The hybrid hard drive is working. Hybrid SSHD hard drives
In this article I will tell you what a hybrid hard drive is, how it is better than the usual HDD, as well as the pros and cons compared to an SSD.
For most ordinary users, I will now reveal a big secret - the weakest (read: slow) link in the chain of a computer system is the hard drive or hard drive. You may have the fastest processor, the best video card and a ton of RAM, but a slow and, excuse the expression, “dumb” hard drive nullifies all the work of this cool hardware.
This was the case until recently. Now there are SSDs or solid state drives. They helped get rid of this bottleneck in computer performance. Many people use them as the main boot disk for the operating system, which is very justified, but the high price and small amount of memory do not make it possible to use them more widely.
The production of hard drives is a very complex technological process, since there are many moving parts in it, which greatly limits the reduction in the size of the devices without losing certain characteristics (which is probably why so many modern hard drives now fail). Manufacturers find themselves at a technological impasse. There is no room to further increase the capacity of disks and their density.
To solve this problem, solid-state drives were created, and in 2007, Seagate developed the world's first hybrid hard drive or SSHD (solid-state hard drive). This is a physical data storage device in which data storage technologies of the 60s (hard disk on magnetic disks, HDD) and modern times (SSD drives on) are intertwined.
In general, this looks like an ordinary hard drive with significantly increased flash memory. The first samples had 128MB, but now there are models with 32GB.
The result is a very interesting and practical product. It inherited a large capacity from a regular disk, and a large, one might even say huge, data cache from a solid-state drive.
Speed parameters or HDD and SSD vs SSHD
The process of increasing the speed of the operating system and applications using such hybrid drives is as follows:
After installing the operating system on a hybrid hard drive, the first boot will occur at normal speed, but after several reboots, the time will decrease due to the device's microcontroller entering the most frequently used operating system data areas into a large cache. Tests have shown that booting a system with an SSHD is only 5-10% slower than a regular SSD. The same will happen with various applications, games, etc. The main thing is that the disk has enough flash memory for everything you need.
In late 2011 and early 2012, speed tests showed that hybrid SSDs with a 750 GB HDD and 8 GB cache were slower than SSDs in random read/write and sequential read/write, but faster than HDDs when running applications. and turning off.
The amount of cache memory significantly affects the cost of the final product. Therefore, when choosing a drive, you must take into account how resource-intensive applications you are going to run on it and their number.
At the heart of hybrid drive technology is deciding which data elements are prioritized by flash memory and which are not. Therefore, SSHDs can operate in two main modes:
Automatic mode or self-optimized
In this mode, the hybrid hard drive independently makes all decisions related to data distribution and does not depend on the operating system.
Host-Optimized Mode or host-hinted
In this operating mode, the Hybrid SSHD enables the extended SATA "Hybrid Information" command set. Based on these commands, the operating system and device driver, taking into account the file system structure, decide which data elements to place in the NAND flash memory.
Some specific features of SSHD, such as host-hinted mode, require software support in the operating system. Support for host-hinted operations appeared only in Windows 8.1, while patches for the Linux kernel have been available since late 2014. They are expected to be included in the Linux kernel in the future.
Historical reference
In 2007, Seagate and Samsung introduced the first hybrid drives: Seagate Momentus PSD and Samsung SpinPoint MH80. Both were 2.5-inch and had 128 MB or 256 MB of flash memory. The products are not widely available.
In May 2010, Seagate introduced a new hybrid product called the Momentus XT drive and used the term " Solid State Hybrid Disk (SSHD). It includes 500 GB of HDD memory with 4 GB of integrated NAND flash memory.
In April 2013, WD introduced 2.5-inch WD Black SSHD drives, including 5 mm thick SSHDs with 500 GB of regular memory and flash memory in sizes of 8 GB, 16 GB and 24 GB.
