Speed up your computer using SSHD. Hybrid hard drives (SSHD) and data recovery How to properly install windows on a hybrid drive
Hi all.
It's time to get acquainted with the concept of a “hybrid hard drive”, as it is increasingly being heard. Would you like to increase the speed of your computer? I have no doubt that yes. And at the same time, naturally, you want to save money? Then read on.
Hybrid drive - what is it?
A hybrid hard drive, or in English SSHD (solid-state hybrid drive), is a cross between the old hard drive that is in your computer and a comparatively new technology - a solid-state drive. To make the situation clearer, you need to understand what one and the other are.
The one we are used to consists of plates and read heads that spin at incredible speeds.
Such a mechanism takes up a lot of space, makes noise and is prone to breakage when shaking.
Therefore, manufacturers came up with an improved version - which does not have any rotating elements, but consists only of a memory chip.
Despite the fact that solid-state drives appeared in the 80s, they are still not going to become cheaper. True, the high price is justified by the ultra-fast work. To balance the situation, the developers created a hybrid version between the first and second - SSHD. And yet, what is it?
It looks like the same simple screw, that is, it also works thanks to the plates and heads. Only they added flash memory to it, like in a solid-state drive.
How did you come to this decision?
To understand the cause-and-effect relationships, let’s look at the operating principle of the drive. When you give it a command with the keyboard and mouse, it first accesses the data in the first level cache. This is the area where the information you use most often is temporarily stored.
Depending on the HDD model, its volume varies between 8-64 MB. Catastrophically few, right? Therefore, the computer freezes (or rather, the screw itself freezes) if it suddenly does not find the necessary information in the cache and begins to select it from what it has in stock.
In order to prevent the computer from slowing down, we added a level 2 hard cache in the form of flash memory. Its volume can reach 8 GB. Better now, right? And although the additional cache has a lower speed than the main one, with a hybrid hard cache you are unlikely to have to worry about waiting for a response from the computer to your request.
After all, SSHD can add much more information to its temporary storage than HDD. True, there is no way to interfere with the election process: the drive itself decides what is more important to you.
For this, self-learning technology is used, which, from the first seconds of work, examines on the disk those files that have already been used several times, and if you reuse them, they will launch faster. That is, only the most frequently used files work quickly on such drives.
But the buffer size is known to be limited, therefore the disk will not process all your files faster (the files are replaced by others you use).
Advantages and disadvantages
Like everything in our world, this device has pros and cons. Let's start with the good:
- Works faster than the old screw by about 30%;
- Costs less than SSD;
- Flash memory and screw have a single housing.
The hybrid drive has only one drawback - a small cache size. But this is temporary, as technology develops. By the way, do not confuse the cache with memory intended for storing multimedia and other data - its volume can be calculated in terabytes.
Do you need a hybrid hard drive?
As you can see, when buying a hybrid propeller you can only win. But is it worth buying this hard one while the old one works flawlessly? The answer is yes if you want to speed up your computer.
I can say the same to those whose propeller has broken. I mean, you'll have to buy a new one anyway, so why not a hybrid? The price is not much more expensive than a regular disk, but it works much faster.
If you decide that you need a drive, when choosing, pay attention to the following main features:
- Form factor - size.
Initially, these screws were intended only for mobile gadgets, so they were produced in a 2.5-inch form factor (size).
But manufacturers also took care of owners of desktop computers by releasing 3.5-inch devices.
- Interface - a way to connect the drive to the motherboard. The data exchange speed also depends on this parameter. The most common now is SATA. The first and third generations of this bus are found in many computers. Do you have very old hardware? It may have an obsolete IDE interface.
- Capacity. In this case, choose according to your personal needs.
My conclusion is this: since this disk generally works faster only with frequently used files, it would be more rational to buy it to install the OS on it. I just don’t see the point in using it for regular files.
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Good luck with the upgrade.
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.
