SSHD or HDD

[Chocolate_Milk25]

I have bought a 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD and was wondering if that is better than a normal HDD. I know I will be told to get an SDD, but I don’t have the money for one at the moment. I read reviews before saying that SSHD is faster than HDD, but I have been told that they are actually slower now. Should I return the SSHD and just buy a normal HDD or keep the SSHD?

[Dedayog]

Just now, Chocolate_Milk25 said:

I have bought a 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD and was wondering if that is better than a normal HDD. I know I will be told to get an SDD, but I don’t have the money for one at the moment. I read reviews before saying that SSHD is faster than HDD, but I have been told that they are actually slower now. Should I return the SSHD and just buy a normal HDD or keep the SSHD?

I'd keep it.  Not seeing how it could be slower than a HDD, but @seagate_surfer may have some info.

[Enderman]

SSHDs are kinda crap.

A small SSD+ large HDD is a better option.

[Chocolate_Milk25]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

SSHDs are kinda crap.

A small SSD+ large HDD is a better option.

I don’t get how they are worse though, it’s mostly been people telling me they’re bad. I also can’t really find any 250GB SSDs less than $50, and a 2TB HDD is about $60-$80 and I don’t have the money to buy both, so I need either one or the other which is my problem and why I went for the SSHD.

[Enderman]

Just now, Chocolate_Milk25 said:

I don’t get how they are worse though, it’s mostly been people telling me they’re bad. I also can’t really find any 250GB SSDs less than $50, and a 2TB HDD is about $60-$80 and I don’t have the money to buy both, so I need either one or the other which is my problem and why I went for the SSHD.

Becaus eit's just an HDD with larger cache, which means it's constantly moving stuff back and forth from the SSD portion causing unnecessary wear and drive usage.

It also uses alggorithms to decide what it pouts there, so you never get to choose what is fast or slow, and nothing is ever fast the first time you open or use it because it needs to be moved to the cache first.

Then, when stuff is being moved to or from the cache, the drive usage is going to be high so anything else you try to access during that time is even slower than on a regular HDD.

[Chocolate_Milk25]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Becaus eit's just an HDD with larger cache, which means it's constantly moving stuff back and forth from the SSD portion causing unnecessary wear and drive usage.

It also uses alggorithms to decide what it pouts there, so you never get to choose what is fast or slow, and nothing is ever fast the first time you open or use it because it needs to be moved to the cache first.

Then, when stuff is being moved to or from the cache, the drive usage is going to be high so anything else you try to access during that time is even slower than on a regular HDD.

So it would be better to just get a normal HDD without an extra SSD then? Cause the HDD would be about the same speed and longer lasting?

[SupaKomputa]

Since your avatar is APPLE, MacOS doesn't support SSHD.

I suggest 256gb SSD + 2 TB regular HDD.

[Chocolate_Milk25]

1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

Since your avatar is APPLE, MacOS doesn't support SSHD.

I suggest 256gb SSD + 2 TB regular HDD.

I’ll be using Windows 10 for this computer.

[Stormseeker9]

8 minutes ago, Chocolate_Milk25 said:

I’ll be using Windows 10 for this computer.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Storage	ADATA - Ultimate SU650 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$41.99 @ Newegg Business
Storage	Hitachi - Ultrastar 7K3000 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$46.91 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$88.90
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-07-18 13:20 EDT-0400

not sure if this fits budget ? 

[SupaKomputa]

10 minutes ago, Chocolate_Milk25 said:

I’ll be using Windows 10 for this computer.

Where do you live? If USA, there's many 256gb under $50, even the 512 gb.

You should prioritize on the SSD first, then adjust the HDD.

If you can't get the 2tb, why not getting a 1tb.

[Chocolate_Milk25]

3 minutes ago, Stormseeker9 said:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Storage	ADATA - Ultimate SU650 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$41.99 @ Newegg Business
Storage	Hitachi - Ultrastar 7K3000 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$46.91 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$88.90
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-07-18 13:20 EDT-0400

not sure if this fits budget ? 

Would a 120GB SSD just for Windows 10 and one or two games be ok? I’ve been told by friends that the 120GB isn't worth it but the HDD plus 120GB SSD would fit my budget.

[SpookyCitrus]

Just now, Chocolate_Milk25 said:

Would a 120GB SSD just for Windows 10 and one or two games be ok? I’ve been told by friends that the 120GB isn't worth it but the HDD plus 120GB SSD would fit my budget.

