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Hybrid Drives
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Author:  JJW009 [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 11:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Hybrid Drives
I "upgraded" the stock 120GB drive in my netbook for an SSD some time ago, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the speed improvement. It boots much faster, apps load faster, and it's especially fast doing more than one thing at a time because it doesn't have a head thrashing from one end of the disk to the other. It's a shame it actually uses more power in standby, but it's only reduced battery life by about 20% so it's a reasonable trade off.

So, I want to upgrade my desktop... but big SSDs are too pricey, and it's a pain trying to split large applications across multiple drives.

A hybrid drive sounds like a good compromise, especially since it's OS agnostic* and I'm still going to be using XP for for the foreseeable future. They get excellent reviews, but does anyone here have experience or thoughts about them? In particular, I'm looking at this one:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/222310

500GB is plenty for the applications I use, and I'll continue to use my traditional drives for media.

Thanks :)


*Wasn't sure where to post this - most of the reviews are for Macbooks!
Author:  tombolt [ Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:25 am ]
Post subject:  Hybrid Drives
I have no experience of that, but multiple ssd drives need not be difficult to split apps across. Put them in a raid 0 and they'll be even faster too.
Author:  JJW009 [ Fri Apr 08, 2011 11:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Hybrid Drives
tombolt wrote:
multiple ssd drives need not be difficult to split apps across. Put them in a raid 0 and they'll be even faster too.

LMAO I'm not spending £100s on a 500GB SSD raid array. What I meant was it's a PITA to have one small SSD and one large HDD and then try to split individual apps to install the frequently accessed components on the SSD.
Author:  l3v1ck [ Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Hybrid Drives
JJW009 wrote:
A hybrid drive sounds like a good compromise

To me it sounds like a good compramise for a laptop where you can only fit one drive in the chassis, but for desktops I don't see the point.
Author:  Geiseric [ Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Hybrid Drives
Yeah I’ve seen those hybrid hard drives on ebuyer and wondered what they are like; the reviews on the site don’t look to bad imo.

If you do end up getting one please let us know how you get on with it.
Author:  JJW009 [ Mon Apr 11, 2011 3:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Hybrid Drives
I might get one for the media centre. It's only got a single 2.5" bay with a 160GB drive in. It's pretty nippy for an Atom but I'd love to see people's reactions when my applications open in a few milliseconds. I'll max the memory out at the same time and it'll probably be faster than our server :D

On the plus side, it's NAND flash so it won't wear out and doesn't need special maintenance.

On the down side, 4GB isn't very much... although for what is effectively a hardware cache that's pretty good for something only a few quid more than a bare drive. A cache controller would cost more than that with no memory or disk...
Author:  veato [ Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Hybrid Drives
PC Pro wrote:
But since the benefit you get is so uncertain and inconsistent, it’s impossible to recommend. For a desktop system you’ll do better with the Samsung Spinpont F3 - it's all mechanical, but it's faster than this hybrid drive and delivers a lot more capacity for your money.

Read more: Seagate Momentus XT 500GB review | Hard disks | Reviews | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/hard-dis ... z1JNWMS1Vr


But

ZDNet wrote:
The Momentus XT exceeded our expectations when it comes to performance. It's arguably the fastest 2.5in. SATA hard drive on the market.

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