Where to buy Hybrid hard drives

savemoney

I am planning on getting a new rig with ssd drive next year with the new mobos that dont have bios assuming they are good. I hate slow bootups. I would be using ssd drive for windows7 mainly

DatabaseError

The more I read..the less sure I am..

Seems it's a well received drive, as a single system drive. I can't find anyone comapring it with a SSD+HDD solution, though it seems to sit in the "slower than a SSD, faster than mechanical" spot for most situations.

Russel245

DatabaseError wrote: »

The more I read..the less sure I am..

Seems it's a well received drive, as a single system drive. I can't find anyone comapring it with a SSD+HDD solution, though it seems to sit in the "slower than a SSD, faster than mechanical" spot for most situations.

I know what you mean, I'm getting a bit of the same feeling, I just read however that it "learns" what you use more often and then preloads that data onto the SSD portion on the fly in anticipation of what it thinks you will load next... apparently.

Hence why it almost kept up on that benchmark, I'll bet they had it loading the data in that order a few times over so it was anticipating what to load next.

I think I'll just save a little bit longer for a full SSD with enough capacity...

Glad I asked about it, thanks guys.

JJ_Egan

Any feedback on the overclockers forum ??

jje

Scrilla

Thanks Russel245 for bringing this up. I've been looking for a faster hard drive without going SSD and this is an option I've not been aware of before. It's very affordable compared to an SSD option and good from a capacity point of view too. Thanks to everyone else to for their input in this topic

Richie-from-the-Boro

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is little difference price between SSD and Hybrid. The price per GB ratio is more or less the same, but the performance ratio is miles apart in favour of the SSD.

#6 DatabaseError - SSD self-optimisation is a function of trim [ make sure the SSD you buy has REV2 firmware TRIM support ] on Win7 x64 at the install point on a new O/S, you will need to run the performance index on an existing / clone image O/S. Both the SDD and the Hybrid will need 6GB SATA port support on the MOBO to achieve the full benefit although both are 3GB backwards compatible.

I'm certainly no expert on the Hybrid, but I fail to understand why anyone would want an allegory of an SSD instead of the real thing when the price per GB is so close. SSD's come in three flavours (1) too soddin expensive (2) those using the sandforce chip, aka OCZ / CORSAIR / PATRIOT GSkill / ETC and (3) best [ in my opinion ] bang for buck boot drive performance at the cheaper / non-Sandforce end of the scale.

DatabaseError

@richie.
I'd love to know where you're finding a 500Gb SSD for under a hundred quid..I paid not much less for 64Gb (non-sandforce..but that's ok )

I suspect you didn't read what the hybrid is/does...It contains a 32Gb Solid State Memory and a controller which moves frequently accessed data from the mechanical 500Gb drive attached to the SSD transparently of the OS/user itself.
Without comparative reviews I still suspect a stand alone SSD + fast mechanical drive is a faster solution (for desktop systems, for laptops the drive is genius!), but I'm coming round to the idea that the drive does have a place in the market, and the technology may become more prevalent until the price/GB of standalone SSDs drops

JasX

DatabaseError wrote: »

I suspect you didn't read what the hybrid is/does...It contains a 32Gb Solid State Memory and a controller which moves frequently accessed data from the mechanical 500Gb drive attached to the SSD transparently of the OS/user itself.

Actuallly its only 4GB solid state memory which makes me a little suspect how much difference it'll actually be able too make (plus 32Meg cache memory)

DB i'm mulling over whether or not to jump into SSD, any good article or summary you can point me towards on the merits and drawbacks of sandforce? what you get for spending more £££s than the sandforce range and what the cheaper option gives you?

DatabaseError

My apologies...I misread 32Mb as 32Gb :? I guess specsavers are on my "to do" list

JasX..i suspect you're toying with me now, you probably know more about the controllers than I :P

Personally I went for a cheap non-sandforce drive, as I decided that shaving a couple of ms off transfer times really wasn't worth the extra money to me..I'm still a little undecided about the whole thing, yep my boot times are fast, my apps load in no time, but boot time wasn't thatslow before (though I have another PC directly beside mine and it is a noticeable difference) Apps load blisteringly fast, but I never really spend that much of the day twiddling my thumbs as Word loaded in a couple of seconds rather than..er..seemingly instantly. Am I happy I went SSD? Yes... Would I do the same again? ...not so sure, if I had money to burn...yeah, probably, if I was on a tight budget..probably not. (with 4 half decent PCs in the house, 2 quads and 2 e5200, mine is the only one with a SSD)

The sandforce based drives do seem to have a definite advantage from benchmarks, but as I understand it the benchmarks tend to hide the reality, all current Gen SSD are really, really fast drives, imagine them as spotscars capable of 0-60 in 3.6 seconds..the sandforce are quicker..0-60 in 3.2 seconds...faster, yep, but you're not gonna notice that difference from the drivers seat

JasX

Cheers DB,

I'm still in two minds, I currently have my OS on a a Spinpoint F3 with a deliberately small outer partition and it seems pretty quick.

thing is that even as a conventional drive benchmarks at 127 MB/s odd sustained read and with some of the lower end SSDs not quoting drastically more than that I'm wondering if its worth it.

Other things driving it is I have a niggling Win7 refuses to power down 20% of the time bug I'm resigned to doing a clean install to fix after faffing with /pwrcfg and not much in the eventlog.

If i'm reinstalling anyway is it worth switching to SSD..... plus i'm trying to come up with something to ask for over Xmas i'll actually use.

will ponder a little more but leaning towards holding off on SSDs for another year for now