Anyone try a hybrid SSD?

I'm thinking about getting this. I know it won't be as fast as an SSD, but I'm told it will be a lot faster than what I already have + it's affordable. Is this a good alternative?

 

I installed the XT2 750GB for a couple of months, and I can be satisfied. No problem, the startup is fast, 750GB is a beautiful space for my files. But a pure SSD, is another matter. I have a Vertex 2E on Dell M1730 and is born again, everything is fast and easy.

Hi : Cool:

 

I've been using SSDs since 2008 when they first came out. Some of the early ones were often slower than mechanical hard drives when it came to random writes, with tons of stuttering on the system - so much so that they were practically worse than mechanical hard drives.

We've come a long way since then. I believe any SSD you get today basically flies. The current ones that I have do. There's simply no comparing them to mechanical drives anymore.

I have also had the good fortune of trying two generations of the hybrids (the first generation 500 gig and the second generation 750 gig variants), and I can say they do perform very well. The adaptive learning is a wonderful thing to behold. Keep rebooting your system and watch it getting faster! That's like the opposite of the aging effect on Windows and its nice to see.

That said, in my experience, Windows 7's optimization is already pretty effective, which somewhat dampens the benefit - emphasis on somewhat - of the hybrid drives. Especially with the second generation hybrid that has double the cache, this dampening is less visible. However in comparing two physically identical Seagate 500 GB 7200 rpm models - identical except for the Flash cache, that is - there were times when I felt both drives were essentially performing the same. However I must mention on those systems I was significantly stressing the hard disks with tons of random reads and writes far exceeding the Flash cache capacity, all over the disk surface. So in effect I was rendering the Flash component ineffective by running it "out of spec" as I certainly admit my usage cases are not typical (running six VMs for a host of gigabyte size installation tests).

I would say, if you will be using the system for typical use, you really cannot go wrong with a hybrid. There's still no comparison between a hybrid and a regular mechanical drive when it comes to regular use.

The only criticism the 750 GB second generation model has received is price; you could get a real SSD for the same price and one that wouldn't be too small at that. So I'd factor that into my thinking - if you can make do with the limited space a pure SSD offers, don't shy away from it! And remember you can always boost available space 25% with NTFS compression.

If storage space is important, then without a doubt the hybrids are still a better choice than the mechanicals. They aren't a poorly implemented idea - they are actually a very mature, efficient solution (at least for most use cases). And while its rare compared to 2008, I believe the hybrids, thanks to the underlying physical platters, would be more reliable than some pure SSDs. Yes, some pure SSDs still may shock you when they die all out of the blue; which unfortunately I have also experienced multiple times.

 

Thanks for the advice. I'm getting the 750gig Seagate for $175. Can't wait.