Pros and cons of hybrid HDDs
The main advantage of a hybrid hard drive is a significant increase in the performance of the disk subsystem, especially in netbooks and laptops, where hard drives are less powerful and you cannot install a second drive, as in a regular PC. It’s not for nothing that the very first SSHD disks were developed in the 2.5-inch laptop format. Later, 3.5-inch hybrid drives were released. Although now in laptops with a disk drive, it is possible to replace it with a hard drive or solid-state drive, but I will tell you how to do this in one of the following articles.
The disadvantages include the inability to fit all critical data on the flash memory of an SSHD disk. But it also doesn’t make sense to install more than 32GB on a hybrid SSHD, since it will be cheaper to buy a regular 64GB SSD.
At the moment, their price is significantly higher than that of conventional hard drives. For example, at the time of writing, a 1 TB hard drive Seagate Desktop SSHD model ST1000DX001 cost about 6,000 rubles, and its competitor 1Tb Western Digital WD Blue SSHD WD10J31X cost about 5,500 rubles. At the same time, a regular 1 TB Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 hard drive will cost you 3,600 rubles. And this includes models with only 8GB of memory. With more quantity the difference will increase. But this is still several times less than the cost of an SSD of similar size.
Conclusion
Hybrid hard drives are a compromise solution that allows you to both increase the overall performance of the system in which they are installed and reduce its price.
You could say this is an evolutionary development of conventional HDDs. Due to the increased cache, it was possible to reduce the number of disk accesses, which was reflected in reduced power consumption and heat dissipation, durability and reduced noise during operation. All this makes them much more productive and practical than HDDs, and several times cheaper than SSDs.
The original purpose that SSHD was supposed to fulfill - a low-cost replacement for solid-state drives and hard drives in laptops and mobile computers - has been successfully achieved. After testing the technology and eliminating the shortcomings, manufacturers began to produce 3.5-inch formats for a regular PC.
Thus, for an expensive PC and laptop, it is better to choose a high-speed solid-state drive with a large capacity on which to install the operating system and the programs and applications necessary for work, but for a regular PC and especially a laptop, an SSHD is ideal, which will replace obsolete and slow ones hard disc drive.
SSHD is a new marketing term coined by Seagate employees to refer to drives in the market known as hybrid hard drives, which are a combination of a traditional hard drive (HDD) and new technologies.
Today we will talk about the pros and cons of this type of drive and whether they are worth your attention and, importantly, money.
What is the advantage of SSHD?
Seagate's advertising headlines read: “SSD Performance. Hard drive capacity. Affordable price". Essentially what they are trying to say is that SSHD combines the benefits of both technologies without any significant cost. But if this is true, then why hasn't hybrid hard drive technology revolutionized the storage market yet? We’ll talk about this later, but for now let’s try to take a closer look at these “hybrids.”
SSHDs are essentially regular HDDs, but with a compact, small-capacity solid-state drive added to the disk controller and acting as a kind of cache for frequently used files. Therefore, you should not be surprised that the memory capacity of SSHDs is not inferior to classic hard drives.
SSHD As for cost, hybrid hard drives cost about 10-20% more than traditional HDDs - this is the result of adding additional cache memory and firmware to manage that cache. On the other hand, they are much cheaper than solid-state drives, many times cheaper.
It all sounds quite cool and optimistic, but...
Is SSHD performance really the same as SSD?
The performance issue of hybrid hard drives directly depends on how the user uses the system, and the limiting factor in that very performance is the small amount of cache memory (currently about 8 GB), which is simply not enough to perform more or less serious tasks.
If a user “uses” his PC to a minimum, well, let’s say, surfs the Internet, sits on social networks, reads email, plays solitaire and plays chess, then such a user will have the greatest benefit from using hybrid hard drives, because in this scenario what is happening The cache memory is quite enough to fully process all data at a speed corresponding to the SSD.
But, if we take into account another user who, let’s say, plays a variety of “heavy” computer games, then we can safely say that this user will not notice any difference in performance if he changes the HDD to an SSHD. Why? Because the cache volume is quite small and the files of that same computer game in it will be constantly updated and cannot be reused (from the cache), since they will be deleted and replaced with new files. And if the files are not reused, then there will be no real benefit from the SSD cache.