Hello admin! I want to buy a 1-2 TB hard drive, one computer geek I know advised me to buy an SSHD drive (a hybrid of a hard drive and an SSD solid-state drive), since it works noticeably faster than a regular HDD, but is not as expensive as an SSD. What can you say about such discs?
Hello friends! Very good question. Yes, the SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) hybrid hard drive is 30% faster than a conventional hard drive, and about the same amount more expensive. If a regular 1 TB hard drive costs 4,000 rubles, then an SSHD can be bought for 5,400 rubles. Such disks are produced both for regular computers and for laptops.
Firstly, What is a hybrid hard drive?
The technology for the production of hard drives (the only component of a computer that has moving mechanical parts) has long been at a dead end and it is almost impossible to increase the performance of a hard drive through production, as evidenced by the appearance on the market of solid-state drives SSDs and hybrid hard drives SSHD. But if a solid-state drive is a completely non-mechanical storage device based on memory chips, then a hybrid hard drive is, first of all, a regular hard drive with an MLC fast flash memory card (8 GB capacity) soldered onto it, used in the production of solid-state drives. that is, it turns out that SSHD is a hybrid of a regular hard drive and an SSD..
Secondly, why is an SSHD hybrid hard drive faster than a regular hard drive?
Seagate SSHD hybrid drives use self-learning technology - Seagate Adaptive Memory, which examines the operating system installed on the disk from the first seconds of operation, as a result, the most frequently used programs and files are copied to the flash memory of the SSHD disk, such files include, first of all, the elements involved in loading the operating system, which means that Windows will be installed from the second or third time boot faster, because Windows will be loaded from flash memory. For example, on my computer, loading Windows 8.1 installed on a regular HDD takes 35-40 seconds, on an SSHD - 20 seconds, on a regular SSD - 15 seconds. The same applies to applications you constantly use; they will launch a little faster. Let’s take, for example, a modern game that requires computer resources and that you constantly play; according to my observations, such a game will load three times faster than on a regular HDD.
Hybrid SSHD hard drive is the golden mean
In general, the ideal configuration of drives in the system unit of an ordinary home user looks like this: buy two drives, the first is an SSD (volume 120-240 GB) for installing the operating system, and the second is a regular HDD for storing files (capacity) 2-3 TB , you need about 10,000 rubles for all this. And if you purchase one 1 TB SSHD hybrid drive, it will cost you 5,400 rubles, and a 2 TB SSHD will cost you 7,000 rubles. Of course, everything won’t fly (as is the case with an SSD), but maybe you don’t need such speeds. A hybrid SSHD drive is coming out, this is the golden mean - for little money you get good performance and a large amount of disk space.
Which SSHD to buy
Until recently, SSHD hybrid drives were produced by the company that developed them - Seagate. In total, there are now three Seagate Desktop SSHD models on the market with capacities of 1, 2, 4 TB.
Seagate Desktop SSHD ST1000DX001 1 TB
Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001 2 TB
Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001 4 TB
Also, recently Western Digital began to produce SSHD, but they are few on the market, and the model that I came across - WD Blue SSHD, WD40E31X with a capacity of 4 TB, was no different in speed characteristics from the similar model Seagate ST4000DX001 4 TB.
In today’s article, I suggest you consider the Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001 2 TB model and here’s why. If we take the Seagate Desktop SSHD 1 TB model, then 1 TB of disk space is no longer enough for a modern computer user. If we take the Seagate Desktop SSHD 4 TB model, then on the contrary, not everyone needs a large volume of 4 TB of disk space, and its price is quite high (11,500 rubles), and what is also important is the spindle speed of this drive: 5900 rpm, that is, it is slightly slower than other SSHDs with a capacity of 1 and 2 TB (spindle speed 7200 rpm) and this will certainly affect the performance of the operating system.
So, I persuaded you and we have a model in front of us Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001 2 TB
Upon closer inspection, the Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001 2 TB hybrid drive turned out to be an ordinary hard drive, only it says SSHD on it.
