Hybrid drives

[KIAB]

Are Hybrid drives worth buying?

Been looking at the Seagate ST1000DX001 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive, don't know whether to with seperate ssd & hard drive or a hybrid drive, advantages/ disadvantages?

[DanceswithUnix]

The amount of flash on a hybrid is tiny, so personally unless you reboot your PC a lot (which it should help with) I wouldn't bother.

I think for most people a simple hard drive is still fine.

[Goobley]

I concur with the above. I still haven't gotten an SSD for my desktop as I find a decent mechanical is still fine. I don't really feel like you'd gain that much from those hybrids with 8 or 16GB of flash.

[minicale]

If you have plenty of space already with a normal hdd then no but if you need more space or are building a new rig with no ssd then maybe.

[Rob_B]

Goobley - Have you ever used on on a desktop? Not very may people would say there isn't much difference, night and day springs to mind when I remember changing to an SSD.

As for a hybrid, I've got one on my laptop and for my usage its noticeably better (due to the way laptops get used) for a desktop though? I'd probably skip the hybrid and wait for a bigger/cheaper SSD or buy a cheap 60GB SSD as a boot drive.

[KIAB]

Thanks for reply, be doing a bit more reading, I think it's better to go for a seperate 60gb ssd for a boot drive as suggested by Rob-B.

[Goobley]

Goobley - Have you ever used on on a desktop? Not very may people would say there isn't much difference, night and day springs to mind when I remember changing to an SSD.

<snip>

I've never used an SSD on my personal desktop, but have on a few friends' machines. On a friend's iMac it was pretty much night and day, I won't dispute that. OS X must hammer the disk quite a lot (he was a bit short on RAM too).

However on all the Windows/Linux boxes (desktops) I've used, I've yet to see it be compelling enough. Maybe it's my usage profile: I never wait in front of my computer for it to boot, I press the button and come back later. Most programs only get opened once per day, so I'm not fussed if it takes Thunderbird or Chrome 5s to open once per day.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't find myself waiting for my computer, I think it's always waiting for me to catch up.

[walibe]

I've never used an SSD on my personal desktop, but have on a few friends' machines. On a friend's iMac it was pretty much night and day, I won't dispute that. OS X must hammer the disk quite a lot (he was a bit short on RAM too).

However on all the Windows/Linux boxes (desktops) I've used, I've yet to see it be compelling enough. Maybe it's my usage profile: I never wait in front of my computer for it to boot, I press the button and come back later. Most programs only get opened once per day, so I'm not fussed if it takes Thunderbird or Chrome 5s to open once per day.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't find myself waiting for my computer, I think it's always waiting for me to catch up.

MACOS works very similarly to other Unix clones, the real genius is their fusion drives. I found it night and day moving Windows 7 to SSD but only in boot times. Didn't really notice much when it came to actually using apps.

With the price of SSD drives now I'd pick up a 120-128 gig drive to use as your boot drive (The Windows partition does love to grow). Even all SSD I'd consider a separate physical SSD for your boot volume and another SSD drive (512 gig have dropped in prices) as your Apps drive.

[DanceswithUnix]

Thanks for reply, be doing a bit more reading, I think it's better to go for a seperate 60gb ssd for a boot drive as suggested by Rob-B.

Was rather pushed for time before and so rather terse, I will try again.

My Windows drive is a 250GB Samsung SSD, and very nice it is too. No windows hard drive, but Linux is still on HDD as I need more storage for work. I always found Windows a bit iffy dealing with multiple drives, so I held off getting an SSD until I could get one big enough to act as my single drive. I still have 60GB free and haven't had to go removing any games yet but then I am not a big gamer.

Most of the time there really isn't any difference from the hard drive I had before and the SSD I have now, apart from a few tasks like big OS updates and game patching which is really screamingly fast.

That is with 8GB of ram, if you are ram starved then it will make far more difference. But then if your machine is ram starved, get more ram.

So these days I think it is fairly simple: If you want speed get an SSD. If you want cheap or big storage, get a hard drive.

[Bonebreaker777]

I would say an hybrid HDD does make sense in a laptop, but in a desktop where is (usually) abundance of space and if your financial means allow, rather go for a separate SSD plus normal HDDs.

Even if the SSHD reviews suggest that there are measurable benefits from using such drives vs. normal drives.

[fuddam]

I started using a hybrid this week, for the first time. The same one you mention, funnily enough. Boot up is very fast compared to my previous HDD (which died).

Would buy the hybrid again.

[Spreadie]

Hybrid drives sit in between SSDs and HDDs, unsurprisingly.

They work fine - the 8GB (in my case) SSD cache takes a couple of reboots to get used to what files are regularly required but, after that, your system will boot up almost as fast as a regular SSD; to the point of being almost indistinguishable.

As far as general operations go, it's the same story - the cache "remembers" which apps/files you use on a regular basis and stores them for fast retrieval. Opening something you don't use very often is much slower, because it's still stored solely on the disc platters. Day to day use isn't quite as snappy as an SSD, but still an improvement over a HDD.

They tend to use SLC NAND for the SSD cache, which is quick and much more durable than MLC - five to ten times more - so wearing it out isn't really a major worry. I did hear that some firms were going to use cheaper MLC for the cache, but offer more of it with over-provisioning and wear-levelling, but I haven't researched so it might be bunk. I'd prefer to stick with SLC though.

I think there's a place for them in the market - relatively lost cost and decent capacities coupled with a mid-point in performance, makes them attractive, especially to those of us on a budget.

[DanceswithUnix]

I think there's a place for them in the market - relatively lost cost and decent capacities coupled with a mid-point in performance, makes them attractive, especially to those of us on a budget.

I think hybrids make utter sense in a laptop.

I have a Seagate phobia though, and they still seem to be the only people that make them

My desktop doesn't boot that often, i usually suspend to disk. That means an 8GB read in a single big gulp, something that a spinning disk is actually rather good at.

[Bonebreaker777]

...I have a Seagate phobia though, and they still seem to be the only people that make them ...

Uhm, Toshiba 500GB Hybrid SSHD or Toshiba 1TB Hybrid SSHD. No more excuses