The same applies to copying data. If you copy, say, a folder of files and want to move it from one place to another, and it takes up more than 8 GB, then, accordingly, not the SSHD cache will be used, but its regular memory on a magnetic hard disk, and the copying speed will be the same , just like on a classic HDD.
But, as a “sweetener”, it is worth noting that the system boot when you turn on the computer will be approximately 10 seconds, which practically corresponds to the speed of the SSD.
So who needs an SSHD?
The primary market for solid-state hybrid drives is laptops. The fact is that the limited space of the case does not allow installing more than one disk in these systems. Installing only one SSD can provide greater performance, but limit the amount of data that can be stored on it. On the other hand, installing a single HDD will provide a lot of space, but the hard drive will not perform as well as an SSD.
SSHD, on the other hand, can offer a simple and affordable way to provide higher performance with the same amount of internal memory - a great compromise. Plus, since most laptops are used for work rather than gaming, the benefits of SSHD drives become even more attractive.
For desktop systems, however, I do not yet recommend installing hybrid hard drives, since the case of a personal computer allows you to easily install several drives, namely SSD (for system operation) and HDD (for data storage), which will give excellent performance and large amount of disk space.
An exception would be mini-desktop systems, which only have internal space for one drive.
). SSDs do not use magnetic disks that rotate (as in HDDs), but stationary flash memory chips, similar to . However, despite having numerous advantages, solid-state drives have not yet been able to completely replace hard drives even in laptops, let alone. The main disadvantage of SSDs remains their high price: a gigabyte of their capacity costs significantly more than that of an HDD. Therefore, we will tell you in which cases it is better to choose an SSD, HDD or a hybrid solution.
Benefits of SSD
The main advantages of solid-state drives over hard drives are:
- high performance;
- resistance to physical impact.
For example, the sequential reading and writing speed of a 2.5-inch laptop HDD is 100 MB/s, and a 3.5-inch desktop HDD is 150 MB/s. The speed of random read-write (files are scattered over the entire surface of the disk) in an HDD can be ten times lower than the sequential one.
Another thing is SSD: even when connected to a motherboard with an outdated SATA II interface, the speed of linear data reading will be less than 250 MB/sec. And once you upgrade to SATA III, performance will increase to 400-500 MB/sec. In turn, the linear write speed of an SSD, depending on the model, can be either equal to the reading performance or be half as low (but still higher compared to the HDD). And thanks to minimal delays in accessing data (SSDs, unlike HDDs, do not need to move the read head across the disk surface), the random read-write speed is also significantly higher.
Without moving elements (electric motor, read heads), solid-state drives are not afraid of exposure to strong vibrations and shocks. This allows, for example, to work on a laptop while driving a car on a bumpy dirt road. However, it’s not worth crash testing the SSD, so that you don’t have to mourn the information that was stored on it later. SSDs are less afraid of overheating: the permissible operating temperature is up to 70°C, while HDDs are limited to 60°C.
Advantages of HDD
Good old hard drives also have their advantages, namely the ability to rewrite data multiple times and a favorable price-to-capacity ratio. With very active use of SSDs (server PCs), memory blocks can be “worn to holes.” Depending on the type of flash memory - TLC, MLC or SLC (second mass storage) - blocks can be rewritten thousands to hundreds of thousands of times. Worn out blocks are automatically blocked, causing the SSD to lose capacity over time.
Traditional hard drives allow you to rewrite data a much larger number of times – the number goes into the millions. Therefore, it is not so much the magnetic disks that fail in HDDs (although bad sectors also sometimes appear on them), but rather the mechanical elements. However, on home and office PCs, data is not overwritten as often as on servers. Unless the registry of the Windows operating system reads and writes data continuously (it is not surprising that bad sectors on the surface of the HDD most often appear precisely at the location of the registry).
But when it comes to price, it becomes impossible to argue with the victory of hard drives. Currently, for $100 you can buy a 120 GB SSD, a 2.5-inch 1 terabyte HDD or a 3.5-inch 2 terabyte HDD. The difference in volume between an SSD and a HDD for the same price is tenfold, which is why it is worth paying attention to hybrid solutions.
