News Microsoft Proposes Combining Flash, Hard Drives

More WinHEC coverage from ExtremeTech:

SEATTLE--Microsoft hopes to combine two popular storage media – flash memory and hard drives – in a bid to cut power in future laptops.
In a presentation at the WinHEC show here Wednesday, Microsoft officials said they had begun talks with hard-disk makers to redefine how hard drives access data. The upgrades would require flash memory to be built in or alongside hard drives, to minimize the time the PC would access the drive.

Full report here

Isn't this essentially exactly the same as the caching done by HDD's already? With the only difference being that the Cache would persist after shutdown?

 

it seems similar to cache, and it would share a lot of the same functions. but it seems that the flash card would more likely be used to increase battery life by decreasing the amount of time the hdd was spun up. It also would serve as a file protection device in case you loose power whilst saving. I think its a good idea and the technology really isn't that hard to implement if it only drove up the cost of a hdd by 10$ I would get it in a laptop

 

so same thing with bigger cache, i don't mind that at all