I have a Late 2011 13" MacBook Pro that has a fairly full hard drive even after I did about 100 GB of deleting. The overall performance is slowing. I have done a few performance improving tricks but it's still slower than I care for it to be. First real performance gainer is SSD so after looking around my budget just doesn't allow for a hard drive that will then cut my storage in half. My cousin had a 2010 MacBook Pro that he put a Seagate Hybrid drive and he said it did wonders for his MacBook. I understand what it is, about 8 GB of solid state and the rest being traditional hard drive. I can find a Seagte 1 TB hybrid drive for about $65.99 which is definitely in my budget! So how many of you have gone the hybrid route? What are your thoughts? I know it may not be exactly the same level of performance as a SSD but gaining some speed and then twice the storage sounds rather tempting!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Experience with hybrid drive
- Thread starter ben824
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I would not do it. I would buy a 256 SSD and move the rest to an external HD. Maybe ok for some, but IMHO traditional drives are dead except for maybe the large 3-4 TB backup drives. My next external will also be an SSD.
- They're useless.
You might consider getting a really small, quite cheap SSD, and then moving your existing hard drive to the optical drive's position. Fast SSD for system and apps and lots of storage.
It really depends on your usage scenarios and how smart the controller inside the drive is. Only use office on your computer? The SSHD might perform quite decently. Move a lot of data around and use a lot of difficult applications? You are less likely to see much difference to a normal drive.
Most of my use is web based and I have to use VirtualBox to run Windows 10 for training programs for work. Aside from those two I don't use my computer for much else than some Mirroring to my Apple TV at home to watch movies. I just want to speed up the computer a bit since it takes quite some time to boot up and applications take a long time to open up and load. Like when I plug my iPhone 6 in to sync with the computer it automatically opens Photos and it takes nearly 2 minutes to open! I know an SSD is the most superior option but it would cut my storage nearly in half and even after I cleared out 100 GBs of space I still am 363 GBs full on my 500 GB factory drive. My cousin had a hybrid Seagate in his 2010 MBP and was pretty happy with it and he was a IT major in college when he had it. So I was just seeing if many others had similar positive experience.
- Well, you should get one if you feel that's what suits your needs best. But you can get a super cheap 120 GB SanDisk SSD or Kingston SSD and an enclosure to use your existing drive externally for less than the price of that Seagate SSHD. And for just $120, you can get an excellent full 480 GB SSD, thus keeping your existing amount of storage (alright 20 GB less...).
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
I actually explored the idea of ditching the optical drive and doing what you just described and even read into doing this and using terminal and creating my own "Fusion" drive. I read where you could do it on Mavericks but I didn't see anyone trying it with with El Capitan. I also just wasn't sure if I am ready to give up the optical drive. I couldn't tell you the last time I used it but I don't know, guess call it an old man clinging to my old tech lol
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
It works with El Capitan. I had an enclosure with an old HDD in my mac for a while. I liked it because I kept windows on a separate drive and it had the whole drive. I removed it because I stopped using windows. It also added a bit of weight since I used a HDD rather than a SSD.