Hitachi shows Hydrive

JAPANESE ELECTRONICS MAKER Hitachi has lifted the kimono on what it says is the world's first SSD-equipped laptop optical drive.

The Hydrive is a standard form factor optical drive, but there's a 32GB or 64GB SSD under its bonnet. This means you can immediately access an optical drive, an SSD and a spacious HDD for storing the media.

Three-drive arrangements have been around before, however this one is made for ultraportables. Another plus to the Hydrive is the integrated defect management technology, which essentially caches information from scratched discs in order to play the content back without any jitters.

Hitachi says that it will be in the shops worldwide in September. It will first be seen in the 102 Series of Moneual HTPCs.

Hitachi is thinking of slimming the Hydrive down and sticking it in a tablet or netbook. There's also plans to move from SATA2 3Gbps to SATA3 6Gbps.

The first generation will measure 12.7mm thick, and we're told that it won't fit into most conventional laptops. µ