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Wouldn't it be great if you could combine the speed of a flash-based drive with the capacity of a mechanical hard drive? Why yes, it would be, but don't get your hopes up too high. It's true Seagate is preparing a new series of hybrid drives that will combine NAND flash memory with HDD platters, but these aren't taking the extremes of either technology and meshing them into a single unit.
Instead, the largest drive will check in at 500GB, according Fudzilla. The other two capacities Seagate plans to offer for its upcoming Momentus XT line will be 320GB and 250GB. All three drives will also come equipped with 4GB of fast SLC NAND flash memory, as well as a 32MB cache buffer, but they'll be limited to SATA Gbps.
It's defeintely an intriguing idea as the mainstream market waits for SSD pricing to approach pedestrian levels, but we'd like to see some hybrid models on tap with more of a performance punch and storage space.
No word yet on US pricing or availability, but after the exchange rate, it looks like these hybrid drives will sell for between $115 to $160.
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