Lenovo on display at CES at the beginning of the two new IdeaPad the Y460 and home entertainment Y560, equipped with a Core i7/i5/i3 series of processors and Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards, the performance of attention. Recently, Lenovo’s “Global Competitiveness analysts” Matt Kohut also disclosed in the company blog, these two models there will be a killer, and that is integration of solid-state drives and traditional hard edge “RapidDrive” intelligent hybrid hard drive technology.
Matt Kohut in Bo-wen, said recently in solid-state hard drive began to develop, there were many enterprises equipped with flash memory as a cache proposed a “hybrid hard drive” technology, able to take into account cost, speed and capacity. Although this technique has not been able to succeed in the actual product, but some users like the early adopters are already on their own to practice such an idea. For example his work with machines ThinkStation S20, using a 256GB SSD as the system disk, install Windows 7 and all the software, a 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor 10000 transferred as a swap partition, store documents, pictures, etc. Finally, there is a 750GB 7200rpm hard drive store other files.

According to his analysis, hybrid hard drive technology does not succeed in the market as long as the reasons are: First, although the prices have been falling, but flash memory prices are still much higher compared to traditional hard drives. Second, the flash memory capacity is not big enough. Because users can not buy (or afford) 2TB solid-state hard drive, so even if the selected solid-state storage, installation of software, or to deliberate whether or not put it in the space of valuable solid-state hard drive. Moreover, this option only to those “knowledgeable” of the players to do, ordinary users may not clear about the C drive / D drive or SSD / HDD difference, so most people choose this solid-state drive + the configuration of a traditional hard drive positive is unrealistic.
It is precisely because of this reason, Lenovo has developed a RapidDrive technology, and first applied to IdeaPad Y560/Y460 notebook. Models using the technology in the Mini PCI-E interface is installed on a 32GB or 64GB solid-state hard drive, while still using a traditional HDD drives. RapidDrive technology unique is that users do not need to consider what files are stored in the SSD, on which the file is stored in the HDD. System from a user’s point of view, only one hard drive, RapidDrive algorithm will automatically optimize the speed and capacity of the coordination of the completion of the work of those who require frequent reading and writing small pieces of data will be moved to solid-state hard drive and need long-term storage of large files will be In the traditional hard drive to save, exchange of data between the two at any time.

Lenovo said, RapidDrive and Intel have put forward a completely different TurboMemory Turbo Memory does not require human intervention, and more automation. In addition, RapidDrive in the solid-state storage space is also much greater than the Turbo Memory. According to association tests, two similarly configured notebooks IdeaPad Y560, a hybrid hard drive using the RapidDrive, a traditional hard drive only. When the load at the same time a group of large-scale program, RapidDrive models took only 13 seconds, the traditional models are used by about 30 seconds to complete.
Lenovo RapidDrive technology is currently patent pending, is expected early in March IdeaPad Y460/Y560 market, the technology will be introduced as an optional configuration.