Are SSHDs good or bad? (Performance wise)

[DanielMDA]

NOTE: This Thread compares a WD Black HDD against a SSHD, for the sake of pricing.

 

Ok, so some people have told me to go with an SSD + HDD setup, while others have told me to go with an SSD + SSHD setup.

 

To my knowledge both WD Blacks Hard Drives  and Seagate Fire Cuda SSHDs have a 7200RPM spin rate and both have 64MB of Cache and the FircCuda has another 8GB of NAND Flash as L2 Cache.

 

DO THEY PERFORM ANY DIFFERENT? (Price difference is around 5-10 USD)

[Mira Yurizaki]

They're about the same as a regular hard drive, except if you load up data that you frequently access. However the drive determines "frequently accessed" is up for grabs.

 

Note that you cannot test SSHD performance by, for example, opening an app, closing it, then re-opening it because Windows will leave the apps' data in RAM in case you do this sort of thing. Several runs of say Crystal Disk Mark may give you a better idea of how it works.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

i have never used an SSHD, but the principle is that it will put frequently used files on that 8gb of NAND. so if you open a game that's 6gb a lot from that SSHD, it will load faster after a while. 

[AdamBGames]

4 minutes ago, DanielMDA said:

NOTE: This Thread compares a WD Black HDD against a SSHD, for the sake of pricing.

 

Ok, so some people have told me to go with an SSD + HDD setup, while others have told me to go with an SSD + SSHD setup.

 

To my knowledge both WD Blacks Hard Drives  and Seagate Fire Cuda SSHDs have a 7200RPM spin rate and both have 64MB of Cache and the FircCuda has another 8GB of NAND Flash as L2 Cache.

 

DO THEY PERFORM ANY DIFFERENT? (Price difference is around 5-10 USD)

They are ok, I use an sshd in my laptop and it trumps the hard drive that was in there previously. I would get the sshd over the hdd personally but it's benefits depends on how much you will be loading from the drive and how frequent you load those applications

[DanielMDA]

2 minutes ago, AdamBGames said:

They are ok, I use an sshd in my laptop and it trumps the hard drive that was in there previously. I would get the sshd over the hdd personally but it's benefits depends on how much you will be loading from the drive and how frequent you load those applications

Then Ill go SSD + SSHD, thanks

[ScratchCat]

The SSHD caches frequently used files such as Windows start up files to speed up your system. The problem is the size of the cache. 8GB isn't going to get you far in a world of games with 50+GB each!

 

Given that you are basically getting a HDD with limited faster loading speeds for frequently used applications I personally would not recommend it.

Rather wait a bit longer and get an SSD for main applications and a HDD for bulk storage, the responsiveness improvement of an SSD should not be under estimated

[DanielMDA]

1 minute ago, ScratchCat said:

The SSHD caches frequently used files such as Windows start up files to speed up your system. The problem is the size of the cache. 8GB isn't going to get you far in a world of games with 50+GB each!

 

Given that you are basically getting a HDD with limited faster loading speeds for frequently used applications I personally would not recommend it.

Rather wait a bit longer and get an SSD for main applications and a HDD for bulk storage, the responsiveness improvement of an SSD should not be under estimated

Please Read the Thread description. I was saying if I should go SSD + HDD or SSD + SSHD

[ScratchCat]

Just now, DanielMDA said:

Please Read the Thread description. I was saying if I should go SSD + HDD or SSD + SSHD

Then SDD+HDD IMHO

[Oshino Shinobu]

They're bad compared to SSDs and can be slightly better than HDD if you have a certain use case. They're an attempt to bridge the gap between the performance of an SSD and the capacity of an HDD but it doesn't really work. What you end up with is an expensive HDD with hit and miss performance improvements from the NAND cache. Small writes are probably the place SSHDs benefit most over HDDs. 

 

The only time I would ever recommend an SSHD is in a situation where a large capacity is needed, there is no room for more than one drive and the budget isn't enough to fit a large SSD in. This basically means laptops and AIO computers, but even then I'd try to go for an SSD in the system and then an external drive for mass storage. Give the availability of high capacity external 2.5" HDDs that can even fit in a pocket, I can't think of too many situations where I'd actually end up saying an SSHD is the best option. 

[79wjd]

2 minutes ago, DanielMDA said:

Please Read the Thread description. I was saying if I should go SSD + HDD or SSD + SSHD

SSD + WD Blue/Barracuda and don't waste the money on a WD Black/SSHD. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

4 minutes ago, DanielMDA said:

Then Ill go SSD + SSHD, thanks

There's no point for that. Anything you need to load fast, like programs, put them on the SSD. For media, put it on a normal HDD. There's very little that really benefits from an SSHD over an HDD when you have a dedicated SSD in the system. The inability to specify what goes in the NAND cache is one of the biggest problems. 

 

When you have a dedicated SSD for at least the operating system, you've basically removed any real benefits from the SSHD so you'd be spending a fairly significant amount of money for 8GB of hit and miss cache. You'd be better off spending the extra money on a larger dedicated SSD and going for a regular HDD for mass storage. 

[Zebedeeboing]

SSD and HDD separate every time, straight performance for the key items on SSD. Personal point but SSHD gives me heebygeebies after mine failed. Although I've also had an SSD fail on me as well so take that with a pinch of salt lol.

 

I'm rocking NVME M.2 only at the moment which is nice but not massively better than pure SSD in most use cases. 

[DanielMDA]

1 minute ago, Zebedeeboing said:

SSD and HDD separate every time, straight performance for the key items on SSD. Personal point but SSHD gives me heebygeebies after mine failed. Although I've also had an SSD fail on me as well so take that with a pinch of salt lol.

 

I'm rocking NVME M.2 only at the moment which is nice but not massively better than pure SSD in most use cases. 

It would be an M.2 SSD + SSHD as mass storage

[DanielMDA]

7 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

There's no point for that. Anything you need to load fast, like programs, put them on the SSD. For media, put it on a normal HDD. There's very little that really benefits from an SSHD over an HDD when you have a dedicated SSD in the system. The inability to specify what goes in the NAND cache is one of the biggest problems. 

 

When you have a dedicated SSD for at least the operating system, you've basically removed any real benefits from the SSHD so you'd be spending a fairly significant amount of money for 8GB of hit and miss cache. You'd be better off spending the extra money on a larger dedicated SSD and going for a regular HDD for mass storage. 

It would be an M.2 SSD as a main/boot dirve and an SSHD as a Mass storage Dirve (i.e. Games, i think the load times of the Steam Library would benefit a lot for the SSHD)

Edited September 9, 2017 by DanielMDA
spelling

[Nena Trinity]

I use my SSHD as a Steam drive!

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, DanielMDA said:

It would be an M.2 SSD as a main/boot dirve and an SSHD as a Mass storage Dirve (i.e. Games, i think the load times of the Steal Library would benefit a lot for the SSHD)

They don't. Unless you only launch the same game over and over  (and if it's small enough to fit in the NAND cache), you won't see any improvement in loading times. SSHDs can be good for OS drives (compared to an HDD) but for mass storage and games, it makes basically no difference, you're basically just buying a really expensive HDD.