Advantages of hybrids
Hybrid is a PC disk subsystem that combines the advantages of SSD and HDD - high performance and large capacity at a reasonable price. There can be three options for a hybrid disk subsystem: an SSD with enough capacity to install the operating system and programs (60-120 GB) plus a large HDD for storing photos, videos, music and games; large HDD plus a separate small SSD (20-32 GB) for caching frequently used programs; and finally a hybrid one (HDD plus a small SSD in a single case).
The first version of the hybrid disk subsystem is, of course, the best, but also the most expensive - it will cost a good $200 (HDD+SSD). Those who want to save money should choose the second option - a small SSD for caching costs only $50. However, for SSD caching to work, a motherboard that supports Intel Smart Response Technology (Intel Z68, H77, Z77, H87, Z87, H97 and Z97 chipsets) is required. Hybrid drives (SSHD) are best suited for laptops, where you have to sacrifice a DVD drive to install separate SSD and HDD.
SSD form factors
Not all solid-state drives are made in the popular type (additional mounting is required for installation in a 3.5-inch slot). In addition to the 2.5-inch models, there are 1.8-inch models with a SATA connection. They are used, however, in so-called embedded systems, for example, on-board computers of premium cars. For thin laptops (ultrabooks), extremely compact SSD form factors and . And for computer enthusiasts who are willing to pay any money for the most powerful components in the world, solid state devices are offered in the form of PCI-Express 3.0 expansion cards (linear read-write speed reaches an impressive 1000-1500 MB/s).
Let's migrate to SSD!
Installing an SSD speeds up your PC much more than, say, upgrading your processor, even if it has all eight cores. Reducing the loading time of the operating system, falling asleep and waking up the PC, and launching programs (even a web browser and text editor) is difficult to miss. And you can transfer Windows from HDD to SSD along with all installed and configured programs with literally two mouse clicks using the free utility EaseUS Partition Master Free. Or just contact ours for help.
The first qualitative leap in the field of data storage in personal computers occurred about 30 years ago - when the hard drive became the main storage device. The personal computer equipped with the latter really reached a different level compared to its predecessors, equipped only with floppy drives, or even working with household tape recorders, and in all respects. Simply because the high capacity and speed of hard drives led to a sharp increase in the power of application programs, and generally to a completely different scenario for using technology. Actually, this is why this scheme quickly became standard and did not change for many years.
However, by now the market has begun to undergo further developments. Hard drives continue to be the main type of drive in mass-market computers. However, it is no longer the only one - flash memory is nipping at its heels. However, solid-state drives still cannot compete with hard drives in terms of capacity, but the trick is that the user often does not need high capacity. In any case, it is not needed in every computer - now a personal computer is not the only device of this kind at the owner’s disposal, but just part of a global infrastructure that includes local NAS and global cloud services. Accordingly, parameters such as performance or resistance to external adverse influences (shaking, for example) are taking the lead in many areas of use, but here flash memory-based drives are head and shoulders above their mechanical relatives.
But in practice, everything is even more complicated than the head-on confrontation between mechanics and semiconductors. The fact is that manufacturers have long been working on hybrid drives that include both. In terms of capacity, they do not lag behind hard drives (which is not surprising, since the hard drive is the basis of all hybrids), but at the same time they inherit many of their shortcomings, and performance... It’s more complicated with it. A conservative estimate (with which we tend to agree) is that the performance of hybrids is no lower than that of hard drives, and in a number of use cases can be comparable to solid-state devices. But not always, i.e. everything is simple only at the extreme points: hard drives are slow, SSDs are fast. And hybrids - depending on your luck.
However, such a vague definition certainly does not suit everyone. The only problem is that accurate testing of systems with hybrid drives is extremely difficult due to the variability of the results. Depending on the chosen scenario and test programs, it is not so difficult to obtain both performance levels at the level of conventional hard drives and comparable to solid-state drives. Moreover, the more low-level test programs we take, the more results of the first type we get. And high-level tests of the entire system usually do not depend too much on the performance of the drives themselves, so in them you can easily achieve parity between all types of the latter.
