Hybrid HD? Crazy idea?

[miguelito]

I was thinking that a hybrid HD, with say 64gb of SSD + 500gb of HD, all in one laptop sata package would be a great thing to have. YOu can have all your executables in the SSD portion, all your media files in the HD portion. There could conceivably be some caching of big files from HD to SSD, etc.

Does this exists? Wouldn't it be great to have?

miguelito

 

[ayeying]

You can include 2x drives in the new unibody system easily since all the connectors are SATA based.

 

[Fonzijr1964]

I was thinking that a hybrid HD, with say 64gb of SSD + 500gb of HD, all in one laptop sata package would be a great thing to have. YOu can have all your executables in the SSD portion, all your media files in the HD portion. There could conceivably be some caching of big files from HD to SSD, etc.

Does this exists? Wouldn't it be great to have?

miguelito

are u saying as if it was all in a 2.5 inch HDD box?
if no no way. The flash memory is too thick

 

[MooneyFlyer]

I'm fairly certain something like this is being worked on today -- though I'm not sure of the packaging. A small (<10GB) SSD with a larger platter-based storage. You can imagine putting the OS and swap on the SSD for performance and use the rest for data storage.

 

[hobbbz]

You can include 2x drives in the new unibody system easily since all the connectors are SATA based.

Are you saying there is room for 2 HDs in a Unibody? Or that you can replace your ODD with another HD?

 

[kastenbrust]

You can remove the Superdrive and put another hard drive there, everyone knows that, however if your takling about adding another hard drive to the hard drive bay, no way, there isn't enough room, Apple engineers fit all the parts really closely, and even if there was it would require logic board (motherboard) bus modifications which would void your warranty with no way of reversing them.

The best way to do this is to upgrade to a SSD as your main hard drive, and boot from that with your OS, so its super fast and put all your programs, games software etc on that, then put all your data i.e. pictures, music etc on an ExpressCard/34 SSD hard drive or even put an ExpressCard/34 MultiCard Reader in your ExpressCard/34 slot and get a 32GB SD card (or bigger, im sure you can now, i know Panasonic is developing a 2000GB (2TB) one now) and use that.

 

[PeterQC]

You can remove the Superdrive and put another hard drive there, everyone knows that, however if your takling about adding another hard drive to the hard drive bay, no way, there isn't enough room, Apple engineers fit all the parts really closely, and even if there was it would require logic board (motherboard) bus modifications which would void your warranty with no way of reversing them.

Actually there's no bus modifications or logic change to do. Someone on this forum did it. He removed the Hard drive and put another HD (SSD or HDD I don't know) and it was working without any irreversible modifications.

 

[teflon]

Actually there's no bus modifications or logic change to do. Someone on this forum did it. He removed the Hard drive and put another HD (SSD or HDD I don't know) and it was working without any irreversible modifications.

Yeah but that's because he removed the drive and put a new drive there. There is still only one HD in there still. kastenbrust is talking about you can't put two drives there without irreversible modification, which is correct.

 

[bugout]

very old news..

I dont think it fits the unibody's yet though..

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

 

[kastenbrust]

Actually there's no bus modifications or logic change to do. Someone on this forum did it. He removed the Hard drive and put another HD (SSD or HDD I don't know) and it was working without any irreversible modifications.

Of course thats easy to do, swapping hard drives is easier than buttering toast, i think you dont understand, the original poster is talking about having two hard drives in the same space (platering), both running at full speed, which would require two sata connectors on the motherboard, which would require another sata connector to be added to a spare bus on the motherboard which would require an irreversable change because it would have to be electrically soldiered on.

 

[The General]

Are you saying there is room for 2 HDs in a Unibody? Or that you can replace your ODD with another HD?

You can replace the optical drive with another SATA harddrive. I've been waiting to do this since I got my new MBP. I can't find a SATA optibay... these guys only make IDE ones.

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

And I dont want to mount it in there myself... I will ruin something.




But yeah, what the OP wants is ONE 2.5" drive that houses a harddrive AND a solid state drive. Totally possible, 1.8" drives are like half the size of a 2.5" drive and then you'd have room for the SSD. It would be slow and not worth it. They don't make anything like that.

 

[hobbbz]

You can replace the optical drive with another SATA harddrive. I've been waiting to do this since I got my new MBP. I can't find a SATA optibay... these guys only make IDE ones.

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

And I dont want to mount it in there myself... I will ruin something.




But yeah, what the OP wants is ONE 2.5" drive that houses a harddrive AND a solid state drive. Totally possible, 1.8" drives are like half the size of a 2.5" drive and then you'd have room for the SSD. It would be slow and not worth it. They don't make anything like that.

I'm considering replacing my HD as well, my concern is this: is double the speed worth 10 times the cost?

 

[UltraNEO*]

You can remove the Superdrive and put another hard drive there, everyone knows that, however if your takling about adding another hard drive to the hard drive bay, no way, there isn't enough room, Apple engineers fit all the parts really closely, and even if there was it would require logic board (motherboard) bus modifications which would void your warranty with no way of reversing them.

The best way to do this is to upgrade to a SSD as your main hard drive, and boot from that with your OS, so its super fast and put all your programs, games software etc on that, then put all your data i.e. pictures, music etc on an

ExpressCard/34 SSD hard drive or even put an ExpressCard/34 MultiCard Reader in your ExpressCard/34 slot and get a 32GB SD card (or bigger, im sure you can now, i know Panasonic is developing a 2000GB (2TB) one now) and use that.

How about this??
Let forget the slow hard-drive entirely, aye!

Two OCZ Core Series v2 SATA II 120GB SSDs in a MacBook Pro (2008/09)

 

[miguelito]

Of course thats easy to do, swapping hard drives is easier than buttering toast, i think you dont understand, the original poster is talking about having two hard drives in the same space (platering), both running at full speed, which would require two sata connectors on the motherboard, which would require another sata connector to be added to a spare bus on the motherboard which would require an irreversable change because it would have to be electrically soldiered on.

What I was "dreaming" about is two storage devices in the space of one. That is, have a platter-based hd and stuff the ssd circuits within the hd's circuit board. The board is already there, so there's space for a circuit board. And if you don't make the ssd very big (say 32gb, we already have 32gb CF cards!) and use a sata controller that could handle two busses, then this is not really that crazy an idea.

mig

 

[PeterQC]

... is talking about you can't put two drives there without irreversible modification, which is correct.

Huh? As far as I know, it wasn't, he could have just remove the hard-drive, put back the drive, reconnecting it in screwing it back to the case, and it would still work. I can't find the topic but there where no irreversible modification.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1973121,00.asp

 

[xoggyux]

some people have actually done it.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/09/28/ssd.raid.0.results/
This is not the Exact article i read, therefore I dont know if they encounter the same issues of the guy that did it and I read about.

basically the only way is to swap the optic drive for it.

I have suggested earlier that Apple should get rid of optic drives from their laptops and like offer an external one, or just include an external one with their products as standard. And the extra space could be used for either extra storage (2xDrives) or batteries (everyone would be happy with a couple of extra hours )

 

[Trip.Tucker]

How about this??
Let forget the slow hard-drive entirely, aye!

Two OCZ Core Series v2 SATA II 120GB SSDs in a MacBook Pro (2008/09)

Put two of the 256GB drives in for half a terra.

 

[magallanes]

the problem is SSD currently stink:
a) filled with troubles.
b) sometimes unreliable.
c) uber expensive.
d) space limited.

 

[Digital Skunk]

I'm fairly certain something like this is being worked on today -- though I'm not sure of the packaging. A small (<10GB) SSD with a larger platter-based storage. You can imagine putting the OS and swap on the SSD for performance and use the rest for data storage.

There is a drive that does that, but the SSD portion is mainly used as cache. That article is a bit flimsy, but I think Seagate is the one that does make the drive.

The Solid State portion is only used as CACHE however, nothing you could use as storage.

I think going the opti-bay way would be a better solution personally. I don't use my optical that much from month to month, and when I do, I don't mind plugging it up to Firewire. I do however, use my second external optical quite frequently.

 

[Niiro13]

Huh? As far as I know, it wasn't, he could have just remove the hard-drive, put back the drive, reconnecting it in screwing it back to the case, and it would still work. I can't find the topic but there where no irreversible modification.

We're talking about having two hard drives in the Macbook Pro at the same time. You're talking about removing the hard drive and putting a different one in its place, as in only one at a time.