SSHD?

[Deftones]

Hi there,

I'm hesitant if I should get a WD Black 1TB 64MB Cache device OR a Seagate Barracuda 1TB SSHD 64MB Cache.

I already have an SSD as my primary boot drive, I've had it for a year and it works well, it's responsive, quick and awesome. It has 240gb capacity and I have ~ 190 gigs available for games after intalling required basic programs and stuff.

So I know how fast an SSD is.

However, large capacity SSD's (above 500 gigs) are hella expensive, I can't afford them. And today's games require a lot of space and ~200gb is barely enough. GTA V alone is more than 60gigs...so that's where SSHD steps on the scene: it is significantly faster and more responsive than an HDD but also significantly slower than a single SSD. That's an in-between solution...

In terms of prices, in my country, for example a WD Black 1TB 7200rpm 64mb cache HDD is a little more expensive (nearly the same price) than a Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 64mb cache 1TB SSHD.

So, price isn't a concern.

My questions are:

Is it worth buying the above mentioned SSHD?

If you are an SSHD owner, could you share your experiences with that? How long have you had it, is it fast, does performance decrease over time etc.

Thx

[Castdeath97]

Form what I heard they aren't that good, but I haven't used one.

[ZetZet]

If you have an SSD as boot drive SSHD doesn't make any sense. WD Black is going to be better, overpriced as balls, but better.

 

Form what I heard they aren't that good, but I haven't used one.

they are good, but only if you have SSHD alone, if you use SSD and SSHD it will perform like a normal hard drive at a higher price, because it doesn't know what to cache.

[Deftones]

If you have an SSD as boot drive SSHD doesn't make any sense. WD Black is going to be better, overpriced as balls, but better.

they are good, but only if you have SSHD alone, if you use SSD and SSHD it will perform like a normal hard drive at a higher price, because it doesn't know what to cache.

Sorry I forgot to mention that IF I choose to buy an SSHD then I'm gonna move my existing SSD to my laptop because it has an awful low capacity HDD in there.

So my purpose is to use an SSHD as the only primary boot drive on my desktop pc.

[ZetZet]

Sorry I forgot to mention that IF I choose to buy an SSHD then I'm gonna move my existing SSD to my laptop because it has an awful low capacity HDD in there.

So my purpose is to use an SSHD as the only primary boot drive.

Then it makes sense. But still worse than SSD+HDD.

[Bl00dgod]

 

If you have an SSD as boot drive SSHD doesn't make any sense. WD Black is going to be better, overpriced as balls, but better.

 

they are good, but only if you have SSHD alone, if you use SSD and SSHD it will perform like a normal hard drive at a higher price, because it doesn't know what to cache.

 

^ this

also sshd need some time to "learn" what to cache and mostly have only 8gb of flash storage

so better buy a ssd and a normal hdd

[ManWithBeard1990]

Depends what you use it for. For large files it won't be that much of an improvement but then, that's not what gets cached. I use an ssd as boot drive and an sshd as home folder.

Having used SSHD's from both Seagate and Toshiba I can say that the Toshiba one did give a noticeable and impressive boot-time speedup once it had "learned" which data needed random access more. The Seagate one seems less eager to cache than the Toshiba one, which may in the long run be more useful but it's hard to tell. As far as reliability is concerned I do trust Seagate more than Toshiba. They get a lot of flak based solely on some Backblaze article from five years ago, but my personal experience is different.

[Deftones]

Then it makes sense. But still worse than SSD+HDD.

But what do you mean by SSD + HDD? You mean I should buy a WD blue HDD 3"5 as a secondary storage device while SSD being the boot drive? That's all good but if I install games on the HDD it's not going to load fast as it would load on an SSD.

[ZetZet]

But what do you mean by SSD + HDD? You mean I should buy a WD blue HDD 3"5 as a secondary storage device while SSD being the boot drive? That's all good but if I install games on the HDD it's not going to load fast as it would load on an SSD.

But if you only have HDD EVERYTHING will be slow.

 

Just loading games being slow>Everything slow

 

 

Also SSHD doesn't help with loading anything. It only helps with programs you use often.

 

Backblaze

test is confirmed to be stupid

[Epiclol86]

the best setup i think is ssd+sshd, with the sshd as a boot drive. That means your ssd cache will be used while booting (so ssd-like speed, see linux's review on it on channel ncix). that means more space on your ssd for games and other heavy programms. the hdd space will be used for whatever it is you store in large quantities (photos, music, videos etc.) and that you don't need ssd-like speeds to access!

[Deftones]

Alright guys, thanks for replying. I think I'll try out the SSHD. I'll install games on it and see how it affects load times and in general, how it affects system responsiveness/speed. If I don't like it, I'll just put it in the drawer and save it for rough times haha. That Seagate SSHD with 1TB space and 7200 rpm only costs $55 in my country.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there Deftones,

 

Gaming relies on the storage's performance only for the loading times and FPS and graphics stay completely unaffected. Games that are load screen intensive may somewhat benefit from a slightly faster storage drive but I doubt that it will make any significant difference. SSHD drives are great for single-bay systems as they use algorithms to determine what is used most (like the OS or a work program) and store their loading files on the small (usually 8GB) SSD portion of the drive for faster loading and better responsiveness. Everything else works pretty much as if it is run from a basic HDD. 

Since you have free space on the SSD I would recommend storing your most demanding games that will really benefit from its performance  there and leave everything else for a regular HDD. WD Black is a good performance drive with high speeds and long warranty. You can also check out WD Blue which can also handle pretty much anything you throw at it: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=5eoqwK

 

Captain_WD.