Hybrid Drives Offer the Best of Both Worlds

WD has added two models to its Blue range of hybrid SSHD drives that offer excellent performance and significantly lower the £/GB compared to the higher cost and lower capacity of standalone SSDs.

The 3.5-inch, 4TB WD40E31X and the 2.5-inch, 1TB WD10J31X both feature self-learning NAND flash cache and run at 5400rpm. They come with Serial ATA-6Gb/s interfaces, 8GB of intelligent multi-level cell NAND flash cache, and 64MB DRAM cache.

These intelligent hybrid drives are ideal for systems where there’s a need to for quicker system boots, faster loading of applications and improved responsiveness. This makes them ideal for power users, such as engineers, designers, photographers and digital artists.

They offer ultrafast read and write speeds and self-learning technology prioritises frequently used data for even faster access. These advanced algorithms reside in the SSHD firmware, enabling it to make intelligent determinations of which data to store in NAND flash memory, without any influence from the host or related storage device drivers.