"gaming" hybrid hard drives?

I've recently been considering updating one of my desktops to use a SSD
drive. Problem is the expense. For a 500 GB drive, the costs I'm
seeing are still a bit beyond my range. Upon researching, however, I
came across so-called "hybrid" HDs that are apparently a combination of
traditional and SSD components, and these seem to be in the same price
range as traditional HDs. I didn't realize these even existed until my
research of the SSDs, so I'm guessing that they must be fairly new.
Anyway, for the price, I am considering just switching to one of those
for now, but I'd like to find out if they really are almost as fast as
SSD as claimed by the manufacturers and how is their longevity compared
to a regular HD? And, if they are decent, what are the better brands?

thank you

On 12/17/2016 10:19 AM, Aj St. Johns wrote:
I've recently been considering updating one of my desktops to use a SSD
drive. Problem is the expense. For a 500 GB drive, the costs I'm
seeing are still a bit beyond my range. Upon researching, however, I
came across so-called "hybrid" HDs that are apparently a combination of
traditional and SSD components, and these seem to be in the same price
range as traditional HDs. I didn't realize these even existed until my
research of the SSDs, so I'm guessing that they must be fairly new.
Anyway, for the price, I am considering just switching to one of those
for now, but I'd like to find out if they really are almost as fast as
SSD as claimed by the manufacturers and how is their longevity compared
to a regular HD? And, if they are decent, what are the better brands?

thank you

I don't game but I do have a good number of utilities and programs
(office and photoshop at least), and a mediocre docs/music/videos in my
home. And even after all that, I could put the whole thing on a
smaller 60G SSD. Right now my laptop is running Win10 and Linux Mint
dual boot on a 128G SSD but I did remove the DVD and put a 500G spinner
there for bulk data.

I like the idea of the OS and minimal files on the SSD and then dump the
load of other stuff on a spinner. There are a ton of articles on the
net on how to move My_Docs and My_Videos etc to D: and even how to put
the swap file (which you should) on D:. I would venture to guess too
that Program Files could also be moved too, but don't hold me to that.

With a Hybrid, you're letting the internal logic determine what files go
on the SSD and what is on the spinner part. It might be great logic,
it might not.

However a Hybrid is great for a laptop. If I didn't have a dual boot
and didn't know how to re-use the DVD slot, I probably would have gone
there.

"Aj St. Johns" wrote:

I've recently been considering updating one of my desktops to use a SSD
drive. Problem is the expense. For a 500 GB drive, the costs I'm
seeing are still a bit beyond my range. Upon researching, however, I
came across so-called "hybrid" HDs that are apparently a combination of
traditional and SSD components, and these seem to be in the same price
range as traditional HDs. I didn't realize these even existed until my
research of the SSDs, so I'm guessing that they must be fairly new.
Anyway, for the price, I am considering just switching to one of those
for now, but I'd like to find out if they really are almost as fast as
SSD as claimed by the manufacturers and how is their longevity compared
to a regular HD? And, if they are decent, what are the better brands?

Use partitioning to separate OS/apps from data files. If you look at
the disk consumption for Windows and your apps, you probably aren't
using much more than 60 GB. Instead of keeping your docs under the My
Documents folder under your user profile folder which is on the C:
drive, keep your data files elsewhere, like in a different partiton (on
a different drive).

I bought a 250GB SSD for $88 (Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SATA3 from Newegg,
now $2 more). I keep few data files under %userprofile%; e.g., My
Documents, My Pictures, My Videos) which is on the C: drive (a
partition). The vast majority of my data files (docs, videos, images,
etc) are in a different partition. That was even back when I had a
larger HDD where OS/apps and data were on the same HDD but data was is a
different partition (drive D on the HDD than for files of the OS/apps
(drive C.

You can have multiple partitions on the same disk. I find it easier to
manage a single partition that spans the entire disk, so I get another
disk when I want another partition.

So I can buy a 250GB SSD for $90. I can buy a 1TB HDD for $50. Total
price would be $140. No point in buying a 500GB HDD since I found a 1TB
for cheaper at the same place (Newegg).

I saw a 1TB hybrid SSD/HDD for $75 at Newegg. Only 8GB is the SSD.
That is why they are so much cheaper than SSD-only disks. It is not the
primary media. It's used as a big lookahead read buffer. Write
buffering still has to get written to the much slower HDD. My
recollection from reading about them is that you have to install their
software to do the lookahead analysis to see what files or portion of
them to keep in the SSD; i.e., let it figure out how you use your
computer to determine what to keep in the SSD for fast reads. For files
not in the SSD (files that have to come from the HDD) or when creating
new files (which still must be written to the HDD even if temporarily
stored in the SSD), you lose all the speed advantages of SSD because you
have to use the HDD for the new files. Caching into the SSD will take
awhile. There is noticeable improvement at the start since all the
files are coming off the HDD to put into the SSD. Speed improves over
time as you use the hybrid disk. An SSD-only drive will outperform a
hybrid drive, and the data files you aren't using all the time on the
HDD will be delivered just as fast as for the HDD part of a hybrid
drive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive
http://www.pcworld.com/article/20254...-for-you-.html

I'd rather have an SSD for both fast reads and writes for the OS/apps
drive and use the slower HDD for data file storage. It is cheaper to
get a hybrid disk ($75) than both an SSD and HDD ($140). What happens
when you move to an OS or version thereof for which the hybrid maker
does not provide the lookahead software?

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 14:07:45 -0500, Big Al wrote:

I like the idea of the OS and minimal files on the SSD and then dump the
load of other stuff on a spinner. There are a ton of articles on the
net on how to move My_Docs and My_Videos etc to D:

I see no reason to move those folders anywhere. If you don't like that
they're on C:, why not simply create similarly-named folders on D: and
be done with it?

Or do what I do and use the built-in Libraries for that. That's what
they excel at. For documents, for example, create a Documents folder on
D: and add it to the Documents Library (along with the C:\...\Documents
folder) and make it the default save location. The result is that you
can read a file from either folder, but saves go seamlessly to D:.

and even how to put the swap file (which you should) on D:.

I'd say that swap should most definitely stay on C: if C: is an SSD.
When SSDs were very new on the market and information was scarce, there
was fear that frequent writes would quickly wear out an SSD, but we know
better now. We know that we don't have to worry about that.

I would venture to guess too
that Program Files could also be moved too, but don't hold me to that.

If you have to move documents, video, swap, and programs off of the SSD,
then you bought an SSD that is WAY too small! Sure, move some of that,
perhaps video since it uses a lot of space, but surely not the rest.

--

Char Jackson