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Thoughts on Seagate Hybrid Drives?

wmitch

wmitch

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 7, 2012
166
12
Iowa, USA
Anyone have experience w/Hybrid Drives?
How do they compare to performance of the SSD?
can anyone comment on Reliability?

I see i can get a 1TB on Amazon for $130 which makes it a ton of storage for the money if the speed is good. I am thinking of putting something like this in my MBP when I finally get around to purchasing so would love to hear thoughts/reviews

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Solid-Hybrid-2-5-Inch-ST1000LM014/dp/B00B99JUBQ
 
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Better than traditional mechanical HDDs, but still not an SSD. Overall an improvement however.
 
I have used both generations of Momentus XT. Anything less is a downer.

I can't say anything about the new 2.5" "SSHD", which are only 5400RPM. I'm waiting for 7200RPM.
 
I don't think that Segate is ever going to have another 7200 hybrid or otherwise laptop drive. That's how I read it anyway.

I've had both the 500gb and 750gb hybrid and loved them both - great drives and no problems on mac or windows.
 
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i would rather get a small ssd and an optibay. faster and better, and nearly the same price overall.
 
There is an advantage to a small SSD + Optibay or medium to large SSD. If you keep important files on the SSD and bulky easily replaced files on the HDD, you enjoy the "no moving parts" advantages of an SSD without the full price. The problem with hybrid SSD is the algorithm which decides what belongs in SSD versus what belongs on HDD is beyond your control and if the HDD part ever dies, chances are your data is gone even if there is nothing wrong with the SSD.

There is another down side to hybrid SSD. If you go to sell your Mac and want to wipe it, wiping a hybrid SSD even one pass all zeros takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r so wiping it robustly would take triple ridiculous forever.
 
They only cache reads, not writes - so while programs will start faster and the system boots faster, you don't get the 'true' speed increase that you see with an SSD.

It's up to you if the extra cost is worth it. 240-256GB SSD's can be found for $145 online if you search hard enough, and a regular 1TB 2.5" HD can be had for about $75.
 
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I used a 500 GB Momentus XT for a bit over a year and recently upgraded to a Samsung 840, also 500 GB. The larger SSDs should be slightly faster than smaller SSDs, and the 500 GB Momentus XT - being the first generation - should be the slowest of the hybrid line.

I made a write-up in the Samsung 840/840 Pro thread, but I'll summarize here: to be perfectly honest, I wasn't blown away by the 840. Moving from the stock 5400 RPM drive that came with my MBP to the Momentus XT felt huge, but the SSD doesn't feel like a huge deal over the Momentus XT. The boot time has been dramatically reduced, but I don't reboot often and that's about the only metric where there's been a really noticeable difference. When it comes to opening programs that I use frequently I can't say that the 840 seems any faster (if anything, based on dock-bounces, it may be slightly slower with certain programs). Of course, the benefit is that the SSD is consistently fast with everything, whereas the Momentus XT had its "learning period" for transferring data to the SSD portion.

Basically, the 840 is faster all-around, but it's not really that much faster for average day-to-day tasks. I was hoping that programs would open near-instantly but it isn't happening. I don't know if it's the drive or if it's a limitation of OS X. There are other benefits, though: my battery life has gained anywhere from 1-2 hours (according to battery estimates; I have yet to run it for that long), I no longer have to worry about moving the computer while the drive is still spinning, and as quiet as the Momentus XT was, there's now zero noise.

I bought my 840 for a good deal ($270) so I don't feel too badly about it. I'll take any speed boost I can get as long as I don't have to break the bank for it. But in the future, I think I'll stick to Seagate's hybrid drives. The cost is significantly less for the storage that you're getting, and the speed difference - at least compared with the Samsung 840 line - really isn't that significant (unfortunately!), unless you find yourself rebooting frequently.
 
SSD > Hybrid > HDD

SSD is leaps and bounds faster than a HDD, but depending on what you're doing you may or may not notice that speed.
 
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cube said:
I just installed it this week until a 7200RPM hybrid is shipping.

