October 2013 Rumours @ Western Digital

Discussion in 'News' started by Adrian Wong, Oct 13, 2013.

  1. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

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    Okay, none of this is confirmed but some of the stuff that the folks at Western Digital are looking into include :

    Hybrid Drives
    Before you scoff at us for being so outdated, Western Digital is looking into a hybrid drive that uses RAM, not flash memory. This would most likely be a DDR3 SDRAM solution, possibly LP-DDR3 with backup power from built-in capacitors.

    Such a hybrid drive would offer a tremendous boost in performance for HDDs, because RAM is many, many times faster than the fastest flash memory. Of course, its performance would be restricted by the interface speed, which is currently stuck at SATA 6 Gb/s (600 MB/s theoretical limit), or SATA 16 Gb/s (1.6 GB/s theoretical limit) when it actually debuts.

    The drive's performance would also depend on how much RAM is actually used. The more RAM is used, the better the hybrid drive's performance, albeit at a higher cost. The larger RAM cache would also need to be backed up with additional capacitors to ensure that there is enough power to write their data into the HDD when power is lost.

    Built-In Anti-Virus
    Future portable hard disk drives may come with integrated anti-virus software built into them. This may either be a hardware-based scanner using heuristics analysis, or a software-based solution that installs on first use.

    Data Recovery Warranty
    Arguably, the biggest issue with failing hard disk drives isn't the cost of replacing them, but the loss of data. Most users aren't worried about replacing any HDDs that fail, just recovering their data.

    So WD could partner with a data recovery company (or more) to offer a kind of insurance scheme, in which purchasers can pay for "recovery warranty", which would guarantee them free recovery services if their drives fail within the warranty period.

    Of course, they claim that their failure rates are so low, there may not be much business for these data recovery companies. Still, wouldn't you be interested in such an offer?
     

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