Seagate Launches "Hybrid" SSD/HDD Discussion

Seagate has rolled out an innovative "hybrid" PC drive aimed at acting as both a solid state drive (SSD) and a hard disk drive (HDD), in ways that depend on the specific tasks at hand.

Read the full content of this Article: Seagate Launches "Hybrid" SSD/HDD

 

I will be very interested in seeing some comparison tests on this HDD.

 

4GB of SSD seems a bit small. I'd be more excited if there was enough for the OS and most program files in addition to some space to automatically allocate to the most used data. I turn my machine on/off a lot so if it doesn't speed that up, I'm not interested.

 

I highly recommend reading this article reviewing the drive by AnandTech

Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Anand says this should be in all notebooks sold from this point forward (instead of traditional rotating hard disks). That's strong praise.

 

Thanks for the link StormEffect, that was a great review by Anandtech and has me really considering picking this up.

 

Ditto, my friend, except because I use a Macbook Pro in Bootcamp (like 95% of the time), Apple disabled AHCI mode for drives in Windows, thus any drive I use is stuck in IDE mode in Windows, which really hurts performance on an SSD and thus mitigates the benefits of this drive for me.

<---- One Bummed User

 

I like the concept however won't buy it because it's a Seagate and on top of that uses a 7200.4 . . . I have found competing 7200RPM drives to be of significantly higher quality. Seagate is not a brand I consider when I buy hard drives.

Great concept though, there is no denying that . . . come on Hitachi/WD.

 

Im kind of partial to Toshiba and Samsung, but yeah I would love to have one of these in my next notebook. Maybe with 32gb of space of something with a nice 240gb hdd for the rest of my stuff.

Then again this seems just as nice. http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/27/hitachi-and-lg-tease-hydrive-an-optical-reader-with-loads-of-na/

 

If I recall didn't someone made this sort of suggestion in the off-topic forum? I can't remember what it was, but it was similar to this. Can't seem to find it...

 

I'll buy one when they're available.

 

I thought these hybrid hard drives were promised a LONG time ago (like when Vista was still in Beta). Still, it's nice to see them finally coming around.

Personally, though I'd prefer it to be more manual. A nice 32GB SSD with a 2 platter HDD (5400rpm would work for me) in a 2.5" enclosure would work nice for me. Let me install the OS and main applications to the 32GB SSD portion, and store my data on the HDD portion. 2 separate drive letters would be much preferred by me (this may cause a problem for the OS though as it may conflict with traditional sector mapping for partitions).

 

The first generation was out a couple of years ago, produced by Samsung. They did not increase performance significantly.

Benchmarks show that the Seagate Momentus performs close to a WD Velociraptor.

I will probably get ones of these, IF the battery life is good enough.

 

I wonder if we can exclude the media parts of the hard drive, so it will only focus on programs

 

I really like this concept.

In fact, I was just about to bite the bullet and buy a 40GB SSD for an ultra portable. This is a much better option.

Since I use windows XP SP3, my windows installation is only ~2.5GB

 

It doesn't work like that. It's almost like a smart cache. Plus claims show it boots up almost as quickly as an SSD. Read the article at Anandtech linked to by StormEffect in the first page of this thread.

I'm all for this tech. I suggested a long time ago, why not integrate a 32 or 40GB SSD in an existing 2.5" drive and it would be seen as a separate drive you could use as boot drive, and everything else on the spindle drive. But if they get this hybrid thing to work out, all the better.

Edit: I just read through the whole article. Quite impressive. Although I wish they compared it with a traditional 7200RPM (WD Caviar maybe?) instead of 5400RPM drive. I think most users in the market for something like this would be more interested in 7200RPM than 5400RPM comparison.

Either way, definitely a step in the right direction. I don't know that I'd replace my existing 500GB 7200RPM in my notebook, but next laptop I get, if SSD's are considerably cheaper, I'll definitely get the cheapest drive in the machine and replace it with one of these.

 

Cnet reviewed it too:
Seagate Momentus XT (250GB) Hard Drive reviews - CNET Reviews

Very impressive results.

 

Curious if desktop hard drives will make this transition. Seems like the right way to go altogether.

 

This hybrid is definitely a boon to people with one HDD bay. A bit unneeded for those with two bays, where you can have a OS/program SSD and large-capacity HDD for everything else. I'm thinking it would be awesome in a netbook or ultralight.

Personally, I'm going to hold off on this tech, since, like I said, I don't need it. But hey, if I decide to jump on the netbook bandwagon I'll definitely look into it.


And an earthquake just hit as I was typing this. Wingnut, you're bad luck.

 

I was just hiding under your chair and shaking it... all in your head Hope everything's ok.

Hybrid makes sense even for desktops because of cost. I have an 80GB Intel G2 which seems the perfect size for a boot partiton with apps, utilities, etc. But that still costs over $200. If nothing else it would add a nice boost to overall performance. Definitely would like to see a read AND write cache.

 

A 1TB RAID 0 of these suckers would cost about $300. That's the same price as a 128GB SSD.

Maybe if I get enough money I can buy a couple and stuff them in the FX. Should be fun. XD

 

Until they can get the hybrid thing sorted out, I still think they should use a similar approach, except stuff 32 or 40GB NAND in there and just treat it as a separate drive, and not as a read cache. This way you can have a full drive dedicated to OS and apps, and everything else on the platter. The user would have complete control like it was a separate drive, but would offer the user the full speed benefits of SSD and storage capacity of a traditional hard drive. Heck, even give the user the option to utilize a certain amount of the SSD as a read and/or write cache to the hard drive.

This would be great for all notebooks to have the speed benefits of SSD and the capacity of a hard drive, since most notebooks only have 1 drive bay. I'd pay $180 to $200 for a 500GB + 40GB SSD type drive like this.

 

I doubt it would be that low. If a 4GB SSD/500GB @7200rpm hybrid is already $153, I'm betting it'll at least $250 if you try for a 32GB built-in SSD.

Also, is there any particular reason why the built-in SSD is SLC? I bet they would shave off some dollars if they use MLC instead. Then again, I assume it would be difficult to TRIM a hybrid SSD.

 

The 500GB Momentus XT is $ 137 at Amazon (no stock yet).

I expect it will be going close to $100 within a couple of months. Especially if competitors are releasing similar drives.

 

Well if a 500GB is ~ $90 retail and 40GB Intel G2 ~ $80 retail on sale, I'm sure you can marry the two techs together somehow. If they can do it with 4GB, they can do it with 40GB, or whatever they can package on the PCB. Even so, $0.50/GB vs. $2.50/GB is still a bargain.

 

Interesting. Lenovo advertised something similar to technology in their Y460/Y560 series notebooks with Rapid Drive.

My only issue is I wish the SSD part was a little bigger (8 to 16GB). Also the review claims that it offers no more durability, so it would be nice if you could access this SSD storage even if the physical drive failed (not sure if you can or cannot).

 

The SSD is NOT a storage drive. It's a read only cache. Even if you could read it, it would have scattered data.