What happened with hybrid drives?

I haven't really been paying attention at all but I remember they were doing quite well in benchmarks when they came out.

Is there still a market there? Are new hybrids still being released or are they outdated now?

 

They were born outdated.

Anyway the newest I know is the WD black something something

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SSDs are so much better.. Hell, even SSD + HDD would be a better combo. SSHDs were always a Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.

 

Well they were always a budget drive. You'd have a 500GB HDD for a similar 500GB HDD price, but with a 4-8GB cache of SSD.

Obviously that doesn't give you SSD speeds... but a 500GB SSD even today is over 200 dollars.

Are SSD prices still going down very quickly?

 

Yeah, they're still dropping.


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the cheaper consumer grade ssds are going down but not very quickly

 

And 4-8GB is hardly sufficient for any *real life* task...married to a 5400rpm spinner...no, thanks. I'll take a 7200rpm Hitachi and count my blessings.

True. However, you could have a smaller SSD + large HDD for less than that...

Depends on how one defines "very quickly"...but they've gone down a long way since my first SSD...which was an Intel X-25E...

 

8GB is pretty huge for a cache, actually. I'd expect largely diminishing returns after maybe 16GB. I'd be curious to see some benchmarks on systems that use SSDs as cache and how benefits scale.

That would require two drive bays, which many laptops wouldn't have.

Yeah, true. They're definitely way cheaper than they used to be. Just wish they'd get down to HDD speeds already. I love every aspect of my new laptop *except* the HDD, especially after coming from a fast SSD.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

I could benchmark it, you'd just have to choose a platform and a "competing" drive. Presuming I find time for such a test anytime soon.

While you are correct generally speaking, most systems that are actually worth upgrading have two slots of "some" kind...

What is your new laptop anyway?

 

Really, any drive. Preferably a slower one to emphasize the benefits of the cache, giving a best case performance boost. Going from 8GB -> 16GB -> 32GB and measuring performance would be interesting. My bet is it's pretty logarithmic.

I guess you're referring to swapping out the DVD drive? That's always been a cool idea to me but I haven't ever tried it.

Lenovo t540p.

 

My experience with a 1TB Toshiba SSHD (8GB cache) is pretty good. System resume and opening applications I use often are much quicker than before. General read / write speed nothing special so guess it depends what you are looking for performance wise.
As an upgrade looking for extra storage and with only one slot available (don't want to lose the blu-ray) I really can't fault it in terms of value for money as the cost wasn't much more than a standard drive.
I think the WD Black Dual Drive goes further and has a 'full' 120GB SSD + HDD arrangement but was more than I wanted to spend on what is quite an old system.

 

What is the WD Black Dual Drive?

edit: nvm, found it

For 200 bucks I'd just get a 500GB Samsung 840 Pro

 

I only have one hybrid drive, a Seagate with 8GB cache. You'd want it benchmarked against a conventional HDD? Or SSD?

Yes on larger machines. However, many others have a mSATA or a M2 slot where one can shove in a SSD. That's the setup I have in my X220T: mSATA SSD + HDD in the main bay.

You have a M2 slot, which is unfortunately currently limited to 128GB as that is the largest SSD in that format available at the moment. You could also swap your media drive for an UltraBay HDD carrier.

 

It's more the boards that allow the mSATA drives. I don't really need benchmarks to be honest, it's really just a meaningless curiosity. Thank you for offering though.

Ah, gotcha.

I had no idea I had the M2 slot, I thought that wasn't included in the model. Cool. 128GB would be more than enough most likely, especially if the board supports using it as a cache.

M2 can take mSATA?

 

You may want to verify that, since I haven't really explored the T540p and its options whatsoever. I know that 440-series machines have them, and would be extremely surprised if they took it out on T540p.

 

Yeah, I'll see about that.

 

Real SSD's became much cheaper and commoditized almost overnight. That's what happened.

 

The reason they aren't more common is because of the trifecta of fails that happened because the HDD makers were hoping that SSDs are only a trend.

SSHDs were
Too slow
Too expensive
And most importantly, too late

Seriously, if they were more aggressive and released the modern day style, SSHDs back when it was a struggle to get 120gb SSDs, things may not have been so bad. Now, high density SSDs are much cheaper but most importantly, people also found that it wasn't safe nor necessary to have more than 256-512gb of data in a mobile platform. It simply wasn't worth the cost savings of going with more capacity but far worse performance.

 

Unless you don't have the space for a 24/7 HDD and a m2.-, m-, SATA SSD there is now benefit/advantage at all.

Then what type of hybrid we are talking about.
The older ones that add somehow a few GB to several 10 GB of RAM to allow for fast storage buffer.

From what I read in tests it works, but only if you repeatedly load large programs. Then it will boost once you loaded the program several timess. If you have smaller programs and only random use how should the drive know what to store for prefetch?

Then there are Hybrid that combine SSD/HDD into a single case using a single connector for access. YOu have no control if you access the SSD or HDD part. It is faster then the above mentioned types, but has a number of limitations, including if you want to use non windows OS.

A seperate SSD for the OS and a 24/7 [h/day] rated 1.5 TB HDD for storage are better and provide you with a fallback incase of SSD death.

Hybrid are not rated 24/7, if the RAM/SSD part fails your drive is worthless, only windows, no control if it stores in RAM/SSD or HDD and finally the price of a 24/7 HDD and a m2.-, m-, SATA are not to different.

So unless it is space constrains forget them for now and askagain when new designs arrive.

 

snn47,

just want to point out that a HDD rated for 24/7 operation used in a normal notebook workflow (i.e. on for a few hours or even minutes and then off for a few hours and repeat) is not any less susceptible to issues than a normal HDD and probably, even more fragile as it is not kept running all the time as it is designed to.

