Term of the Moment
legacy-free PC
Redirected from: hybrid hard disk
Definition: hybrid drive
(1) An optical disc drive that supports more than one format. See Blu-ray.
(2) A storage drive with a large amount of hard disk capacity and a small amount of solid state flash memory that is used as a cache. If the next set of data called for by the computer is in the cache, the transfer is much faster than reading the disk. See solid state hybrid drive and cache.
RAM Caches
Since the 1990s, hard drives have had a small dynamic RAM (DRAM) cache built in. Because DRAM is faster than flash memory, hybrid drives may use both DRAM (or faster SRAM) and flash memory caches. See Fusion Drive, flash memory, SSD, dynamic RAM, static RAM and Robson cache.
Hybrid Drive and SSD
(2) A storage drive with a large amount of hard disk capacity and a small amount of solid state flash memory that is used as a cache. If the next set of data called for by the computer is in the cache, the transfer is much faster than reading the disk. See solid state hybrid drive and cache.
RAM Caches
Since the 1990s, hard drives have had a small dynamic RAM (DRAM) cache built in. Because DRAM is faster than flash memory, hybrid drives may use both DRAM (or faster SRAM) and flash memory caches. See Fusion Drive, flash memory, SSD, dynamic RAM, static RAM and Robson cache.
Built for gaming in 2019, this Alienware laptop featured a hybrid hard drive as well as a solid state drive to provide a terabyte and a half of storage. Along with a 512GB SSD, the 1TB hybrid hard drive had 8GB of built-in flash memory. See gaming PC.