Disk space - 2 TB
SSD buffer capacity - 8 GB
Cache memory size - 64 MB
Spindle speed - 7200 rpm
On the back of the drive we see a special Adaptive Memory printed circuit board, with 8 GB of fast MLC memory and a “hybrid” controller soldered.
It’s very easy to install the drive into the system unit.
SMART hard drive in the CrystalDiskInfo and Victoria program.
The hybrid drive is new and has been used for 0 hours.
Read and write tests
To make sure that our disk is really good, let's perform several tests on reading and writing using special programs: CrystalDiskMark 2.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark and SiSoftware Sandra. These utilities will sequentially read and write information to our hybrid disk in small blocks, then show us the result.
CrystalDiskMark 2.0
The simplest and most frequently used program in this regard, you can download it on my Yandex.Disk
The utility is very simple, select only the desired drive letter (in our case E:)
And press AII, the SSHD disk performance test will begin.
1. Test of sequential reading and writing of large blocks of data;
2. Test of random reading and writing in 512 KB blocks;
3. Test of random reading and writing in 4 KB blocks;
I can say that the result is very worthy, especially the recording in 512 KB and 4 KB blocks.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Let's test the hybrid disk with another program - ATTO Disk Benchmark.
Select the drive letter of the SSHD hybrid drive and click Start.
Result.
SiSoftware Sandra
A global program capable of diagnosing all computer components and having its own official rating.
As a result, our disk is ahead of 94% of the results. Excellent performance.
Disadvantages of SSHD
In my opinion, the only disadvantage of the SSHD is the small amount of built-in flash memory 8 GB, it would be great if its size increased to 32 GB, then more running programs would be placed in the solid state cache and the performance of Windows would be exactly the same as if it was installed on the SSD.
Read about what a hybrid hard drive is and what they are. Features of data recovery from SSHD. Hybrid hard drives or SSHD (Solid-State Hybrid Drives or solid-state hybrid drives) are not yet very common devices, but they are gradually gaining popularity. Combining the properties of traditional magnetic hard drives and the well-known properties of solid-state drives with their extremely high speed capabilities, hybrid hard drives promise to offer the best of both worlds.
At least in theory. Is it worth buying a hybrid hard drive, what are its advantages, and what to do if the SSHD fails? To find out, read our comprehensive review.
First, identify the problem. Is your HDD drive still in working order, or has it failed due to mechanical damage? If it fails due to mechanical damage, you can take the HDD drive (with or without SSD parts) to a repair shop and ask them to save the information from this drive to another medium. You can also use signature-based data recovery technology (available in tools like Hetman Partition Recovery) to scan the SSD part at a low level in order to recover files that may be cached on it. But due to the nature of hybrid storage media, your chances of recovering anything other than a group of system files are very slim.
If your hard drive is still operational and you determine data loss, simply treat your hybrid system as you would a regular hard drive. Download the appropriate data recovery tool and recover your data as if you were using a regular hard drive. In most cases, it will be better if you disable the SSD part in your computer's BIOS; but this is optional.
But what if you have an SSHD from one device? Your actions should be the same, with some exceptions. If the SSD part has failed (for example, due to wear and tear due to a large number of rewrites), you are better off replacing the SSHD drive completely, or continuing to use it, but with the SSD part disabled and Smart Response Technology deactivated. You will have access to all your data, albeit at a slower speed. Do not use an SSHD drive with a worn out SSD part in hybrid mode! If you do this, you risk damaging data or losing information written to the disk. If the SSD part fails, disconnect it.
Finally, what if you have a real SSHD drive, without any visible separate SSD and HDD partitions, and the SSD part fails? In this case, to recover files from such a drive, you can still use a data recovery tool like Hetman Partition Recovery. In some cases, you will even be able to read the files normally without having to use a data recovery tool. However, you should not continue to use such a device, as you will probably end up with damaged files sooner or later.
Did this help you become? Leave your comments.
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.