But no matter how difficult the search for an exact answer to the question posed may be, it needs to be done. Including using different approaches. In the line of articles devoted to testing drives themselves, we mainly focus on low-level tests and try (for obvious reasons) not to compare devices of different types with each other. Today's material is of a different kind. In it we will limit ourselves to high-level benchmarks, but we will test five different drives within one system. Let's see what comes out of this.
What and how we test
Not long ago we got our hands on an MSI GP60 gaming laptop, which differs from most devices on the market in the use of a Western Digital hybrid hard drive. This is already interesting in itself, since, unlike Seagate, which sells its hybrids left and right through all channels (so anyone can buy them), WDC so far ships its drives of this class only to manufacturers of finished systems. According to the company, this should help the fullest and correct use of the potential of hybrid hard drives and avoid their “incorrect” use. For example, an individual buyer can try to install a couple of hybrids in RAID0, which is not very reasonable (mostly sequential operations are accelerated, but the same level of performance can be achieved on a cheaper array of conventional hard drives), or use additional external flash caching, which in most cases it will only worsen the performance. And the laptop manufacturer definitely won’t do anything stupid :) Moreover, if possible, he will configure the system accordingly and include the “correct” utilities in the kit (ideally). In general, this is an approach with its pros and cons. And its main disadvantages on the part of testers (i.e. us) is that you can’t just go to the store and pick up one hard drive - you need to get a whole system with it somewhere. However, as we see, it is not so difficult :)
So, the WDC WD10J13T itself is interesting in itself. Despite belonging to the Black series, it has a platter rotation speed of only 5400 rpm, which, in general, is already becoming common: 7200 laptop hard drives are dying out, since hybridization is now becoming the main method of increasing productivity. This model also has as much as 24 GB of flash memory installed, which is not so bad - SanDisk caching SSDs, actively used by many laptop manufacturers, have just such a capacity. And the pancake package is also familiar - two 500 GB disks, which is currently the maximum for 9.5 mm WD hard drives. Note - only 5400 models: “black” at 7200 rpm. has not been updated for a very long time and uses less dense platters, so the capacity is limited to 750 GB, and with some types of load it is narrower and the higher rotation speed of the platters does not help it break away from the cheaper “blue” models (and, accordingly, older hybrids) . In general, this is a capacious hard drive, accelerated by hybridization.
Who can compare it with? Of course, testing would not be complete without the Seagate SSHD. The closest in terms of technical characteristics is the ST1000LX003: also a terabyte on two plates and 32 GB of flash memory, but, unfortunately, we have not tested it yet. But I found the Laptop Thin SSHD ST500LM000 “at hand”. The plate in it is the same as in older models, but there is only one. However, in comparison with an SSD, its 500 GB capacity still looks good - flash memory of this or greater capacity is still too expensive from the point of view of many buyers. So the main drawback of this model’s performance characteristics is only 8 GB of flash buffer, which, as we already found when testing the drive, is not enough. On the other hand, the technology developed over several years may well compensate for the advantage of a Western Digital drive in flash capacity, so the comparison promises to be interesting.
But, be that as it may, the question is “which hybrid to buy?” Users ask themselves much less often than “is it worth buying a hybrid hard drive?” (especially since, as mentioned above, Western Digital does not yet sell its models at retail, which further narrows the possibility of choice as such). That is why it is impossible to avoid comparison with “ordinary powder,” i.e., a simple hard drive. So as not to offend any of the manufacturers, an example of such today will be the Hitachi Travelstar Z5K500-320: a single-platter from a “neutral manufacturer” with the same rotation speed of 5400 rpm as both test subjects. Of course, there are faster “classic” hard drives, but the modern “floor” is more important to us, not the “ceiling”. And in general - as has been said more than once, the latter is already beginning to slowly disappear: the role of top models is beginning to be played by hybrids, and devices with a rotation speed of 7200 rpm. become a dead-end branch of evolution.
