Hybrid Disk Drives - Part 2
December 19th, 2006
When Dvorak mentions the upcoming Hybrid Disk Drives (HHDDs) and how Windows Vista plans to profit from them.
He also says “I have to assume that Linux coders will take advantage of these drives eventually”. Once these drives are on the market, I’d have to agree. However, some of that can be done now.
- Secondary Swap (Windows ReadyBoost)
- Any formattable partition can become a Linux swap partition. Simply mount and format. In addition, any swap partition can be the target of a Suspend 2-type hibernate.
- Why? Somebody will come up with a reason. Vista’s stated reason is those who are unable to add more RAM to their system. I’m sure there are also security reasons - like you could also encrypt the home directory on your key, and the Suspend image would be the only way to access it (on a correctly set up computer). Hey, you come up with a better idea.
- Non-spindle loading (Windows ReadyDrive)
- Part of the issue here is how the flash chips identify themselves. A secondary partition? Another drive? Some new model? Kernel support is an issue here.
- After that, inotify events can tell of frequenly used programs. This would be optimal with prelinked binaries. The issue with this (unless the file system supports it) is that your /usr/bin. would quickly fill up with symlinks.
- The Suspend 2-type hibernate option makes more sense here, though it is limited: more memory requires more suspend space.
Doubtless the flash chips used in these new HHDDs will be high quality; still, I am concerned about how many writes they will be able to handle.
Also, there is the issue of dual-booting. If both linux and windows used the drive, and therefore the flash chip, how does one keep the flash from becoming anything but a mess? More partitions?
Without the actual hardware or technical specs, this is mostly speculatory. But if HHDDs do become a commodity, I hope that there will be leeway for several different experiments.