Hybrid hard drives won't get traction in the marketplace unless Microsoft makes up its mind that it wants to support them with optimized drivers.

The discussion came up at a luncheon meeting of HDD (hard disk drive) and SSD (solid state drive) company executives, journalists, analysts, and attendees of the IDEMA (International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association) DiskCon conference Sept. 19 at the Convention Center here.

HDDs, which rely on a combination of traditional drives and flash memory to deliver better power consumption rates, durability, battery life and system response time cheaper than full flash drive systems, are expected to constitute 35 percent of all disk drives shipped with portable PCs by 2010. But that progress is threatened since Microsoft ceased development on supporting drivers earlier this year.

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Microsoft, HDD, Hard Disk, Hard Drive, SSD, Hybrid HDD, Hybrid Hard Drive, IDEMA, Storage, Hardware