By Andrew Liszewski

Today Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc. officially announced their new HyDrives, designed for laptops and compact PCs, which incorporate a 32GB or 64GB SSD into a CD/DVD optical drive. The obvious benefit to such a setup is that you can have a dual drive configuration in a mid-sized laptop, with the fast SSD for your OS and applications, and a large regular hard drive for media and other content. Now according to Engadget, the first generation of the HyDrives, which should be available come August, will actually be 12.7mm thick which means they won’t fit in most laptops, relegating them for use in compact desktop PCs and HTPCs. But the second generation, which will hopefully be available by March of next year, will have a smaller 9.5mm form factor making them usable in a wide range of laptops, as well as increased capacities of up to 256GB.

Specific pricing info wasn’t announced today, probably because the drives will only be available to OEMs at launch, but a ~$200 premium was quoted for systems featuring one of the new HyDrives.

[ Engadget - Hitachi-LG goes official with HyDrive: SSD-equipped optical drives landing in August ]