And finally, today's favorites are solid-state drives. There will be two of them - the budget Crucial M500 120 GB and the Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB belonging to a slightly higher class. Note that the “budget” of the M500 is, in general, also relative - in price it is approximately equal to a terabyte hybrid from Seagate with 8 GB of flash memory (there are no retail prices for the WD10J13T yet, but it is unlikely that the cost of two similar drives from different companies can be too much vary). Actually, this is the answer to the question - why solid-state drives are still unable to displace mechanical drives: the prices are too different. Yes, of course, it is now possible to purchase an SSD at the price of an HDD (especially an SSHD), but the capacity will differ radically - eight times, i.e. almost an order of magnitude. A quarter of a terabyte of flash is relatively more profitable than an eighth of flash, but here it’s better not to compare absolute prices with hard drives. And if the buyer needs half a terabyte, then he will either have to buy an SSD at the price of a budget (even not the cheapest) laptop, or... Or give up on all the theoretical advantages of new technologies and turn to time-tested ones. Or also new, but less radical, i.e., hybrid drives.
As for the tools, there is no particular point in leaning on low-level tests - we have already established that. But PCMark is suitable as a measuring tool. Moreover, the two latest (at the moment) versions of this test package are also used when testing laptops, so some of the results have already been obtained earlier.
Low level - technology matters
So, let's start with the routes specialized for storage devices. There are too many detailed results, so we will limit ourselves to general estimates.
There are two suitable traces in PCMark7, so let's start with the more “refined” one. As you can see, hybridize does not hybridize, and solid-state drives are out of reach. They themselves can vary greatly in speed, but a budget SSD is already a couple of times faster than the fastest of the three hard drives participating in testing. However, flash buffering is not so bad - it allows you to increase performance on this route by 30-50%, but this is not at all enough to cross the chasm separating “mechanical” drives from semiconductor drives.
If you rise to a higher level and get closer to real loads, then the situation no longer looks so clear. Yes, of course, SSDs are still out of reach, but their advantage is greatly reduced compared to the previous case. That is, we can talk about a twofold difference only when comparing a slow hard drive with a fast SSD, and hybrid drives can already somehow be compared with budget solid-state drives. Of course, we are still not talking about equality, but a lag of some 20% against the background of many times greater capacity at similar prices is something that many users can already accept.
In PCMark8, this group of tests turned out to be completely new, and not a significantly reworked old one. The result is at least interesting - the difference between different hard drives or different SSDs almost disappears. The former are about one and a half times faster than the latter, but within the groups the spread is not too great.
So, let's drop everything, break out the piggy bank and run to the store? Take your time - these are just relatively low-level tests.
PCMark7 - Ubiquitous Storage
As we already wrote in the review of the laptop itself, with the exception of the Computation test, in each PCMark 7 scenario there are tasks to determine the performance of the data storage subsystem. Moreover, when calculating the integral result, the weight of these results turns out to be quite large. What should we get as a result?
Computation, of course, is practically independent of the type or specific model of the system drive. The influence of the latter can be traced a little, of course, but the difference (albeit stable - easily repeatable) is somewhere within the measurement error.
The transition to other routes changes things dramatically. Lightweight (light, non-stressful computer work) is almost identical to System storage. Relatively, but not absolutely, of course: after all, the test also contains a considerable number of tasks for other computer systems. As a result, we can talk about something like parity between hybrid hard drives and budget SSDs - the difference between them is only about 10%, which is not important for many users. At the same time, “traditional” hard drives are significantly slower, but top-end SSDs are much faster.
The Productivity test is also very “easy”, and it includes only two traces from the System storage group, and not three as in the previous case. True, here is one of them (namely launching applications), as we have seen more than once when testing drives, O and everyone else. In general, the results are already familiar: a computer with a traditional hard drive is almost two times slower than one equipped with a fast SSD, but budget models of solid-state drives and hybrid hard drives are somewhere in the middle between them, and provide comparable performance. But even that is not the same. True, their capacity is even more unequal :)
There is more work in Creativity, so the difference between different types of drives begins to decrease, although it does not disappear altogether. But don’t be surprised that many may not notice it. That is, a person exchanges a hard drive for an SSD to work with videos and photos in anticipation Wow!, but instead of “wow” he gets 20% of the productivity, and not everywhere. Also a lot, of course, but knowing the numbers in advance, there would be even fewer people willing to pay for them.
