Patent ID: 8670205

Claim:
A hybrid drive comprising: a disk channel comprising a head actuated over a disk, the disk comprising a plurality of data sectors; a non-volatile semiconductor memory (NVSM) comprising a plurality of memory segments; and control circuitry operable to: receive write commands from a host, wherein the write commands comprise write data; and when a frequency of the write data based on a frequency of write data serviced by the disk channel falls below a first threshold, adjust an operating mode of the disk channel to a lower power mode to decrease the power consumption rate of the disk channel; wherein the control circuitry is further operable to: service write commands using the NVSM while the disk channel is in the lower power mode; and adjust the operating mode of the disk channel to further decrease the power consumption rate of the disk channel when the frequency of write data targeted to the disk channel and serviced by the NVSM falls below a second threshold.