Difference between harddrives?

[firestarter]

If you're considering a drive upgrade, you should seriously consider the Seagate Momentus XT

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-review-finally-a-good-hybrid-hdd

This is a regular mechanical hard drive, with 4GB os super-fast SSD drive integrated in the same box. It's not as fast as a 100% SSD drive - but it's a lot faster than a regular mechanical drive, and not much more money. It's also plenty large enough (500GB) - while you may find an affordable SSD to be too small.

If I were buying a laptop, I'd fit one of these as my first choice, as it seems like an excellent compromise between speed/cost and space.

 

[Ifti]

Difference between a SATA HDD and SSD is that a HDD drive has a spinning disc and a head that reads data. This is slower since the disc needs to spin up, and then the head needs to move to teh data, and so on.

An SSD is like a USB Pen Drive - just a number of chips on a board. Obviously much faster since there are no moving parts.

For a speed comparison, take a look at my upgrade video:

Part 1
Part 2

Bear in mind, SSDs are very expensive - hence its best to keep your operating system and programs on the SSD - where they can be accessed quickly and hence speed up your system - and keep other data on a normal hard drive - whether its external, or a second drive in the system (Optibay).

 

[sydenham]

Difference between a SATA and SSD is that a SATA drive has a spinning disc and a head that reads data. This is slower since the disc needs to spin up, and then the head needs to move to teh data, and so on.

An SSD is like a USB Pen Drive - just a number of chips on a board. Obviously much faster since there are no moving parts.

For a speed comparison, take a look at my upgrade video:

Part 1
Part 2

Bear in mind, SSDs are very expensive - hence its best to keep your operating system and programs on the SSD - where they can be accessed quickly and hence speed up your system - and keep other data on a normal SATA hard drive - whether its external, or a second drive in the system (Optibay).

You obviously didn't read diazj3's post earlier in this thread regarding SATA.

 

[Ifti]

You obviously didn't read diazj3's post earlier in this thread regarding SATA.

Sorry, by SATA I was referring to a HDD - sorry its been a long day!!
I'll edit!

 

[AdamRock]

If you're considering a drive upgrade, you should seriously consider the Seagate Momentus XT

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-review-finally-a-good-hybrid-hdd

This is a regular mechanical hard drive, with 4GB os super-fast SSD drive integrated in the same box. It's not as fast as a 100% SSD drive - but it's a lot faster than a regular mechanical drive, and not much more money. It's also plenty large enough (500GB) - while you may find an affordable SSD to be too small.

If I were buying a laptop, I'd fit one of these as my first choice, as it seems like an excellent compromise between speed/cost and space.

how do hybrids work? do you like install the os on the ssd part of it? or do you like install apps on that?

 

[firestarter]

how do hybrids work? do you like install the os on the ssd part of it? or do you like install apps on that?

The drive looks like just a regular 500GB mechanical hard drive, and you install stuff as normal.

The electronics are smart... and they watch which data the OS is loading often, they also watch to see what's being loaded during bootup. This data is then saved in the SSD, so that next time you boot it just fetches the data from SSD rather from disk.

The advantages is that it's almost as fast as SSD for bootup, app loading etc. - it's also cheap and has high capacity.

The disadvantage is that write speed isn't any faster.

Read the Anandtech review I linked to. The reviewer is really enthusiastic about the drive.

 

[tjb1]

lol your very confused.

There are 2 types of hard drives. Serial ATA or SSD (solid state drive).

The difference between a Serial drive and an SSD is an SSD has no moving parts and is incredibly faster than a standard Hard Drive.

Getting an SSD is the most expensive but beneficial upgrade you can make for your mbp. You will have an incredibly short boot time and reading and writing to the drive will be much faster. With that being said, right now a 512 GB SSD will run you over $1000. Best wait for the prices to go down.

You are the confused one...Serial ATA is not a drive, its a connection type/interface. The two are HDD and SSD. Also, the noticeable different between a SSD and a 7200 drive is little. I have both and the only real difference is applications boot about 1 second faster than my Momentus XT.