SSD + HDD vs. Hybrid drive?

My current setting is Lenovo R61 T7100 2GB Ram 160GB WD. Looking to improve overall performance and most tasks I do are heavy multi-tasking, like 20 webpages + multiple youtubes + multiple productivity programs + heavy download tasks, and some light photo editing. Thinking of 2 options;

1. 40GB SSD + my current hard drive moves to 2nd bay, the SSD for program/OS/swapfile

2. One hybrid, like Momentus XT 250GB (want a single platter)

Those will runs about $100 something. The 2nd option is a little more tempting since I can move the drive to my new machine when I purchase (looking forward to get a Sandy Bridge later this year, maybe Lenovo E220s).

 

R61 has a pata optical drive bay so your sata HDD would lose performance if moving it there - no AHCI. You'd also incur a 0.8W-1W extra power consumption overhead due to the sata-to-pata bridge chip so consider the hit on your battery life.

Best option would be to get a 240GB SF1222 SSD for $325 http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...enice-x3-sf1200-2-5-240gb-sataii-mlc-ssd.html . Otherwise I'd go the hybrid drive now and do a SSD+HDD setup once you have a system with a sata optical drive connector. I guess you could consider an expresscard e-sata solution as well.

 

Wow, I totally forgot about that! Thanks for reminding me. Seems like double drive solution will not work in my case. Hybrid make more sense now since the SSD is way too expensive to run as a single drive solution, IMHO, of course.

 

Also, I would reconsider a 'single' platter solution.

If you don't need the space; partition the drive to the size of the single platter version and enjoy the benefits of a much faster responding system.

Or, go all out and do this:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...00-benchmark-setup-specifics.html#post5617217


The Seagate Momentus XT 500GB drive works very, very fast with the above partitioning scheme - especially if you use PerfectDisk 11 Professional to maintain it once a month or so.

Good luck.

 

Try reading my thread and see if it helps. Sorry if it's not relevant but after reading yours I think you might find what you need in there

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...t-2-5-laptop-hdd-question-my-current-hdd.html

TL;DR I'm getting the wd7500bpkt I think due to it's pretty amazing benches in a link provided in the thread I made. Have a look-sy and see if that's what you need as well.