Choose SSD for win 8?

I have the choice of 1TB hard drive or 500GB + 32SSD for the same money. Do you think I should get the SSD to speed up win 8. Do you think it would also help speed up photoshop if I use it as a scratch disc. Thanks!

 

You won't be able to access the SSD directly, it's just a cache for the HDD. I would still choose that though, unless you absolutely need the 1TB storage.

 

I'd say I'd grab the 1TB drive... if you don't need storage get a proper SSD, i got 120gb one plus an external 2.5" drive. Also i doubt hybrid would be much quicker, those 1tb HDDs have quite decent speeds, the little Hitachi 1tb i got as external storage averages roughly 80-90mb/s on USB3 when copying large files, so while start-up wont be as fast game load times etc. shouldn't suffer much, or windows themselves unless you got fairly little ram.

 

I'd choose the SSD, if your laptop could support it you can remove the dvd-drive and replace it with a hdd caddy and plug the 1Tb/500gb hdd there and just use the dvd-rom as an external drive.

 

Traditionally, the speed of windows boot times and UI snappinness has been tied to Random 4k Read performance as the boot process involves loading heaps of tiny DLLs and reading through the registry really fast. However, Windows 8 is unique in that there is a Fast Boot feature where essentially, the kernel never shuts down and is unpacked upon boot and repacked on shutdown (like a very lite hibernation mode). This transfers the BOOT speed dependence to Sequential performance, therefore, even a HDD can boot windows 8 with decent times vs windows 7. However, You will notice a massive boot-time speedup with an SSD with windows 8, especially if you install it on a GPT partition with UEFI support. To put in to perspective, my Intel 320 can Fast Boot windows 8 in 25 seconds, this drive can read at 240mb/s and write at 130mb/, I upgraded to a very cheap 256gb ($175) Plextor m5s which could read at 500mb/s and the boot time dropped to 17 seconds, I then upgraded to a very expensive Samsung 840 pro which could read at 520mb/s and the boot time only dropped 1 second. In conclusion for a fast booting, snappy Windows 7, you want the fastest 4k Random read drive you can find, for fastest booting and snappy Windows 8 you want a combination of Fast Sequential and acceptable 4k Random read performance.
These speeds cannot be achieved with a Hybrid SSHD, I'm strongly advocating for a fast dedicated SSD (not neccessarily the fastest like the 840pro) with a secondary hard-disk drive.

For Reading, the Samsung 840pro is undoubtedly the fastest drive at all kinds of Reading with a significant power efficiency. The Plextor m5s was a helluva bargain when I got it for $175 so don't completely discount last gen drives.

Photoshop is a program that loves fast sequential speeds, however, for a scratchdisk, you want really fast all round Write performance.
For this, the OCZ Vector is probably the fastest drive at all round writing that doesn't care if data is compressible or not (with Photoshop, most of the data is incompressible)
The Neutron GTX is also not a bad option either if the Vector proves hard to find.

Therefore, should you go for a dedicated SSD, you really have to prioritize your preferences. The Samsung 840pro is a pretty good all rounder and will net you roughly an extra 30 minutes of battery life but the OCZ Vector is vastly faster at Writing (i.e. photoshop work) with acceptable UI and System boot times.

 

Well since he says he can get hybrid or HDD for same money, i would assume he can't spend xxx$ on the 840 pro, got myself an oldie patriot inferno 120gb ssd, boots really fast, haven't timed it but it is really fast(not 1 second), though i usually just put my laptop to sleep when i go somewhere.

in the end it depends on if you're going to need the extra storage or prefer a slight to moderate increase in performance over the extra 500gb storage.

 

I've tested several notebooks with the hard drive + SSD cache setup (most are 500GB 5400RPM drives tied to a 32GB SSD). The SSD isn't directly accessible as noted. Here's the most recent review:
HP Spectre XT TouchSmart 15t: Performance

The bottom line is the HDD + SSD cache setup does work but the ideal setup is to have a standard SSD.

 

Aye. The HDD + SSD cache - or a hybrid drive - is the middle ground for cost to performance. SSD is ideal for performance though.'

BTW - nice review, Charles. :thumbsup: