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Hybird drive VS SSD

mrsir2009

mrsir2009

macrumors 604
Original poster
Sep 17, 2009
7,505
156
Melbourne, Australia
Hello everyone,

I was looking to buy a SSD, but was a bit put off by the price when I saw Hybird drives could be purchased for $100-$150. And I'm wondering if the Hybird drive can still offer the amazing speeds (booting time and app launch) that the SSD offers. I'm using an early 2010 13" MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM and 2.26 ghz processor.

Thanks guys!
 
It wouldn't wow you like a true ssd but it will be faster than a normal 5400 drive, you will see an increase of speed in the most commonly used apps and a quicker startup.
 
A hybrid drive can't deliver SSD like speeds all the time. It simply isn't possible. The Hybrid drive is nothing but a hard drive with 4GB of cache. The user has no control over it; the drive's firmware fills it up as it sees fit. If your data isn't in the cache, you'll get traditional speeds.

So you get some speed improvements as the drive learns your habits, but the SSD is nothing but flash. Don't have to worry about head crashes and spinup times with flash. ALL your drive reads and writes will be quick.
 
I have a momentus xt and its very fast without learning and I did the hdapm to disable the head parking/sleeping of the drive. Works great!
 
I've had a look at some true SSDs (such as the Samsung one) and I've found that a true SSD will also reuduce noise, use less battery power and be faster with everything. I may as well spend the extra money getting a really great hard drive if I'm buying a new one, ah?

•Oh, and just to confirm - The 13" late 2009/early 2010 MBP takes a 2.5 inch hard drive. I'm pretty sure it does but I do not want to spend 100s of dollars on the wrong hard drive :rolleyes:
 
Yes, all macbooks take the 2.5" drive and if you are really going to buy an SSD make sure you are getting one with the sandforce controller.
 
mrsir2009 said:
Hello everyone,

I was looking to buy a SSD, but was a bit put off by the price when I saw Hybird drives could be purchased for $100-$150. And I'm wondering if the Hybird drive can still offer the amazing speeds (booting time and app launch) that the SSD offers. I'm using an early 2010 13" MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM and 2.26 ghz processor.

Thanks guys!
Click to expand...

Shouldn't it be 2.4GHz/2.66GHz if it's early 2010's model? :eek:
 
I love my Hybrid drive. And I love that it didn't cost $400 to get a decent size. But I needed a drive that was faster than a 5400rpm, that was also large. In reality it really depends on what you need the drive for. The only thing I use my laptop for is Mac OSX for school and daily computing, and Windows 7 for gaming. So for me a larger drive at 7200rpm was a better option than a smaller drive that has good read/write speeds.

For people that use it for production purposes, like video and photo editing, will definitely see the advantage of an SSD. But until the prices halve from what they are now, I don't see myself purchasing one.
 
Yeah, I've only got $400 now (in NZ dollars) and I'll need about another $100 to get a SSD. I would really like one, but it would clear out all my money and my parents would think 600NZD for a drive is pretty riduclious. They don't understand of course, the huge difference between a HDD and a SSD.
 
mrsir2009 said:
Yeah, I've only got $400 now (in NZ dollars) and I'll need about another $100 to get a SSD. I would really like one, but it would clear out all my money and my parents would think 600NZD for a drive is pretty riduclious. They don't understand of course, the huge difference between a HDD and a SSD.
Click to expand...

Well... you have another choice.
a) buy a less expensive smaller SSD, say an 80GB or so. $250 USD
b) Buy an MCE Optibay Upgrade (replace dvd with drive). $100 USD
c) install OS and apps on SSD, data on current main drive (now in dvd bay)

Result - performance of an SSD - cost: $400 USD
 
milan03 said:
Hybrid drives are not even in the same league as SSD. Stop fooling yourselves...
Click to expand...

Agreed, they do offer exceptional performance gains, without a huge hit to the wallet. I have a 500gig Momentus XT,and I like it, a lot. And I enjoy the $800 remaining in my wallet too.:cool:
 
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