What country do you live in and what's your budget. You can get 480GB Solid State Drives for under $50 all day if you're in the US.

[Stormseeker9]

4 minutes ago, Chocolate_Milk25 said:

Would a 120GB SSD just for Windows 10 and one or two games be ok? I’ve been told by friends that the 120GB isn't worth it but the HDD plus 120GB SSD would fit my budget.

I would get a ~500GB ssd at least. You can also opt for a 1TB drive @ $32 I believe 

[Chocolate_Milk25]

Thanks for all the help guys! I think I’ll go with a 1TB HDD and a 250-500 SSD and return the SSHD. This is my first build so thanks for putting up with the questions.

[seagate_surfer]

I will post here some statements that may sound affirmations well known to anyone, or maybe not!  An SSHD drive is the best type of non-SSD drive, the larger the SSHD cache, the better the performance, they are faster than normal hard drives for starting and closing applications and booting up an operating system, but even with 8GB of NAND cache, it was found that SSHDs did not offer SSD performance. One regular HDD is programmed with algorithms to keep track of every chunk of data in the master file table or MFT, that makes the action of deleting a file from an HDD unnecessary. Simply erase its entry in the MFT, and from the host's point of view it's gone, only when new data physically overwrite the old is it truly gone, which is why forensic software can often recover “deleted” files from systems and one of the reasons why HDDs and SSHDs are more durable. The key point, though, is that the hard drive doesn’t care if there is data in sectors or not. The host only sees sectors in terms of occupied or available for writing.

 

Because SSDs work very differently, instead of marking one sector as garbage that can be removed and overwritten when new data find that space necessary, the SSDs must first erase (actually erase and not just mark things like "Ok to delete") everything. However, deleting a page in one SSD is complicated by the fact that entire blocks of pages must be deleted at the same time, periodically the SSDs go through a process called garbage collection to clear out invalid pages of data to help with overprovisioning and require algorithms like proprietary DuraWrite technology from Seagate that reduces cumulative amount of data written, all these help the SSDs to relieve those reads and writes but In practice an SSD’s performance begins to decline after it reaches about 50% full, that's why you may hear people recommending that you do not completely fill out one SSD and use only about %70 or %80 of the space because the SSDs work better with a bit of free space to handle all these algorithms (you can actually leave one small partition unused in your SSD and that will automatically be assigned to be used as that "cache" that one SSD require to work better). There is one obvious drawback to all this: the more unused capacity one reserves to increase writing speeds, the less capacity there is for storage. With hard drives that doesn't happen, the somewhat similar practice of short stroking, which confines reads and writes to the fastest outer tracks of the drive platters, is less penalizing because the cost per gigabyte is lower, making the decision to give up 25% or more of a drive’s capacity more difficult. 
 

The intention of an SSHD when they were first manufactured about 10years ago, was to add some of the speed of the SSDs to the cost-effective storage capacity of traditional HDDs, acting as a cache for the data stored on the hard disk, improving the overall performance by keeping copies of the data used more frequently in the faster but still small 8GB SSD that most of the SSHDs have inside, that puts the SSHD to be between an HDD and SSD. For home user this may make no difference but buyers should look closely at their workloads and consider what technology will provide the greatest benefits for their invested dollars. In the end, you are the one with the money and it is you who will decide if it is worth sacrificing the storage space for transfer rates or vice versa.

Edited July 20, 2019 by seagate_surfer

[Vandey]

On 7/18/2019 at 12:27 PM, Chocolate_Milk25 said:

Would a 120GB SSD just for Windows 10 and one or two games be ok? I’ve been told by friends that the 120GB isn't worth it but the HDD plus 120GB SSD would fit my budget.

120 GB wont be nearly enough... I'm running windows 10 and only have like two modern AAA titles installed and my 500 GB drive is close to 80% full. The rest of my library is on a secondary SSD that just houses games and lesser important games that i play from time to time are install on a 2TB HDD. Most modern AAA games are enormous probably roughly 50-60 GB per game

[Enderman]

On 7/18/2019 at 7:07 PM, Chocolate_Milk25 said:

So it would be better to just get a normal HDD without an extra SSD then? Cause the HDD would be about the same speed and longer lasting?

Yeah that's what I would have done but you already bought the sshd so...