Complimentary Storage Technologies by Dennis Zattiero, Technical Marketing Manager, Micron

The majority of today’s computer systems rely on some form of a disk drive to store operating systems, programs, and other files. Although the density per square inch of the traditional rotating disk drive has increased significantly over the years, there have only been modest improvements in the access times and power consumption. Adding a small amount of nonvolatile flash memory to the traditional HDD can improve access times, reduce boot and resume times, reduce power, increase reliability, and generally enable a more rugged and robust solution for the mass storage market.