DigitMemo.com

Microsoft rebuts talk at DiskCon that current Vista drivers must be improved for hybrid drives to work better.

Microsoft on Sept. 21 denied claims by hard drive industry executives and analysts that the world’s largest software company isn’t providing optimized drivers for the new hybrid drives about to come into the market.

“Microsoft certainly does provide drivers for hybrid hard drives in Vista,” Matt Ayers, program manager in the Windows Client Performance group for Microsoft, “They’ve been in there all along, and they work with any hard drive. I don’t quite understand the issue here. And about ‘optimized’ drivers—we never send out any drivers that aren’t optimized.”

Hybrid hard drives combine nonvolatile, solid state flash memory and traditional disk drives. The benefits of using hybrid drives include improved power efficiency, extended notebook battery life gained by powering off the spin motor and operating out of nonvolatile memory, faster system response time, and increased durability, since spinning the drive down creates less mechanical movement and increases reliability.

Hard drive industry executives and analysts complained about a lack of Microsoft Driver support during the DiskCon conference Sept. 19-20 in Santa Clara, Calif. These critics claimed that to work optimally in a Vista system, the hybrid drives must be supported by better drivers that are not now available.