And finally, the entertainment group. There are only two “accumulative” tests here (and one of the traces is not very accelerated on an SSD), and there are 11 others. Some of them, however, flash memory allows you to pass faster, but not all of them are significant. As a result, we come to the conclusion that for “home entertainment” use of a computer, the type of drive used is not very important. Hybrid hard drives certainly provide some performance gains, and solid-state ones are even faster, but the difference is not as dramatic as the low-level tests might lead you to believe. Which is quite consistent with everyday logic - a fast drive will allow you to launch the game faster and/or load new levels, but the frame rate in it will be determined by the video card (and a little by the processor, memory, etc.), regardless of where the game is installed. On the other hand... It is precisely in order to remove these most annoying delays when switching between levels that gamers buy SSDs. And those who are not too irritated by them (at least, not enough to part with a significant amount of money) do not buy.
The overall PCMark7 result, as one would expect, is even more dependent on the performance of the drive used than individual traces. But this still doesn’t give us anything new - a familiar situation, where mechanical drives are obvious outsiders, fast solid-state drives are the undisputed leaders, and somewhere between them is the habitat of budget SSDs and hybrid hard drives, which can, to a first approximation, be considered equal to each other.
PCMark8 - everything is calm in Baghdad
The operating logic of the new Futuremark test package has changed greatly - unlike its predecessor, it does not try to “mix” cumulative tests, focusing specifically on “real software” (which in some scenarios can actually be real - as we have already written, the package is capable of using different versions of Adobe Creative Suite or Microsoft Office, such as those installed by the user). However, as we have already seen, and, in fact, the Storage group in this package finds fewer differences between drives of different types. Let's see how all this affects high-level tests.
Home computer - All Colas are the same. In any case, when running tests repeatedly, only “pure” mechanics lose (and only 10%), and hybrid hard drives are able to quickly cache the bulk of the work, which makes them equal to SSDs. But even if we plan for the worst case scenario (which, unfortunately, is almost impossible to simulate in this version of the package), we will “fall” only to the level of ordinary hard drives. That is, with this use of the computer, as we see, there is no need to chase an SSD (in any case).
What is noteworthy is that in an even easier “working” scenario, the gap between solid-state and hybrid drives from traditional ones only increased, while they themselves remained approximately equal to each other.
If content is not only consumed, but also produced, the use of flash memory in any form becomes even more preferable. In itself, there is no longer any need to chase top-end solid-state drives, since budget models of the latter, as well as hybrid hard drives, provide a level of performance comparable to them. However, you can look at the situation from the other side - in fact, here the difference between the two hybrids that took part in testing is comparable to the difference between drives of different classes.
And sometimes it can even exceed it. In fact, the Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD lags behind the younger modification of the Crucial M500 less than it is ahead of the hybrid WD Black. However, here the fastest SSD taken outperforms the slow “classic” hard drive by less than 15%. But it overtakes, i.e. the already established dependencies are in force.
Perhaps the most difficult work scenario also turned out to be the most loyal to solid-state drives. So we come to the conclusion that to use Adobe products, purchasing an SSD is highly desirable. Which is not surprising - applications from this manufacturer work very actively with hard drives. Especially the same Photoshop, which actively creates a large number of temporary files. Hybrid hard drives are unable to greatly speed up the process - after all, the mechanics prevent you from achieving high performance. But the potential of solid-state drives is fully utilized. A “smart” SSD allows you to get a one and a half times increase in performance relative to hard drives, which is very noticeable in the same environment. Especially in laptop computers, where, for example, it is impossible to obtain a similar increase due to the processor in some cases - let us recall that the system we used had a Core i7-4700QM installed: although not the highest in the model range, but a quad-core Haswell, lagging behind the extreme models of their generation are only 20 percent smaller (competition with representatives of older lines is even less clear). But, of course, to get such an effect, the solid-state drive must be used not only for installing programs, but also for working with data - otherwise the increase will be much more modest. And this unambiguously addresses us to capacious models of the top lines (the rest may simply not fit everything you need), which themselves can cost as much as a middle-class laptop. Thus, hybrid technologies are even more relevant - as we see, such hard drives are quite capable of competing with some budget SSDs, offering the buyer many times more working space, which can turn out to be extremely important (“splashing” a hundred gigabytes of photos with a modern DSLR is a simple matter and within one trip). In general, based on a combination of factors (speed, capacity, price), there are no clear leaders and clear outsiders. This means that all technologies and their combinations will remain relevant in the near future. Each one is simply in its place.
