Anyone using a Hybrid SSD/HDD on a MBP

[windowstomac]

Quite tempted by one of these hybrid drives which has 8GB of SSD and the rest as a standard hard drive.

Has anyone got one? What kind of effect has it had on overall speed? Odd though it may sound, I would rather have a subjective review - i.e. how much faster it feels day-to-day than figures...

 

[ECUpirate44]

I've had one for a week and I haven't noticed much difference when compared to a 7200 RPM drive.

 

[teerexx52]

Quite tempted by one of these hybrid drives which has 8GB of SSD and the rest as a standard hard drive.

Has anyone got one? What kind of effect has it had on overall speed? Odd though it may sound, I would rather have a subjective review - i.e. how much faster it feels day-to-day than figures...

I have a Momentus XT 500GB. It is quicker than my stock 5400. System boots in about 30 seconds. I like it. Worth the investment in my opinion

 

[talmy]

I've been using one (the 500GB Momentus XT) for about 14 months. In artificial testing of boot time, performing multiple boots in a row until the time minimized, startup time got much faster. However my working set of files is larger than the SSD cache and I don't see any boot speed up in "real life" so the only real benefit has been the 7200rpm rotational speed of the drive. OTOH it vibrates.

I understand the new Momentus XT 750GB drive has a much larger cache and works better. I'll probably give that a try on my next system. I need too much disk space to go with a pure SSD. Perhaps the ideal solution is to have a standard large capacity HD and replace the optical drive with an SSD of about 64GB to hold the OS and applications?

 

[dlimes13]

I've been using one (the 500GB Momentus XT) for about 14 months. In artificial testing of boot time, performing multiple boots in a row until the time minimized, startup time got much faster. However my working set of files is larger than the SSD cache and I don't see any boot speed up in "real life" so the only real benefit has been the 7200rpm rotational speed of the drive. OTOH it vibrates.

I understand the new Momentus XT 750GB drive has a much larger cache and works better. I'll probably give that a try on my next system. I need too much disk space to go with a pure SSD. Perhaps the ideal solution is to have a standard large capacity HD and replace the optical drive with an SSD of about 64GB to hold the OS and applications?

Exactly what I'm doing and couldn't be happier. It's the best of both worlds.
64 GB Samsung 830 SSD + 1 TB Western Digital HDD
However, I may get a 128 GB SSD so I can Boot Camp with SSD as well.

 

[rebby]

Exactly what I'm doing and couldn't be happier. It's the best of both worlds.
64 GB Samsung 830 SSD + 1 TB Western Digital HDD
However, I may get a 128 GB SSD so I can Boot Camp with SSD as well.

I agree with this solution. I have a 256GB SSD where I put my OS and most used "documents" ("Hybrid" Aperture Library). I also have a 750GB 7200RPM for my bigger storage requirements in place of my SuperDrive. It's been a perfect solution. Highly recommended.

 

[dlimes13]

I agree with this solution. I have a 256GB SSD where I put my OS and most used "documents" ("Hybrid" Aperture Library). I also have a 750GB 7200RPM for my bigger storage requirements in place of my SuperDrive. It's been a perfect solution. Highly recommended.

Curious on the 256 GB SSD. Doesn't that seem a bit large since you have a hard drive? I am considering a 256 SSD but don't really see the point with a 64 + 1 TB combo.

 

[Bkraft]

I agree with this solution. I have a 256GB SSD where I put my OS and most used "documents" ("Hybrid" Aperture Library). I also have a 750GB 7200RPM for my bigger storage requirements in place of my SuperDrive. It's been a perfect solution. Highly recommended.

Glad to hear that. I've been dual-booting a quad core 2011 MBP using an OWC SSD in the optical bay for my Apps and Home folder combined with the factory 5400RPM in the default SATA bay. I just ordered the 6G 750GB Momentus XT hybrid hoping it would make a noticeable difference, glad to know someone with a similar hardware setup saw results from the combo of those two drive upgrades

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Curious on the 256 GB SSD. Doesn't that seem a bit large since you have a hard drive? I am considering a 256 SSD but don't really see the point with a 64 + 1 TB combo.

For what it's worth I just replied to his comment with a description of my own setup on a 2011 MBP that's really similar to what this person described. I've been dual-booting by having a 60GB SSD in the optical drive bay with a conversion kit from OWC. I have my OS, apps, and home folder on that drive and it only takes up 15GB of the 60GB available. I can assure you that if you have between 4 and 8 GB of ram with that kind of setup, even using a stock 5400RPM HDD for your data and mass storage in the main bay, your computer will ****ing fly.

 

[Waffl3s]

Quite tempted by one of these hybrid drives which has 8GB of SSD and the rest as a standard hard drive.

Has anyone got one? What kind of effect has it had on overall speed? Odd though it may sound, I would rather have a subjective review - i.e. how much faster it feels day-to-day than figures...

I been wondering about this as well since I had my eye on the Momentus XT 750 GB. I currently have a Sata III Solid 3 120GB SSD but need more room. I was planning on using my SSD in another machine or move it to the optical drive later.

 

[rebby]

Curious on the 256 GB SSD. Doesn't that seem a bit large since you have a hard drive? I am considering a 256 SSD but don't really see the point with a 64 + 1 TB combo.

At any given time, I'll have 100+ GB of images on my SSD. It's very useful to have that kind of space available. I also use the SSD as my scratch disk for Photoshop. If money allowed, I have a 512GB SSD. All in good time...

 

[nickphoto]

At any given time, I'll have 100+ GB of images on my SSD. It's very useful to have that kind of space available. I also use the SSD as my scratch disk for Photoshop. If money allowed, I have a 512GB SSD. All in good time...

Rebby I'd love some more details on how you went about migrating old programs to the new SSD and also old data to the HDD. Also, how'd you do the OSX install? Did you CCC everything except large data to the SSD?

 

[rebby]

Rebby I'd love some more details on how you went about migrating old programs to the new SSD and also old data to the HDD. Also, how'd you do the OSX install? Did you CCC everything except large data to the SSD?

That's pretty much exactly what I did. Prior to doing the clone I moved the large files that I wanted to keep on the HDD over to my NAS. I then did the clone to the SSD, swapped primary drives, installed the secondary HDD into the optibay and copied my data back from the NAS. I ended up mounting the internal drive at /Volumes/Internal and created a few symlinks from my home directory pointing to the relevant data. Pretty straight forward really. It's worked really well for me.