14 DAY TRIAL // Merging a solid state drive with an optical drive has already been done, but the Hitachi-LG joint venture has just unveiled that it has developed one whose SSD component uses NAND Flash chips based on the 25nm manufacturing process.
The Hybrid Drive is essentially a means of outfitting a system, particularly mobile PCs, with the best of both NAND Flash and optical storage.
The new generation of such storage units use NAND chips based on Micron's 25nm process technology, which makes them more power efficient and capacious.
This second generation can come with both DVD or Blu-ray players, depending on model, and this makes them quite useful in notebooks.
Normally, a notebook would need space for both a SSD and an ODD, but the Hybrid Drive lets both be crammed inside half the space.
Hitachi already previewed samples of this product at CEATEC, where it also showed off some first-generation drives, among other things.
According to Engadget, the series is composed, for now, of three members, each differentiated from the others through their actual flash storage capacity.
One of them is limited to 16 GB, which makes it most likely intended to act as a boot drive, since the high transfer speeds will significantly improve boot-up times.
The same could be said about the 32 GB versions, while the third and final one, for now at least, can be seen as more versatile thanks to its capacity of 64 GB.
Basically, the newcomers are guaranteed to boost system performance compared to the speed at which applications would launch if they were stored on a HDD.
Engadget managed to snatch a picture of the one that was on display, this particular version being fitted with a DVD unit and having a thickness of 12.7 mm. Unfortunately, there is no mention of prices or exact availability.