14 DAY TRIAL // Right at the beginning of February, HighPoint announced that is had successfully developed a series of PCI Express add-on cards which could transform any HDD and SSD combo into a hybrid drive that promised to offer both improved performance and a high storage capacity, and now, these cards have finally become available for purchase.
At the heart of the cards lies the Marvell SATA 6Gbps 88SE9130 controller which was announced during the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show and features the company's trademark HyperDuo technology.
This is what allows the operating system (Windows in this case) to see the two devices as one larger unit which can be accessed, managed and backed-up just like a regular drive.
Furthermore, the technology also increases the responsiveness of the system as the performance critical files are moved to the SSD while the less frequently accessed data remains on the hard drive.
This way, consumers get the high transfer rates associated with an SSD as well as the storage capacity of an HDD.
More advanced users will have the option of moving whatever files they desire on the SSD via a software utility developed by Marvell and the same tool can also be used for switching the drives into a special mode which allows for the duplication of critical data.
“The performance benefits of SSD’s over conventional HDD’s are enticing to all, but their high cost of entry and low storage capacity keep many potential customers away,” reads the company's official statement.
“Hybrid storage resolves this dilemma – with RocketHybrid HBA’s, you can combine inexpensive SATA hard disks with fast SSD’s, into a high-performance and high-capacity storage solution. RocketHybrid HBA’s remove the dollar-per-gigabyte barriers imposed by today’s high-capacity SSD’s.”
HighPoint's RocketHybrid HBA add-on cards are available in two different versions, one for SATA and one for eSATA drives, and pricing is set at $59.99.