SSD + HDD or SSHD?

[Veninblazer]

I have two options.

Get an SSD for $150 (525GB MX300) plus a WD Blue 1TB drive for $50

Or get a 2TB SSHD for $100

 

I'm moving from a very slow (in comparison to how slow my laptop's 5400RPM drive was), loud (not even my old IDE was this bad), and old SATA I hard drive over to something quicker, and likely more reliable, but my budget isn't the best at the moment. What should I do?

[W-L]

Just now, MasontheDeathbat said:

I have two options.

Get an SSD for $150 (525GB MX300) plus a WD Blue 1TB drive for $50

Or get a 2TB SSHD for $100

 

I'm moving from a very slow, loud (not even my old IDE was this bad), and old SATA I hard drive over to something quicker, and likely more reliable, but my budget isn't the best at the moment. What should I do?

Hands down SSD + HDD, you can put your OS and mainly used programs on the SSD for fast boot and load times with mass data on the HDD.

[Veninblazer]

Just now, W-L said:

Hands down SSD + HDD, you can put your OS and mainly used programs on the SSD for fast boot and load times with mass data on the HDD.

For double the price though... and I chose the 525GB variant so I wouldn't have to worry as much about how much space I have left so I can easily clone my data onto it. with a 2TB SSHD that worry is completely eradicated, plus it costs less.

[YedZed]

SSHD's are a bit useless compared to SSD+HDD, even if you get less storage with the latter.

[Enderman]

Avoid SSHDs if you can.

[W-L]

1 minute ago, MasontheDeathbat said:

For double the price though... and I chose the 525GB variant so I wouldn't have to worry as much about how much space I have left so I can easily clone my data onto it. with a 2TB SSHD that worry is completely eradicated, plus it costs less.

They don't operate in the same way SSHD are a kind of middle ground between HDD's and SSD's where they just cache heavily used programs as they get used which helps speed things up but only marginally faster than a HDD. An SSD though would beat it in many regards, it would be best to do a fresh install cloning is usually never as good. 

[Veninblazer]

1 minute ago, YedZed said:

SSHD's are a bit useless compared to SSD+HDD, even if you get less storage with the latter.

I mean, I'm only using about 400 GB at the moment, so it's not a huge deal as far as less storage goes, but doubling the price for what seems like a slightly marginal gain over an SSHD compared to a hard drive? Hell, even a brand new 7200RPM would be an "upgrade" to me because of how slow this one is, even a 5400RPM laptop drive felt snappier.

[Veninblazer]

1 minute ago, W-L said:

They don't operate in the same way SSHD are a kind of middle ground between HDD's and SSD's where they just cache heavily used programs as they get used which helps speed things up but only marginally faster than a HDD. An SSD though would beat it in many regards, it would be best to do a fresh install cloning is usually never as good. 

 

Considering that I have data that I wouldn't be able to easily recover through a fresh install, I'm dead set on cloning.

[W-L]

Just now, MasontheDeathbat said:

Considering that I have data that I wouldn't be able to easily recover through a fresh install, I'm dead set on cloning.

You can just transfer the data over after the build is complete and installed, nothing too complicated. 

[Veninblazer]

1 minute ago, W-L said:

You can just transfer the data over after the build is complete and installed, nothing too complicated. 

None of the backups I've done of the base files (these are literally iTunes playlists that I'd have a tough time recreating due to their length) have transferred over the data I want to keep.

[aisle9]

SSHDs make a ton of sense in a few scenarios:

• Whoever designed your case was asleep at the wheel and set it up so you can only fit a single 3.5" drive in there and absolutely nothing else. Can't even velcro or zip-tie a 2.5" drive into place.
• Whoever designed your motherboard was drunk and asleep at the wheel and only put a single SATA port on the entire board.
• You're using a laptop.

