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davemon50 · ‎05-25-2018

I was looking over a laptop build and noticed the SSHD offering. On Amazon, I notice that a 2TB SSHD (2.5" FF) is less than $100. That's awful cheap. Actually it's $15 cheaper than an equivalent capacity HDD. Is anyone here using an SSHD and can comment on the performance? I would've suspected that because it's a hybrid type drive that it would actually cost a bit more than an HDD of the same size. Why is it cheaper when performance is advertised to be better? :confused:

Davemon50

Weirdoutworld · ‎05-25-2018

All SSHD drives hold about 8gb of data in solid state format. The SS data is compiled on its own. I have one & loading times for games does seem a little better than my old 7200rpm HDD.

xeromist · ‎05-25-2018

I have my OS on SSD and a desktop SSHD as a second data drive...not impressed. It's not a substitute for an SSD. I move games I'm playing to the SSD with SteamMover and move them back when I'm done playing. That way I take advantage of the speed of the SSD and the capacity of the platters.

It doesn't seem to be any *worse* than a plain drive though, so if it's cheaper go for it.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

davemon50 · ‎05-25-2018

I was looking at the current offerings on XOTICPC for the high end Asus laptops, and the builds come with SSHD. Seemed strange to me that this was the basis for the high-end builds if it was a "cheaper" or lower performing drive. I would still put the main drives in as M.2, e.g. Samsung 960 Pro. And for some strange reason they don't even (at the time of this post anyway) offer the 970 Pro in anything greater than 500MB. Can only get the 1TB or 2TB size in the 960 Pro version as an option, not 970. It makes me think, "why".

Davemon50

dessyleung · ‎05-25-2018

davemon50 wrote:
I was looking at the current offerings on XOTICPC for the high end Asus laptops, and the builds come with SSHD. Seemed strange to me that this was the basis for the high-end builds if it was a "cheaper" or lower performing drive. I would still put the main drives in as M.2, e.g. Samsung 960 Pro. And for some strange reason they don't even (at the time of this post anyway) offer the 970 Pro in anything greater than 500MB. Can only get the 1TB or 2TB size in the 960 Pro version as an option, not 970. It makes me think, "why".

Yeah, I recommend looking at one of those as well, as even budgetish ASUS offerings have a support for NVMe based M.2 drive bay as well.
I'd only suggest a NVMe driver if you do video editing or moves large files to and from the main drive as those drives will offering virtually no differences for everyday applications, including games etc...

xeromist · ‎05-25-2018

Might just be what xotic could buy in quantity. The 970 comes in a 1TB version if you wanted to buy it separately: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147694

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

davemon50 · ‎05-25-2018

Yeah I know I was eyeballing it yesterday on Amazon.

Davemon50

dessyleung · ‎05-25-2018

I've had one of those as a primary drive on my old laptop, and I am not really all too impressed with it. On Windows 8, it was okish, like all the basic stuff such as the anti-virus and web browser, graphics drivers frequently used application etc... will load like a SSD, but then, everything else feels like a hard drive, and it's not like the instant power on and use like you get on SSDs.

Once WIndows 10 came a long, it completely ruined any mechanical drivers including SSHDs, and I can't feel a differences between that and a conventional hard drive.
Overall, not impressed, and I just think its a gimmick.

Overall, I suggest a small SSD boot drive (240gb) and a large hard drive for all your other media files. It's such a huge jump over a SSHD.

davemon50 · ‎05-26-2018

dessyleung wrote:
...
Overall, I suggest a small SSD boot drive (240gb) and a large hard drive for all your other media files. It's such a huge jump over a SSHD.

I agree, and this is how all my machines are configured, except that they all have either 500GB or 1TB M.2 boot drives (250 is not enough if you are a gamer), and then additional M.2 or HDDs for data. Which is why I was surprised to see the data drives on XOTICPC were SSHD's instead of a high performing HDD.

Thanks for all the input here guys, appreciated. I think I do buy into the theory above that it's more of a gimmick than anything else. Otherwise I'd suspect there would be a lot of competing products out there by different mfg's, and they'd also cost more than a good HDD. If I decide to buy another laptop I would probably upgrade/change the data drive to an HDD.

Davemon50

dessyleung · ‎05-26-2018

davemon50 wrote:
I agree, and this is how all my machines are configured, except that they all have either 500GB or 1TB M.2 boot drives (250 is not enough if you are a gamer), and then additional M.2 or HDDs for data. Which is why I was surprised to see the data drives on XOTICPC were SSHD's instead of a high performing HDD.

Thanks for all the input here guys, appreciated. I think I do buy into the theory above that it's more of a gimmick than anything else. Otherwise I'd suspect there would be a lot of competing products out there by different mfg's, and they'd also cost more than a good HDD. If I decide to buy another laptop I would probably upgrade/change the data drive to an HDD.

I'd say it depends on what you do with them. 250GB is enough for an average gamer if all of your games are installed onto a dedicated hard drive.
I've also noticed how a lot of SSHD comparison are comparing the boot up performance of a fresh copy of windows with nothing except for the essentials installed, but it doesn't show you what the performance is like overtime once additional drivers, and software is installed, or how it'd cope with power users passing a lot of data through it on a daily basis because it can confuse the caching algorithms.