Hybrid hard drives

[FoxTrot]

Are they worth it or are they just a gimmick? I hear mixed reactions about them, some say its well worth it even over a 7200rpm drive and others say dont bother. From what i gather only Seagate makes hybrids - the Momentus XT. They just came out with a model with 8GB flash on it.

[Xtrema]

Unless you have a laptop with a single drive bay, I think this is hardly worth it.

Go for a 120GB SSD + a cheap ass 1 to 2 TB HD.

[WhippWhapp]

I have a 4gb first gen in my m11x, no complaints and boots very fast.

Xtrema's comment is true, I'd only consider for a laptop.

[FoxTrot]

Yes this would be for a laptop, and the owner doesnt want to have 2 drives in it because they use their bluray drive a lot.

Mem Ex has the 500GB last gen with 4GB flash for $160 and the 750GB next gen 8GB flash for $230.

Just trying to decide if the extra $80 is worth it.

- newer model, from what i read faster
- double the nano memory
- 250 more GB


Originally posted by WhippWhapp
I have a 4gb first gen in my m11x, no complaints and boots very fast.

Xtrema's comment is true, I'd only consider for a laptop.

do you ever find you run out of the 4GB nano memory?

[Wakalimasu]

I have a 120GB SSHD + 2 TB hitachi drive and everything is great.

With Win7+WoW+PS+OFFICE on the 120GB i have like 40GB left

Win7 also tries to put 16GB pagefile but I got that reduced to 4GB

I don't know how you can go with 8 GB drive tbh ..

[Mibz]

I didn't even think 4GB was enough for a Win7 install :P

[Wakalimasu]

Ahh I read up on them.. I guess the 1st 4GB or 8GB is a buffered flash memory which data is written into first for faster access then moved to the platter section which is the bigger number.

Its mostly made for laptops to save space.

[clem24]

Originally posted by Wakalimasu
I have a 120GB SSHD + 2 TB hitachi drive and everything is great.

With Win7+WoW+PS+OFFICE on the 120GB i have like 40GB left

Win7 also tries to put 16GB pagefile but I got that reduced to 4GB


I'd just disable the page file altogether. That is murder on an SSD.

As soon as I got my SSD, I disabled the page file, moved all TEMP locations to my HDD (and in Photoshop as well), moved my email off the SSD, turn off temporary internet files or move them to an HDD, etc..., and even uninstalled antivirus. Now my computer runs like a champ every time I boot it up.

[WhippWhapp]

Originally posted by FoxTrot
do you ever find you run out of the 4GB nano memory?

It's invisible to the end user, performance is between an SSD and platter drive, with a lower cost per/gb than SSD.

I bought mine for $60 on Kijiji, at that price I have zero complaints.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by WhippWhapp


It's invisible to the end user, performance is between an SSD and platter drive, with a lower cost per/gb than SSD.

I bought mine for $60 on Kijiji, at that price I have zero complaints.

This. It's not a partition you install on but worked as secondary non-volatile cache on top of your typical 32/64MB volatile cache.

If I understand it correctly, whichever block on your HD get access the most will be written to the SSD and pointer redirected so you get the performance when those blocks are called or written to. But you are basically on the mercy of software to determine the pattern, to me that's a extra point of failure.

And here's some food for thought, can the hybrid drive service with the SSD portion died from excessive writes? Remember, SSD while better now with there 2nd/3rd gen products, still years behind platter drives when it comes to MTBF (I know MTBF suppose to be better with SSD, but to me it's a draw. Less moving part vs limited amount of writes.)

You should always mitigate drive failures by backups. But with pure SSD, at least I know I can limit writes to it. How much more read/write will happen in this case when it's served as cache?

The fact is I hate anything that bill themselves as hybrids. It always means, be it cars or electronics, that always means twice as much can go wrong and fuck with you while it's complex setup means there not enough saving to be had.


So in a laptop, sure, it probably give you better bang for the buck per GB. But back that shit up.

[WhippWhapp]

I was curious and I've never timed it, cold boot to desktop is 35 seconds with no optimizations.

I have no clue what the boot previous was because the Momentus went in as soon as I unboxed the m11x.