SSHDs Debut On the Desktop With Mixed Results

crookedvulture writes "Seagate's solid-state hybrid drives have finally made it to the desktop. The latest generation of SSHDs debuted with a 2.5" notebook model that was ultimately hampered by its slow 5,400-RPM spindle speed. The Desktop SSHD has the same 8GB flash payload and Adaptive Memory caching scheme. However, it's equipped with 2TB of much faster 7,200-RPM mechanical storage. The onboard flash produces boot and load times only a little bit slower than those of full-blown SSDs. It also delivers quicker response times than traditional hard drives. That said, the relatively small cache is overwhelmed by some benchmarks, and its mechanical sidekick isn't as fast as the best traditional hard drives. The price premium is a little high, too: an extra $30 for the 1TB model and $40 for the 2TB variant, which is nearly enough to buy a separate 32GB SSD. Seagate's software-independent caching system works with any operating system and hardware platform, so it definitely has some appeal. But dual-drive setups are probably the better solution for most desktop users."

Comments

Re:Does it require windows only software?

[aitikin]

You can't RTFS!

Seagate's software-independent caching system works with any operating system and hardware platform, so it definitely has some appeal. But dual-drive setups are probably the better solution for most desktop users.

oops

[slashmydots]

They seem to have forgotten a little defect. SSDs have a low failure rate, high speeds, okay prices, but everyone's scared of flash memory degradation after a number of writes. Some crappy one would get 1500 write cycles on a chip but OCZ ones get 9000 which, even at my high usage on a 128GB drive, is at least 8 years before it fries.
So Seagate decides to take the biggest pitfall and hated feature and put it into a hybrid drive. All data written to the gigantic drive is passed through that 8GB buffer first. Flash memory that can put up with that amount of writes over the long term doesn't exist. These drives would maybe last a year or two if you're lucky.

Re:oops

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a write through cache. The drive firmware copies frequently read files to flash. I use a Momentus XT and can you can actually notice when it does this. Frequently used programs load quickly. If you update a program, it loads slowly a time or two, then suddenly switches to loading fast.

Bittorrents screw all of this up. Frequent reads lead to more and more programs being displaced. If I leave bittorrent running over night, it takes a day or two for the flash to repopulate with the OS and programs.

Huh?

[Russ1642]

I've had one in my desktop for a couple years now.

Re:Amen

[bobbied]

Linus Torvalds agrees with you...

Had one in a laptop

[HockeyPuck]

I had one of the laptop versions for about a year and a half now, and it's definitely an improvement over a traditional drive and considerably cheaper per GB than an SSD.

I'm not sure why the majority of the population wouldn't opt for these as they still give you decent capacity and speed over dedicated HD or SSD drives.

Sure they're not as good as a dedicated setup with a SSD and a HD, but then again, the average user can still install everything on their C: drive without making any changes from the default installation.

not actually write caching blocks copied to flash

[raymorris]

I looked at buying one of these. Writes don't really go to flash. Selected blocks are asynchronously copied to flash.

There's cool way to avoid the cash over use you mention that I wish someone would make in an under $500 drive. Have 4GB of flash, 4GB of DRAM, and a capacitor. Random writes go to DRAM, making random io a thousand times faster. On power failure, the capacitor flashes the contents of the DRAM to the flash. You get the speed of DRAM, crash safety, and 3TB of capacity from the underlying spindle.

you'd need a BIG capacitor if no Flash.

[raymorris]

with actual real world write speeds of around 20 MB/s, that capacitor would need to spin the drive for three minutes. That would be one hell of a capacitor. Flash chips use less power and are faster, so they could run long enough on capacitors that actually exist.

.

I've had SSHd running on all mu computers for 15y+

[arcade]

I really do hate overloading acronyms. SSH / SSHD is pretty well known already. It's what most unix folks (and I really do hope that that is the majority of slashdot readership) use to log on to servers every single day.

C'mon.