The United States Patent and Trademark Office today published a patent application from Apple that revealed plans for a next generation Hybrid Drive utilizing both a hard-disk drive (HDD) and a flash drive.
Intel will be releasing a hybrid drive system in 2012, called Smart Response, though Apple’s patent application indicates it have plans to make their own. Where Intel’s hybrid will focus on putting massive storage on an hard drive, but the operating system, favorite apps, and essential services on a Solid State Drive (SSD), Cupertino seems to be focusing more on handling issues that cause HDD failures.
Modern HDDs are capable of storing large amounts of data at a low cost per byte, but they can be extremely sensitive to environmental conditions, significant temperature, vibration, or acceleration changes can cause the drive to temporarily fail.
The invention Apple described on the application would include an HDD, a flash drive, an interface circuit, and control logic. The system would store data to the HDD, but if an extreme environmental change that could cause the drive to temporarily fail was detected, the data at risk will be saved to the flash drive.
Apple also noted on the application that they may designate "basic system services" to the flash drive specifically, such as a web browser or parts of the OS. This type of functionality would be more like Intel’s proposed solution. Apple often mentions competing products in their patents in case they license that technology later on.
For a detailed breakdown of the patent application, visit Patently Apple.
Adrian covers daily news as well as the weekly Law & Apple column for MacLife.com. You can follow him on Twitter, if you want to.
ilikeimac
September 29, 2011 at 1:29pm
Hybrid drive do already exist of course, but the part about putting at-risk data on the flash memory if environmental conditions are bad is new to my ears.
I do have a problem with the whole concept of combining solid state and mechanical drives though, in that the mechanical part will probably fail sooner and get thrown out with perfectly good and expensive flash memory. So I prefer approaches that let the two work together but be indepenently replaceable, such as PC motherboards that have built-in flash that caches all disks.
