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Is the Time Finally Right For Hybrid Hard Drives?

Posted by Soulskill on from the half-man-half-machine dept.

a_hanso writes "Hard drives that combine a traditional spinning platter for mass storage and solid state flash memory for frequently accessed data have always been an interesting concept. They may be slower than SSDs, but not by much, and they are a lot cheaper gigabyte-for-gigabyte. CNET's Harry McCracken speculates on how soon such drives may become mainstream: 'So why would the new Momentus be more of a mainstream hit than its predecessor? Seagate says that it's 70 percent faster than its earlier hybrid drive and three times quicker than a garden-variety, non-hybrid disk. Its benchmarks for cold boots and application launches show the new drive to be just a few seconds slower than a SSD. Or, in some cases, a few seconds faster. In the end, hybrid drives are compromises, neither as cheap as ordinary drives — you can get a conventional 750GB Momentus for about $150 — nor as fast and energy-efficient as SSDs.'"

4 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. It'd better happen quick then by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If there is to be a time for hybrid drives, the window on it is fast closing. As SSDs get cheaper and cheaper more and more people will opt to just go that route. Most people don't really need massive HDDs and so if smaller SSDs get cheap enough that'll be the way they'll go. They don't have to be as cheap as HDDs, just cheap enough that for the size people need (probably 200-300GB for more people) they are affordable enough.

    For me personally, the time already came and went. I was very enthusiastic about the concept of hybrid drives, particularly since I have vast storage needs (I do audio production). However no hybrid drive for desktops was forthcoming. Then there was a sale on SSDs, 256GB drives for $200. I picked up two of them. $1/GB was my magic price when I'd be willing to get them. Now I have 512GB of SSD storage for OS, apps, and primary data. That is then backed by 3TB of HDD storage for media, samples, and so on.

    A hybrid drive has no place. I'd certainly not replace my SSDs, they are far faster than any hybrid drive (even being fairly slow on the SSD scale). Likewise I have no real reason to upgrade my HDDs, they serve the non-speed intensive stuff.

    While I'm willing to spend more than most, it is still a sign of things to come. As those prices drop more and more people will say "screw it" and go all SSD.

    1. Re:It'd better happen quick then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Most people don't really need massive HDDs

      Are you kidding me.

      Record FRAPS of your gaming sessions, photography (or RAW), record and edit anything with any modicum of quality? Save said media and final encodings?

      Age of conan, 33 GB. LA Noire13 GB. Mortal Online, 30 GB.

      That is stuff ordinary people do, not audio producers.

    2. Re:It'd better happen quick then by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The rewrite figures are going to shit as they move to smaller processing tech, 25nm eMLC is already down to 3000 writes/cell, they say you won't get $1/GB at normal prices until we get 19nm which at least some say will be down to 1000 writes. That you're getting 500MB/s write speed is nice, but if you actually start using that regularly you'll burn through the disk in a matter of months. My first SSD - which I admit I abused thoroughly - died after 8-9000 writes average (was rated for 10k) after 1.5 years. My current setup is trying to minimize writes to C:, but I still don't expect it to last nearly as long as a HDD. Using it as a read-heavy cache of static files may be a better way to boost it for those that haven't got hundreds of dollars to spend every time it wears out.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:It'd better happen quick then by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      MTBF is not the failure rate of a single disk, it's the average failure rate of disks used in an array. If you have a type of disk with a 100,000 hour MTBF, and use 100 of them (whether in a raid array, a cluster, or 100 individual desktops in a company). Then you will (roughly) replace one disk due to failure for every 1000 hours (100,000 MTBF / 100 disks), or 40 days.

      It doesn't try to pretend that a single disk lasts 100,000 hours. That's stupid.