a non-volatile, high-speed silicon memory with rotating storage to marry the best of both worlds, meaning maximum speed and maximum storage capacity? Hybrid hard drives (H-HDDs) arrived in 2007, and they disappeared soon after because there was hardly any real benefit. Today, Seagate unveils a new type of hybrid that is similar to the initial H-HDD concept. However, the new Momentus XT does not rely on operating system support, and hence should be more versatile.
I will get one and report back.