It fulfils its interim purpose better than I thought, but still not a smooth experience at login, which I can only reach with a hybrid drive at least.
Click to expand...

Ya, I may just wait until a 1TB 7200RPM Hybrid pops up. Really would like that 1TB mark for storage, but don't want to have to drop down to 5400RPM.
 
r0k said:
There is an advantage to a small SSD + Optibay or medium to large SSD. If you keep important files on the SSD and bulky easily replaced files on the HDD, you enjoy the "no moving parts" advantages of an SSD without the full price. The problem with hybrid SSD is the algorithm which decides what belongs in SSD versus what belongs on HDD is beyond your control and if the HDD part ever dies, chances are your data is gone even if there is nothing wrong with the SSD.
Click to expand...

I don't trust SSDs except maybe Samsung, or Intel with an Intel controller. There's a lot of infant mortality and crappy firmware. Reliability is a myth.

I don't know what happens with a Seagate hybrid if the flash part ever fails.
 
Orlandoech.com said:
SSD > Hybrid > HDD

SSD is leaps and bounds faster than a HDD, but depending on what you're doing you may or may not notice that speed.
Click to expand...

So would a 5400RPM Hybrid perform faster than a 7200RPM HDD? I'm guessing yes, but wanted to make sure.
 
Link2999 said:
So would a 5400RPM Hybrid perform faster than a 7200RPM HDD? I'm guessing yes, but wanted to make sure.
Click to expand...

Seagate confused all their potential customers with their lame release and ambiguous roadmap.
 
It's possible for a hybrid 5400RPM drive to be faster and slower at the same time, due to platter density.

The new 5400 RPM drives are single platter inside, resulting in higher track density. This means that data streams off the disk at a faster rate due tot he higher density but lower RPM.

At the same time, latency is slower since the disk is spinning at a slower rate. A 5400 RPM drive will always have longer latency.

For large file transfers, this means that it may take a bit longer to get that first block of data for a file, but over the long term, the entire file may be delivered by the disk at a faster rate than an older 7200RPM drive.

Look into the specs for drives you are considering to see the max data rate from the platter. Lower density results in a slower max data rate. This is not the same as the interface speed.

Then the size of the cache and pre-fetch also factors into the overall performance.

Different benchmarks will reveal different information depending on what they focus on: I/O transactions per second; small block transfer rate; large block transfer rate, etc.
 
Go with SSD. I got a kingston 240 SSD at staples for 180.00. Not the fastest SSD but it blows away my momentus xt hybrid. I had already pulled the moments out due to the extra noise, vibration, and less battery life.
 
I really don't want to pull the optical drive out of a new machine but i need/want the storage which is why i'm not looking to buy an MBA so a traditional SSD is out (at least for now)

One of my questions with the hybrid is around the Cache.
This 750GB 7200 RPM Hybrid only has a 32mb cache- http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-7200RPM-Hybrid-ST750LX003/dp/B00691WMJG

This 1Tb 5400 RPM Hybrid has a 64 mb Cache-
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Solid-Hybrid-2-5-Inch-ST1000LM014/dp/B00B99JUBQ/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

So wouldn't the larger cache be an advantage even though the RPM is slower? is there a 7200 RPM with a higher cache out there that i'm just not seeing?

Does anyone else other than Seagate make a good hybrid drive for this kind of money?
 
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Western Digital is a good brand, but I am not sure they make hybrids.

Samsung does for sure but will probably be more expensive.
 
Don't bother about the cache.

What is important is that the new drive should have higher density than the XT, which would mitigate at least in part the slower speed.

Toshiba announced the first 1TB 5400RPM hybrid last year, but besides their laptops, I don't know if it's available bare anywhere in the world yet.

WD announced a 1TB 7200RPM hybrid to be available later this year.

Samsung sold their hard drive operation to Seagate, as Hitachi sold theirs to WD. Some Hitachi 3.5" product line was sold to Toshiba in exchange for a factory for WD.

Fujitsu's hard drive operation was sold to Toshiba before that.
 
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