Abstract: An apparatus for optimizing write performance of a hybrid drive includes a magnetic medium that stores data with respect to the hybrid drive and a plurality of write cache regions configured on the magnetic medium. When a write request is received by the hybrid drive, a head of the hybrid drive is automatically positioned to a nearest write cache region for writing of data to at least one write cache region without rotational orientation, thereby eliminating rotational latency and optimizing the write performance of the hybrid drive. The hybrid drive also updates normal data regions of the magnetic medium with data comprising write cached data during drive idle time, freeing up the write cache regions for future writes.

Abstract: Described embodiments provide a method of writing data to a storage medium having a plurality of shingled magnetic recording (SMR) regions and a plurality of non-SMR recording regions. A host write request is generated from a hard disk controller coupled to the storage medium and a host device. Data corresponding to the host write request is written to the storage medium in one or more associated non-SMR recording regions. During substantially idle time of the storage medium, data from the non-SMR recording regions is transferred to one or more associated SMR recording regions. Thus, the data corresponding to the host write request is buffered in the associated non-SMR recording regions, avoiding operation latency for read-modify-write (RMW) operations corresponding to data previously written to an SMR recording region.