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Are they any good as a cheaper alternative to an SSD?
Need 1TB which is still pricey in SSD form
Hybrid drives are mechanical drives with a chunk of flash memory in them. They fall somewhere between SSDs and mechanical drives in terms of price and performance. </over-simplified explanation>
What do you need it for?
The speed of an SSD is not required for most people so a hybrid drive works well. I replaced the drive in my 2009 macbook with a 1TB one that has 8GB of flash memory. The 8GB is more than enough to handle the boot up and shut down which massively slashed the boot up and shut down times of my ageing Macbook - still sub 1min for both. But once it's fired up the speed of an SSD is not needed just to run your web browser and buy stuff from Wiggle. Unless you're into photo or video editing or something you're not going to miss the fraction of a second quicker it takes an SSD to open up an application.
Indeed. Which is why I asked what he wanted it for. (-:
The price of ssd drives is coming down. I paid £100 for a 750gb recently. Worth it for improvements across the board.
The price of ssd drives is coming down
I wouldn't [url= http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/Samsung-inch-Solid-State-Drive/product/B00P738MUU?context=browse ]bank on it[/url] in the short term - there's [url= https://www.extremetech.com/computing/240531-ssd-pricewatch-ssd-prices-expected-jump-quarter-thanks-limited-nand-supply-surging-demand ]a NAND shortage[/url], and apparently also a HDD production shortage.
When can I get 750gb for £100?
I bought mine from Amazon. Just checked, it was actually £105. Deal popped up on hotukdeals. Maybe have a search on there and see what's good at the moment.
Most people only really think their machine is fast / slow on start-up, rest of the time most users don't care.
SSHD do the fast start-up thing very nicely.
jamesgarbett - Member
Are they any good as a cheaper alternative to an SSD?
Just to add to what everyone else has said: Hybrid drives do a really clever thing where the most used bits of your drive get put on the flash memory, speeding them up. Usually that'll end up being your OS and most commonly used applications.
I'm on an SSD now, but a hybrid drive was a great upgrade to my last laptop.
I sleep rather than turn off my frequently used mac and pc so start up time is definitely NOT the biggest improvement of moving to an ssd.
I like the way moving from one program to another especially office stuff is instantaneous.
120gb ssd will hold a hell of a lot of program files a cost £40 240gb fo £70. The get a 1/2tb hd for about the same.
Just to add to what everyone else has said: Hybrid drives do a really clever thing where the most used bits of your drive get put on the flash memory, speeding them up. Usually that'll end up being your OS and most commonly used applications.
The counterpoint to that is, somewhat obviously perhaps, it doesn't cache rarely used data. Depending on your usage, it may or may not make a difference on a data drive (which again, is why I asked what it's going to be used for).
Thsnks all - it's to go in a 2010 Macbook Pro which has the original 250Gb drive (almost full)
Likewise my Mac is asleep rather than off and I don't really notice my HDD is slow so perhaps a hybrid will be fast enough for me
You've only got space for one drive then..I think.
I've got a 1tb sshd in my 2011 mbp. Works a charm, boot is faster than previous mechanical drive. Can't do anything about apple updates slowing boot time though regardless of drive type 😉 I have 16gb of ram in it though, so system speed is fast anyway.
I use it a lot for photo editing. Drive speed is irrelevant once an image is loaded as the image is loaded into ram. I use it for lightroom and do batch exports. These are slower than a ssd but not much at all, we're talking seconds worth of difference across 5 mins eg. of export.
Think real world differences aren't at all great between ssd and sshd. I use ssd in other machines for ref.
Ssd have gone up in price a lot over the last year, eg Samsung 850evo is at least 25? more expensive compared with his time last year. Not looked at sshd prices recently.
This thread made me think maybe I should get a new mbp so browsed over to apple..3k wtf!!
I always wonder why you all boot your computers so much? never understood the desire for a quick start up time, just don't turn the computer off.