Otherwise, they just don't make sense. You're compromising in too many ways. Sure, you've got SSD cache--eight whole gigabytes of it! That's about enough for a Windows 10 install, sure, but you don't get to choose what goes on that SSD cache. Algorithms within the drive itself do, and having scratched my head in the past with an SSD that took forever to boot into Windows but brought my music up in milliseconds, I can attest to those algorithms being...poorly implemented.

 

Is it more cost effective? No. Before the major storage and memory companies got together and decided that there would be a nice little shortage of NAND to bring their prices back up, you could buy a 120GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive for about $10 more than a 1TB desktop SSHD cost. That was a better value in every way, and I would still strongly suggest that anyone looking at a desktop SSHD take a long, hard look at the prices for a 240GB, 120GB or even 64GB boot SSD and the cost of a Blue or a Barracuda first.

 

Then there's, imo, the issue of reliability. I've used three SSHDs, all Seagate, two desktop and one laptop. The laptop drive took a massive dump within a couple months of buying it, and had to be RMA'ed. One of the desktop drives went into the SFF Optiplex 75 I upgraded for my dad. How well has that worked out? The drive is functionally sound and working just fine, but when he was here last after using the PC for a few months (more than long enough for the drive to have figured out what belonged on the SSD cache), I did a little test and timed how long it took to boot into Windows 10, then compared that against the boot times of a WD Black, a Hitachi Deathstar and a Seagate laptop HDD, all hooked into that same Dell to see how they'd stack up.

 

Here's a hint: the SSHD was not in the top two.

 

If you're in one of the situations I mentioned above, then an SSHD makes sense. I used the RMA replacement for the laptop SSHD that took a dump in a desktop build for a month or so because I didn't have a 3.5" drive on hand. It worked ok, ran about like you'd expect a 5400RPM drive to. I'm going to drop it into a Dell laptop in the not too distant future, as soon as I stop being lazy and open the thing up. But that's the third situation: I'm using a laptop. If none of those three situations mentioned applies to you and you're still thinking about an SSHD, I can't emphasize enough how much I'd suggest looking at faster, more cost effective and more reliable SSD+HDD combinations.

[Veninblazer]

3 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

SSHDs make a ton of sense in a few scenarios:

• Whoever designed your case was asleep at the wheel and set it up so you can only fit a single 3.5" drive in there and absolutely nothing else. Can't even velcro or zip-tie a 2.5" drive into place.
• Whoever designed your motherboard was drunk and asleep at the wheel and only put a single SATA port on the entire board.
• You're using a laptop.

Otherwise, they just don't make sense. You're compromising in too many ways. Sure, you've got SSD cache--eight whole gigabytes of it! That's about enough for a Windows 10 install, sure, but you don't get to choose what goes on that SSD cache. Algorithms within the drive itself do, and having scratched my head in the past with an SSD that took forever to boot into Windows but brought my music up in milliseconds, I can attest to those algorithms being...poorly implemented.

 

Is it more cost effective? No. Before the major storage and memory companies got together and decided that there would be a nice little shortage of NAND to bring their prices back up, you could buy a 120GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive for about $10 more than a 1TB desktop SSHD cost. That was a better value in every way, and I would still strongly suggest that anyone looking at a desktop SSHD take a long, hard look at the prices for a 240GB, 120GB or even 64GB boot SSD and the cost of a Blue or a Barracuda first.

 

Then there's, imo, the issue of reliability. I've used three SSHDs, all Seagate, two desktop and one laptop. The laptop drive took a massive dump within a couple months of buying it, and had to be RMA'ed. One of the desktop drives went into the SFF Optiplex 75 I upgraded for my dad. How well has that worked out? The drive is functionally sound and working just fine, but when he was here last after using the PC for a few months (more than long enough for the drive to have figured out what belonged on the SSD cache), I did a little test and timed how long it took to boot into Windows 10, then compared that against the boot times of a WD Black, a Hitachi Deathstar and a Seagate laptop HDD, all hooked into that same Dell to see how they'd stack up.

