RapidDrive is a solution from Lenovo to greatly improve performance of their notebook computers by using both a low-capacity solid-state drive and a traditional hard disk drive. As of August 2010, the solution makes use of a 32GB or 64GB solid state drive connected via an internal PCI-E slot along with the normal traditional hard disk drive. RapidDrive differs from other solutions in that it combines both the capacity of the SSD and HDD to one big, contiguous drive where the storage is dynamically pooled and managed.
That way, the end user does not need to know how to configure the system or how it works. Instead, the system manages the contents of the SSD based on what files and applications are commonly used by the user. Over time, as the habbits of the user changes, the system will prioritize different documents and programs for SSD storage.
To protect data, files are automatically written to the HDD and then copied to the SSD, so there should be no problem when the SSD gets to full capacity.
In the video demonstration below, two Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 notebooks are compared. They both run a simple script that loads a series of programs. The notebook on the left features RapidDrive technology, while the notebook on the right uses a standard HDD only. Otherwise, both are identically configured.
The result is that the RapidDrive-equipped notebook completes the task (loading of several programs) in 13 seconds, while the IdeaPad with the standard HDD takes 30 seconds to finish.
