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    SSD and Hybrid

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Wildride, Apr 6, 2012.

  1. Wildride

    Wildride Notebook Consultant

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    I'm completing my specs for my new notebook. The last question I have is...

    I have a 256GB SSD Drive sitting at home waiting to be my primary drive but that's not big enough for all of my needs. Currently I have a 750BG 7200 rpm drive (3Gb sec) configured as my secondary drive. I'm wondering should I configure it for a 750Gb Hybrid drive instead or is that just a waste of money? From what I have read the Hybrid utilizes a cache but if the drive is only 2ndary will any data ever hit the cache to increase transfer speeds?
     
    Wildride, Apr 6, 2012
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  2. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    The Hybrid as a secondary drive works great as well if you use your secondary storage as a place where things are read multiple times and disk IO can be a bottleneck. If you have any kind of "digital library" read over and over again and the app that needs the data is bottlenecked by I/O, the Momentus XT Hybrid serves up that data just a pace behind an SSD. In some scenarios, it makes a huge difference.

    Regardless, you should definitely change your configuration. For a system drive, if you can, using a Hybrid (or a Solid State Drive) would be optimal - as your read times (including data read while booting) will be better than on a platter based drive, and loading apps / booting will definitely benefit.
     
    jclausius, Apr 6, 2012
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  3. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    IMO that's a waste of money. Hybrid SSD drives only work well as the OS drive, plus the 500 and 750 GB Hybrid drives aren't any faster than the Scorpio Blacks and cost way more money.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, Apr 6, 2012
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  4. Wildride

    Wildride Notebook Consultant

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    Missed the SSD portion of the 256GB drive. I don't think anything coming off of the 2ndary drive will have a high occurrence rate. So im leaning against the extra cost.
     
    Wildride, Apr 7, 2012
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  5. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    In that case, probably not worth it unless you have large libraries as mentioned above.

    In your opinion, yes it may be a waste of money.

    But it is incorrect to say the drive only works as an OS drive. Also the Hybrids *ARE* faster than the Socrpio Blacks in read operations when those files end up in the SSD cache.

    For the layman, the Hybrid works well with any files read over and over again. Ever get tired of Windows Media Player or iTunes crawling to try to bring up your MP3 library stored on this drive. Not a problem when MP3s (and any generated images) are stored on the drive and end up in the cache. Have a large photo collection you browse? Again, very fast when cached.

    The question is, is that performance worth the extra $40 or so to the buyer? In some cases, no and in some cases yes. It all depends on the user.
     
    jclausius, Apr 7, 2012
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