What's the advantage of a "hybrid" hard drive?

Another dumb Noob question--I'm considering a Malibal Lotus W150 laptop. Had penciled in the 750GB (7,200 RPM) conventional hard drive, but $35 extra gets me optional 500GB 2.5" SATA 300 Hybrid w/ 4GB NAND Flash. I'm sure I can get by without the extra 250GB but just am unfamiliar with hybrid drives.

The rest of the configuration: Core i7 2670 QM, 8GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz, nVidia Ge Force GT540 graphics card (GT555 is an option, but not planning to bite on that since I won't be doing serious gaming). Please explain pros/cons, and any specific performance advantages to be gained from the hybrid for general multi-tasking use. Thanks,

 

Speed of an ssd combined with the storage space of a hard drive without the high price of an ssd. That of course is the basic answer.

 

The SSD caches frequently used files; the mechanical 500GB part is the same as a standard hard drive.

 

The concept is a bridge solution between an SSD and a conventional Hard Drive that uses spinning disk,it's meant to improve the speeds of a convectional hard drive while still maintaining relatively lower cost, then SSDs of equal capacity,however it still does not reach speeds anywhere near modern SSDs,but it does improve system responsiveness.

Intel offers a similar technology called Smart Response,the difference is the you have to use a dedicated SSD,via an Msata port,which you may want to take a look at as well.

 

Do they offer the new 2nd Gen. 750GB XT hybrid? If the price differential is one you can swing, they offer even better performance than their 500GB counterpart.

 

How does the drive choose which files are "frequently" used? Is it a dynamic response to the usage patterns seen on each computer or is it a standardized list of OS files, MS Applications etc?

 

Seagate Reinvents the Hybrid Laptop Hard Drive | PCWorld
Note I am not a fan of this brand.

Ignatz_A2 I would get the cheapest hard drive available and upgrade to an SSD when prices go down or good deals appear.
Then you could use the original HD for storage and the SSD for OS and Apps. (assuming you do not need an optical drive)

 

My definition: Not as fast as an SSD but faster than a HDD. Not as big as a HDD but bigger than a SDD. Simple, eh?

 

It is called poor men's SSD. If you can't afford a full ssd drive you can buy an imitation SSD and (try to) be happy.


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The 4GB of NAND flash will cache files associated with programs that you frequently use. Over time, as tis cache is built, the drive will use that instead of the rotational media to launch programs, etc. A good example will be your boot times. Over the course of several boots, all your startup files and progams will be cached, so Windows won't need to reference the rotational media. The speeds are quite an improvement over traditional HDDs for things you use all the time, but they will still be slower than an actual SSD.

I personally went for an SSD as my main drive and replaced my optical drive with an HDD, but my budget allowed for that at the time, and I'm just a gadget freak, so I "had to have" an SSD in both my notebook and my wife's netbook. Your budget and needs/wants may differ, so make the decision that is best for you.

 

I haven't seen it personally, but the 2 MomentusXT 500 GB drives I owned were disappointingly slow. They booted into desktop in 1 minute, and don't read/write faster than the fastest 7200 rpm notebook drives (Scorpio Blacks). They are also 50% more expensive than a comparable sized 500 GB Scorpio Black. IMO I'd get a real SSD and a caddy/secondary mechanical drive.

 

In relation to booting, a second or two difference is still quite impressive. And if you have a library of files used over and over again, the XTs make a great data disk. Considering you can pick one up at a decent price - (just around $220), you can save around $130 USD and have about 3x the space, that may satisfy a lot of users.

More info here on the 2nd Gen XT here - AnandTech - Seagate 2nd Generation Momentus XT (750GB) Hybrid HDD Review

 

Makes boot time considering lower as well with the increase read access of the flash.

 

Thanks for all the feedback. I do need an optical drive, so for the extra $35 I think I'll spring for the hybrid and look to possibly upgrade later if I need to and the price is right.

 

Not necessarily that. Many laptops have a single drive bay, and this is a good middle ground. The new 750GB Momentus XT is supposedly going to have a firmware update to allow for user enabled write caching as well, currently it's only read cache.

 

For $35, it is hard to not take this deal. Even for the much slower first gen version of the XT Hybrid.

However, what I would be wondering is how small a HDD you can buy and how much money can you save that way? If the savings are substantial, I would buy the system like that and get the new 2nd gen XT Hybrid @ 750GB and have a much, much better performing system overall.

(In my case; if I could save even $35 off the 7200 RPM 750GB HDD's price, coupled with the $35 'extra' to upgrade to the 'old gen' XT, I would be using that money to get the new XT 750GB model as soon as my notebook arrived).


See:
Seagate 750GB Momentus XT 7200.1 SATA 2.5in Hybrid Drive w/ 32MB Cache at Memory Express


The difference from the original XT to the newest version is around 30% faster - more than enough to be noticeable - however the biggest improvement is that on the first 'run' the new XT is just as fast or faster than the old XT is on 4 'runs' or more - what that means is that it learns faster and can adapt to changing user requests on the fly - it feels much faster than the 30% might indicate.

Good luck.

 

SATA 300 2.5" @ 7200 RPM options:

320GB -- Stock
500GB -- + $15
750GB -- + $45
500GB hybrid -- +$80

Obviously there are larger offerings beyond that for even more $$. Purely as a sidebar, since I'm not considering it anyway, 1TB 5400 RPM is a +$140 option (i.e., +$60 vs. the hybrid and +$95 vs. the 750GB). Seems a big jump for more pure disk space, given lower RPMs..??...

 

So, by getting the 320GB stock HDD you save $80.

Put in another $120 on top for an XT Hybrid 750GB HDD and you get 3x the capacity and about 10x the responsiveness. Plus, you will have your original system drive as a system backup.

As for the 1TB drives - not only are they slow - they are unreliable too (from what I've read). As a system drive you may as well put in a 4200RPM drive for all the performance the 1TB drives offer (in O/S use).

The people who opt for that configuration are only wanting to say they have the biggest capacity HDD in a notebook - I'm almost 100% sure they don't know it is also the slowest (and assuming it is a single HDD bay system, of course).

For your case though, this is how I see it: you are getting a backup system drive (the original 'stock' 320GB HDD) and an XT 750GB HDD for $120 above the base system cost (when the XT by itself is worth around $250 with no deals/sales).

I would be jumping on this pronto!

 

Makes sense to me. My question is whether in the configuration you suggest, I'd have to sacrifice the laptop's optical drive? I don't want to do that since at least for the near future, my family will be actively using that drive for DVDs/CDs, and I really don't want another peripheral on the desk.

 

Just swap the stock drive for the XT and install Windows. Done. No touching the optical drive.

 

There are two purposes of the hybrid. Firstly, it is the "poor man's SSD" as folks have called it. Secondly, it is a good compromise for those who don't want to sacrifice their optical drive to run a SSD + HDD set-up that takes up two bays. You fit nicely in the latter category.