ReadyDrive - Vista

Recently announced were hybrid disk drives which were part non-volatile Flash memory (NVRAM) and part regular hard disk. Such H-HDDs, as they are called, should soon become regular features of our computer systems. Typically, H-HDDs include between 50 MB and 512 MB of Flash memory. Much like ReadyBoost, Windows Vista will make use of this Flash capacity to store frequently used data as cache. Vista can, for example store boot data to the cache when the system shuts down or hibernates. This should allow faster restarting or resuming, respectively. The cache can also be used as a scratchpad for data reads and writes even when the hard drive has spun down—this should reduce the power consumed by the disk under normal usage; once again a plus point for laptop owners.