How Does a Hybrid Drive Work? Are They Worth it?

[cooleobro]

I noticed that Linus doesn't have a dedicated video on Hybrids. Tbh, I know nothing about them. Are the faster than HDDs? Are they slower than SSDs? Are they just SSDs with more storage? Any useful info I could get would be awesome!

[othertomperson]

They're HDDs with basically solid state cache. They're a decent compromise for speed, capacity, price and the physical space they take up, but aren't as good as a dedicated SSD and HDD. The cache is pretty small -- don't expect a speed boost in many games.

[Nexxus]

They are pretty pointless as I understand

[Opeth747]

They're faster than regular HDD's but not as fast as a real SSD.

[Curufinwe_wins]

As ssds have becomes cheaper, faster and larger, they make less and less sense in the market. They can't reach the same capacities as either and currently hdds are only being used for mass storage anyways.

Oems love them though.

[,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,]

You have a slight boost in overall usage. I own a 2TB SSHD. Later moved onto an SSD and now use the SSHD to hold my games. I did like the very slight boost so I'd say it's worth it. SSD is much better though. (Nothing noticeable about games)

[R0hm]

They are targetted at laptops which only have one 2.5" slot.

It is very useful to boost an old laptop. It was like night and day when I changed the stock WD Caviar Blue 640 GB to a Seagate Laptop SSHD 1 TB. Boot times are SSD-like, small programs (Firefox...) load faster. However, don't expect reduced load times in games.

[Captain_WD]

I noticed that Linus doesn't have a dedicated video on Hybrids. Tbh, I know nothing about them. Are the faster than HDDs? Are they slower than SSDs? Are they just SSDs with more storage? Any useful info I could get would be awesome!

 

Hey there cooleobro,

 

SSHD drives of Hybrid Drives are generally regular HDDs that have a small SSD drive that's used for caching. The drive itself uses a mathematical algorithm to figure out what you use the most in your computer and stores the boot/load files from those applications on the SSD for much better performance. For everything else the drive functions like a regular HDD. You have no control whatsoever over what goes on the SSD portion. 

These drives are good if you have a computer that has a single drive bay (laptops for example) that are used for just a few things that can be stored on the SSD. 

 

Captain_WD.