G+_Sam Dunham Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Define "tiny," Padre. ;) A 240GB SSD is roughly $125. Add on a TB spinning drive to that for about $70 and you're sitting at nearly $200 for that configuration. By contrast, you can pick up a 1TB 3.5" hybrid drive for about $105. Double the cost doesn't seem like a "tiny" bit more expensive. SSD prices are dropping, but they're not even close to competitive with spinning drives yet. And for those of us that need the space, hybrids are a valid option, even in a desktop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Sam Dunham I really, really love the idea of hybrid hard drives. The problem with 90% of them on the market is the tiny little 8GB SSD being used. Boot windows, now the only thing in the cache is the windows boot files. Starting Titanfall the cache wouldn't even hold all the files being loaded. The good news is that some of the manufacturers have realized this and a few have actually started making drives with a worthy SSD on board. Let's hope that trend continues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Sam Dunham Posted October 3, 2014 Author Share Posted October 3, 2014 I'd definitely like to see larger SSD component son the hybrids. They do, tend to speed up day to day functions as long as you do a lot of the same things day to day. They've been shown to noticeably speed up the PlayStation 4, as well. I happen to have a spare 500GB SSHD that I was going to throw into my PS4, but it wouldn't recognize it for one reason or another. :\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Tyger Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Travis Hershberger I love the idea of hybrid drive. I see them as them as the next generation of large storage devices that should completely eradicate standard spinning platter disks. They're obviously faster. I suspect they are also lower power and lower heat because the disk doesn't have to spin up and down as much. This would make them great for NAS deployment. As stated before, the biggest issue spinning disk side to SSD cache size ratio. An 8GB cache is just too small for a 1TB drive. All the drives I've seen have this problem. It sounds like the industry is finally working on resolving issue. I haven't seen the results yet. What I'd really love to see is an open standardize cross vendor API that lets the OS to monitor and possibly prioritize the blocks / files that get cached. This would be great for database performance tuning that are to big to be considered for SSD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Posted October 7, 2014 Share Posted October 7, 2014 I stick by my statement... unless you're running a single-bay laptop, I would NEVER go with a hybrid drive. The performance hit from a pure SSD to a Hybrid drive can approach 80% As for cost: Seagate ST1000DC001 1TB/8GB Hybrid = $80 vs. Seagate Barracuda ST1000D 1TB 7200RPM drive = $48 120GB Kingston V300 = $65 Total Price: $113 (All prices from Newegg) My setup gives me a MUCH faster system than the hybrid and costs $23 more. So... yeah... "Tiny" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Posted October 7, 2014 Share Posted October 7, 2014 And if you're REALLY caught-up on the idea of a hybrid drive, then why not get a 32GB mSATA drive for your motherboard and use your build-in hybrid feature? It won't take up a drive bay and will give you much faster hybrid performance than a hybrid drive. (And the price difference goes from $23 more, to $3 more -- again from NewEgg) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Sam Dunham Posted October 7, 2014 Author Share Posted October 7, 2014 1. But you're overlooking the VAST storage difference. That storage space has value as well. There's no way I could get by with 120GB (or even 240GB) on my MacBook. 2. That idea has some merit. Though you'd have to have a motherboard with the "hybridization" feature built-in. Otherwise the 32GB SSD wouldn't be big enough to be useful. On the hybrid, the drive itself handles the behind the scenes logical volume stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Posted October 7, 2014 Share Posted October 7, 2014 Sam Dunham 1. I'm not overlooking it at all. That's why I qualified my comment (and the episode segment) with "unless you're running a single-bay laptop." - The episode was about DESKTOPS... and in a desktop, with plenty of space, there is no good excuse to go with a hybrid drive rather than a SSD/HDD combo. 2. No. If you're running Windows, that feature is built into the OS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Sam Dunham Posted October 7, 2014 Author Share Posted October 7, 2014 :shudder: I'm not sure I'd trust Windows to handle that. I barely trust it to handle the filesystem. ;) That said, until the cost of SSDs drops way past where it is now, we'll just have to agree to disagree. The difference in cost per megabyte is just too great still. Now, back to trying to get my Hackintosh to properly dual boot Windows. :) Love the show, by the way... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Tyger Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ I did think about your solution ( HD drive + SSD cache drive) but it still can have more cost. While space is usually not an issue, SATA connectors can be. If you have to buy another SATA interface board, that raises the cost of this deployment. I have 6 SATA connectors on main server mono, all of them already in use. So SATA connectors can be at a premium. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 I'm just gonna throw this out there... A Seagate Momentus XT will top out at ~115MB/s read ... with a sustained of ~55MB/s (the cache gets very quickly exhausted and it needs to go back to the drive.) A Kingston 3K will top out at ~545MB/s read... with a sustained of ~545MB/s So... the SSD isn't just "a little faster"... it SPANKS a hybrid drive. (And don't believe the specs that only show you the Hybrid operating off it's SSD... you need a composite benchmark because the MAJORITY of the data you'll be accessing of your drive will NOT be in the cache. Your system may be bay-limited or connector-limited... and that's where a Hybrid drive may make sense... but just know exactly how much of a bottleneck you're creating by going with a slower storage device. (Remember the Toshiba W50? 59% of it's potential performance killed off by a HDD) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Costabile “Gustavo” Ian Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 My laptop is quite sluggish and was thinking of doing an upgrade. Something that caught my eye was the wd black2, it isn't like the Momentus where it caches but actually splits the both storage types. its read speeds is significantly better than the Momentus and offers the two in one form factor. Thoughts anyone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Sam Dunham Posted October 10, 2014 Author Share Posted October 10, 2014 That actually looks like a pretty decent solution. ~$185 where a 120GB SSD + 1 TB HDD would be around $150. Interesting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Stephen Butler Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 You could always use a 1tb hdd and a 30gb cache drive will come out the same price as the hybrid drive but much faster. Perfect comprise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Sam Dunham Posted October 10, 2014 Author Share Posted October 10, 2014 Word of warning on that Black² - It's not MacOS or Linux compatible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Tyger Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 Costabile Ianni If you can work in under 240GB, go for an SSD. You'll get lots more performance, better power usage, and more shock resistance from an SSD. If not, look at the hybrid drives. They are you're best bet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Costabile “Gustavo” Ian Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 Sam Dunham my laptop is a dual boot machine with Windows 8.1 sluggish and Windows 10 which is snappier. Ben Tyger it's a machine that will do little to no travel but plan on using exclusively for a few months in the future due to moving and will not have access to my desktop machines. Will take the 240GB into consideration though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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