 

Here's a hint: the SSHD was not in the top two.

 

If you're in one of the situations I mentioned above, then an SSHD makes sense. I'm about to put the replacement for the laptop SSHD that took a dump into a Dell laptop in the not too distant future, as soon as I stop being lazy and open the thing up. But that's the third situation: I'm using a laptop. If none of those three situations mentioned applies to you and you're still thinking about an SSHD, I can't emphasize enough how much I'd suggest looking at faster, more cost effective and more reliable SSD+HDD combinations.

 

Alright, I'm in none of those three categories. I really don't consider 120GB enough for solid state (I wouldn't even be able to fit all three of the games I own with the worst loading times on it), and even 240 is pushing it a little because I'd have to uninstall a bunch of shit to even be able to clone the drive. Frankly, to be safe with the amount of storage, my only choice would have to be a 525GB MX300 - or even a 500GB WD Blue SSD. But here's the thing, combined with a 1TB storage drive, the price is double, and I don't exactly make money very quickly. It took a few months just to finish up the system I have right now, which only cost like $350. I also plan on upping the RAM in this thing, so if I got this combo and upped the RAM, this $350 "console-killer" that utilized a $200 Dell off Ebay and a $150 graphics card would turn into a $600 investment.

[aisle9]

4 minutes ago, MasontheDeathbat said:

Alright, I'm in none of those three categories. I really don't consider 120GB enough for solid state (I wouldn't even be able to fit all three of the games I own with the worst loading times on it), and even 240 is pushing it a little because I'd have to uninstall a bunch of shit to even be able to clone the drive. Frankly, to be safe with the amount of storage, my only choice would have to be a 525GB MX300 - or even a 500GB WD Blue SSD. But here's the thing, combined with a 1TB storage drive, the price is double, and I don't exactly make money very quickly. It took a few months just to finish up the system I have right now, which only cost like $350. I also plan on upping the RAM in this thing, so if I got this combo and upped the RAM, this $350 "console-killer" that utilized a $200 Dell off Ebay and a $150 graphics card would turn into a $600 investment.

I hear you, and I'm frequently in the same boat. Hell, most of the HDDs I have lying around here came from yard sale and flea market picks. And most of them are IDE. That's a problem in real-world applications.

 

But I digress. I would almost recommend you buy two HDDs and use one as your "pretend SSD" to make cloning easier later on over buying an SSHD. They're just terrible value propositions, the ones I've dealt with are RMAs waiting to happen, and their performance is miserable.

[W-L]

49 minutes ago, MasontheDeathbat said:

None of the backups I've done of the base files (these are literally iTunes playlists that I'd have a tough time recreating due to their length) have transferred over the data I want to keep.

Those can be backed up but I got to say are a pain to do. As mentioned a 500GB SSD is a really good starting point, you can place your secondary programs or game libraries on the HDD as they don't see much gain from an SSD. 

[Veninblazer]

On 3/6/2017 at 9:20 PM, W-L said:

Those can be backed up but I got to say are a pain to do. As mentioned a 500GB SSD is a really good starting point, you can place your secondary programs or game libraries on the HDD as they don't see much gain from an SSD. 

 

Some games will see major gains from an SSD, mainly with the loading times.

[W-L]

Just now, MasontheDeathbat said:

Some games will see major gains from an SSD, mainly with the loading times.

Yes some will, but not all games it varies a lot between different games.

[Veninblazer]

1 minute ago, W-L said:

Yes some will, but not all games it varies a lot between different games.

Yeah, a 120 is off the table because the 3 worst offenders I own when it comes to loading times wouldn't fit, and a 240/250/256 is still a bit sketchy.

[W-L]

1 hour ago, MasontheDeathbat said:

Yeah, a 120 is off the table because the 3 worst offenders I own when it comes to loading times wouldn't fit, and a 240/250/256 is still a bit sketchy.

A 250GB is usually a good fit for most users to have their OS and a few of their most common games and programs.