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The perfect blend of performance and capacity?
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The perfect blend of performance and capacity?
Not much point to it IMO. Desktop only - the place where it's easy to add extra drives. Maybe if you were considering a Revo drive you'd get this instead, but other than that..
Problem with the review is they have specifically done a small range of tests.....so the caching is working brilliantly.
Now use it for a month doing all the varied tasks you generally do, playing a range of games etc....I bet the results would start to look different.
I have a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive in my laptop (a unibody MacBook), and, even with a mere 4GiB of flash, it makes a huge difference in day-to-day running. Booting the machine, running apps etc are all very quick, and a major OS patch like 10.7.2 brings things right back down to normal laptop HD speeds while the cache sorts itself out.
It's surprising how few blocks of data really need caching on the SSD part if you've got intelligent algorithms. I suspect that a 100GiB cache like this would be more than sufficient for all the critical blocks on a 1TB drive used primarily for gaming and productivity work.
That said, this product still seems like a bit of a silly (or rather, unfinished) idea. If you're going to make it desktop-only, why not pair the SSD with a reasonable-speed 7200rpm desktop drive? They're cheaper to make, higher capacity, and offer better performance than any 2.5" laptop drive.
What I'd really like to see is something like this, but integrated into a standard form-factor 6Gbps SATA 3.5" drive. I'd very seriously consider buying one of those, as I don't have a Z68 chipset but don't want to invest in a huge SSD.
Well, 100GB would probably be enough for most users to install everything they normally access on....Quote:
Originally Posted by Rolphus
So, why buy a hybrid? You paying a price premium for nothing. Just buy a 100GB SSD and install your apps on, then buy a cheap HDD and keep your bulk storage on it.
You know what is and isn't going to load fast, no waiting for algorithms to catch up and a LOT cheaper as well!
i thought 120gb would be plenty but it's not. with games like GTA4 (16gb), witcher 2 (14gb) and now BF3 (11gb) permanent residents on the drive, along with a few other online games of various sizes, you soon find yourself having to pick and choose which games you want to keep on the drive, or sacrifice loading speeds and put them on a different drive.
i'd like to see this drive tested with say 20 games installed, as many program suites, and said games and programs accessed at different times over the days, thus truly testing the performance of the drive after normal use exceeds it's cache size
On a mostly unrelated note, has anyone ever considered putting four 2.5" HDDs into a single 3.5" drive chassis, with an inbuilt controller making them appear as a single 4TB drive to the OS? It'd be a tight squeeze (a quick comparison suggests 2.5" drives are to 3.5" drives as A5 is to A4 (paper), with 2.5x depth), but without needing the complete 2.5" drive chassis and some nifty wiring, should be quite possible.
It wouldn't have to be RAID 0 either, it could be similar to JBOD for some reassurance about drive failure (i.e. only a quarter of the data affected).
100GB certainly isn't enough for either my laptop (120GB of music, plus another 100-200GB of transient TV shows and films before they get archived), or my gaming PC (my Steam folder is well over 300GB, and growing all the time).Quote:
Originally Posted by shaithis
Most of the "streamed" media data doesn't need to be on fast SSD storage. Same with games - loading sound and video data is a huge waste of fast, expensive storage, when it's code, reused textures etc that need the high speed.
So for either of my two main machines, a hybrid drive makes a lot of sense. Also, the Seagate drive I have was £93 when I bought it - approximately 30% more expensive than a normal 7200rpm 500GB laptop drive was at the time, with substantially better performance.
Where a normal SSD would make a lot of sense is in my development machine: I've got under 100GB of data on there, and the speed boost while compiling would be handy.
Could you guys test it with a 7200rpm laptop drive?
Its a silly idea IMHO.
Had this been priced lower or made last year, it would have made sense.
Its not exactly cheap and the price of SSDs are coming down in price every month, I would still rather buy two 120GB SSD's and then have a fast 7200RPM storage drive.
If you'd read the article, you'd know that they can't.Quote:
Originally Posted by mike306dt
I did say MOST.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rolphus
You are FAR from the typical user.
300GB STEAM folder? Hell most people do not own 300GB of games....
As using SSD for A/V storage.......sheeshh.....might as well start wiping your arse with 20 pound notes :P
Grr double post
What I'm saying is that the approach of hybrid drives works. Most users (normal users, non-techie users) do not want to manage multiple drives (I don't either, but that's another discussion). This particular product is (in my opinion) overpriced, but the principle of hybrid drives works very well for enhancing performance in almost all normal workloads and can do so much more cheaply, with much more efficient use of SSD storage, than any manual approach.Quote:
Originally Posted by shaithis
I had read the article. I have a slight issue with short term memory. Its people with attitudes like you that really lower this forum and website down.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheVoice
From what I read, the low rpm drive was to keep cost down........... I asked if hexus could try it with a 7200rpm drive.
Edit : Actually - Hexus state nothing other than the cost is why the 5400rpm drive, unless I'm blind. So my point still stands. I ASKED if they could try a 7200rpm drive, the article says no option for upgrading it, doesn't state simply whether the software doesn't allow it, or if they even tried it.
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Secondly, if you're not too keen on the 5,400RPM hard disk, don't try replacing it. As the product technically has no RAID array and works on VCA 2.0, you can't remove drives and rebuild. According to OCZ, attempting to do so will "destroy the drive immediately".
I'm sure in the short term, with a small amount of applications being used (and so can all just be cached to the drive with minimal fuss), things like this seem great. Give it a few months or so and then how would it perform?
I'd rather just buy an SSD and HHD separately. Then I can put on it exactly what I want to run faster.