"The key feature to me is that the heads can stay locked for large amounts of time. We put laptops in trucks and carry them to work sites where they can get banged around quite a bit, so this technology would greatly reduce [hard drive damage]," Weilandt said, adding that a solid state disk would be even better.

Beyond laptops

Performance benefits may be the main reason for using hybrid disks in desktops, but Panabaker said some large enterprise customers have approached Microsoft and said that they'd like to have hybrid drives in desktops so the disk drives will spin down during periods of inactivity, cutting power consumption and heat generation.

The same power savings could be beneficial for servers with direct-attached storage, he said. Although Panabaker wouldn't confirm it, it is likely that ReadyDrive will be integrated into the next version of Windows Server. "The code is part of the core bits in Windows," he acknowledged.

The outlook for hybrid disk in networked storage is less clear. ReadyDrive doesn't support iSCSI network-attached storage, but Panabaker said he sees value in supporting it as a way for network storage devices to save power and generate less waste heat in data centers.