Enterprise HDD's vs. Consumer HDD's show no correlation of failure (check out backblaze for more details) - Hitachi's are the most reliable HDD in my experience (and backed up by backblaze).

Just as you wouldn't take a cruise with a racing boat across the Atlantic or take a cruise ship racing across the harbor; you shouldn't use a HDD rated for 24/7 usage unless you're actually using it in the way it was designed for.

 

Yeah true, I find that all the HDDs are pretty much the same if you use them in a mostly sequential workload capacity. They can last years and years, its the Random workloads that kill HDDs, the constant starting/stopping of the platter and the wear+tear on the actuators basically get accelerated tenfold. The second reason is the why I disagree with the concept of SSHDs, the HDD is still being forced to operate in a Random environment albeit with Flash assistance.

 

The only hybrid drive I see of value, and limited value at that, is the WD Black 2 with the integrated 120GB SSD + HDD. For laptops with a single 2.5" drive bay, this is a great solution to have a fast OS/apps drive and large storage without relying on the whole "SSD as Cache" gimmick. Granted at $200 for a 120GB+1TB combo, SSD prices are coming down to the point where it will make it moot in probably less than two years time. Not to mention that most newer laptops offer at least one mSATA or M.2 slot now in addition to a traditional 2.5" SATA bay, if not eliminated altogether.

 

The Black 2 would be perfect for the non-Retina MacBook Pro, but WD hasn't released a Mac version of the software needed to expose the spinning drive.

 

that's technically called a dual drive instead of a hybrid drive. hybrid drives are defined to use SSD as cache instead of a separate drive. the problem with black2 is that the SSD is somewhat inferior to the rest of the SSDs on the market but that's the smaller problem, the bigger problem is that with $200, people can just throw in a couple bucks extra for a 500gb ssd. unless people really need that storage, it's kinda pointless to go for a dual drive when you can get a pure ssd

 

What's wrong with the hybrid drives? Nothing! Something is wrong with those who don't understand what they're for.

The best use for them is upgrading older machines which have a single hdd caddy and no msata. It's a niche product, yet perfect for the purpose. The fact that you don't need one after getting a big, fat SSD doesn't make SSHDs bad or useless.

I've been using 750gb Momentus XT SSHD for years and all I can say it's a great drive. Newer 5400rpm Seagate Laptop SSHD model seem slower, though. Yes, I'm switching to SSD for OS and software as soon as some parts arrive, but definitely not because something's wrong with SSHD performance. For average Joe's everyday usage pattern it's absolutely satisfactory.

 

The main benfit is for those who mainly and repeatedly use large programs. Here a Hybrid "learns", but it requires from what I've read several starts do so so. Then it speeds up loading your program significantly by providing data from the SSD part. Unfortunately for the average users with mainly random use or only small programs, the benefit is close to 0. The Hybrid cannot foresee what you/we do next and therefore cannot store the data to improve access.

Maybe my lack of understanding of the english language, but a Hybrid also consist of a SSD and a HDD. Would "dual drive" not imply that I have control where the data is stored, SSD or the HDD, and that I only use one interface to access both?.

[Dream]For small notebooks that have only space for one drive, someone should offer a (ultra-)slim HDD that allows us to add one or two m.2SATA SSD on top. Both sharing the same internal sata connector, but allowing seperate access .[/Dream]

I fear we won't see such a option,since drive manufacters would allow users to buy which m2.SATA they want and therefore they can't profit from it.

 

Call it a dual drive if you want, it's still hybrid because it integrates the two techs, just doesn't use one as a cache. I think it is a better solution than hybrid drives because they have very limited performance improvement, and limited to improving frequently used data only. I'd rather have control over what data I want to be fast all the time for reads and writes than nothing more than a large "smart cache" that are the hybrid drives. And 1TB is reasonable, it still costs $400-$500 to get a 1TB SSD, so this is half the cost. But as I noted, it will be obsolete within a year or two at most since SSD prices are dropping like crazy, unless they can shove a 2TB hard drive in there, but HDD tech has stalled over the last several years. I was hoping we'd have affordable 8TB desktop drives by now but they haven't budged past 4TB.

 

sourced from wikipedia

this is the essential difference between a SSHD and dual drive

yeah but the problem with ssds is that tech is starting to stagnate. as the NAND gets smaller and smaller it's close to be physically impossible to fit in all that electrons, which therefore means the production cost of ssds can only get down that low, which then means price won't be dropping that much

 

As it's been stated, SSD hybrid drives are a jack of all trades drive...that excels at nothing. It honestly doesn't boot that much faster than a fast 7200 rpm drive, it costs quite a bit more than a traditional platter drive, and its write speeds as of like 1-2 years ago is far worse than a traditional hard drive. The only thing that it has going for it is they are far cheaper than a pure SSD. And I can attest to the fact that SSHD aren't that much better than traditional platter drives as I've owned 4 of them, even after weeks of "learning" I found it was far worse than an SSD and not much better than a spinner.

The average joe doesn't have hundreds of gigabytes of data on their systems, so buying a smaller sized (even a 240-256 GB) is good for 90% of average users. They are able to clearly see the difference between that and a mechanical drive, plus all the benefits that an SSD offers (typically lower power consumption, uber low latency, much higher read/write speeds, overall system responsiveness, SSD durability/reliability).

 

@heibk201
Reading the wiki article you quote I found it said Dual-drive hybrid systems and not dual drive. Hybrid drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hedding of the text in the figure is therefore incorrect as it ommits Dual-drive " hybrid systems" and does not show that a hybrid drive occupies only a single controller port, while a Dual-drive hybrid system needs at least two ports, one for a HDD and one for a soldid state drive.

The main intent for hybrid drives was to occupy only one port, since most notebooks only have one drive/port.