Total
Manufacturers of solid-state drives “love” to use the results of low-level benchmarks in advertising, and when promoting hybrid ones, the main emphasis is on the fact that sometimes they are almost as good as solid-state drives. Both are true. But not all of them :) In the first case, do not forget that low-level “parrots” are extremely rarely achievable in practice - more often than not, the performance of the entire computer when solving certain problems is “limited” by the characteristics of completely different components. Or even nothing at all except the user. As you might guess, this is often the “stumbling block” for hybrids: there are many loads where “regular” hard drives are often not too far behind solid-state drives even without any hybridization. Therefore, you should not count on the fact that installing an SSD instead of even the slowest hard drive in any laptop will radically speed it up everywhere - this may not affect the time it takes to complete practical tasks at all, i.e., just as you processed a photo for 15 minutes, so will continue. Another question is that the comfort of this event may increase - in particular, delays when launching programs will no longer be noticeable. Or “brakes” when loading levels in a game, etc. But the frame rate, as we wrote above, will not increase - it all depends on the video card and, to a lesser extent, on the processor. To view a photo in RAW format, it seems that you need to quickly read it from the media. However, at high resolutions, the “developing” of RAW itself can take several seconds (or even tens of seconds) - against this background, the time for reading a file even from a USB flash drive will simply be “lost.”
Many people have already heard about the new hybrid hard drives, but most are wondering if they are worth buying? Or maybe, instead of hybrids, it’s better to take a small SSD drive (or a large one, there’s a lot of money), install the system on it, and install a regular hard drive for data? Now I will try to shed light on this issue.
After my laptop fell off the table, the hard drive had to be replaced. There is no space in the laptop for a separate SSD drive, so you can only plug one device into it. I settled on a Seagate ST1000LM014-1EJ164 hybrid hard drive with a capacity of 1 TB, and an SSD cache of approximately 8 GB. This is certainly not as much as we would like, but it’s better than nothing at all. This hybrid drive cost me almost 7,000 rubles.
The hybrid disk cache is entirely hardware and there are no programs to configure or optimize it. Programs and files that are frequently used, including system files, are cached.
Pros of a hybrid hard drive
I list the advantages that I was able to identify when using a hybrid from Seagate:
- when using "quick start" Windows, the system loads 25-30 percent faster,
- applications that we often use launch several times faster,
- copying files up to 500 MB, even within different logical drives, occurs at high speed, equal to approximately 200-300 MB/sec (I think the file is first copied to the cache, and then transferred to the hard drive during idle time),
- the whole machine works faster and there are fewer bottlenecks.
Cons of a hybrid drive
Let us note some disadvantages, but they are not critical:
- the cost is almost 2 times more than a regular hard drive,
- low SSD cache volume (in general, there are all sorts of disks, they have 32 and 64 GB, but the cost is appropriate).
Conclusion, is it worth buying?
Let's move on to the most important thing, and here I have two answers, and they depend on your operating conditions for the computer.
I think it’s worth buying them only for laptops when it is not possible to install a second separate drive in it. If you have a desktop computer and there is space in it (usually there is always some), then it would be best to take a separate SSD drive with a capacity of 64 GB to 128 GB (this is if you plan to keep only the system on it). And if finances allow, then you can fork out for a 1-2 TB SDD, I think it will be great.