New Seagate Hybrids

whs · 05 Jun 2013

Newegg offers new Seagate hybrid drives and the numbers they show look promising both in performance and price. But because of the ho-hum reception of hybrids in the past I wonder whether they are really worth it.

If I were in the US at this time, I would order one for trial - but I am in Germany right now. If anybody feels compelled to try one out, it would be interesting to get some experience feedback.

http://promotions.newegg.com/Seagate...rd-_-Promoword

They are about $20 cheaper with this promo code: BTEXPWW22

kbrady1979 · 05 Jun 2013

I'm going to be skeptical until I see proof. Hopefully someone will take the plunge and post results. Also, maybe related or not, Seagate just released their consumer and enterprise SSD's a few weeks ago.

bobafetthotmail · 05 Jun 2013

ooh, I'm interested too.

Some reviews while we wait.
StorageReview
Hardware Canucks

Both point to the fact that it has only 8GB of flash memory as its main drawback.

ICIT2LOL · 05 Jun 2013

Hum cannot find them out here at my supplier Wolfgang and I am wondering what the advantage of having this over a small SSD for booting and small data capacity and having a 6.0Gbs HDD to back onto.

I perhaps am being a bit over simplified but from what I read that what it seems you are getting only a very small SSD (cache) attached to a fast HDD

The justification I suppose is cost.

linnemeyerhere · 05 Jun 2013

I almost ordered but went with a 3TB 64x7200 drive instead....oops that was the 3.5" for the 2.5" I went with a WD 1 TB Black but the Seagate looked interesting. Mine was for an external enclosure anyway for a lappy primary this could be just the ticket!

madcratebuilder · 06 Jun 2013

Very inexpensive way of getting ssd speed, and cheap enough to experiment with. I opted for two physical drives, a ssd and a spinner.

ICIT2LOL · 06 Jun 2013

Hum I am now guessing the drive would suit a casual use laptop but I am not so sure it would be any advantage over what I do now and that is a 120GB SSD and 500GB drives for back ups.

Personally I prefer the smaller HDD as a 1 or 2TB dropping it's bundle is just too much data lost for my liking and I really don't store a lot of data or do a lot of gaming.

Lady Fitzgerald · 06 Jun 2013

The hybrid uses the 8GB NAND to cache the spinner. This will give a speed improvement for the most frequently used programs, boot time, etc. although not as dramatic as an SSD. Where this drive will shine is in low cost laptops/netbooks that only have one HDD. Some midrange laptops have a small m-SATA installed to cache the spinner. These would not benefit from a hybrid. A larger laptop with two drives would do better to have one SSD for the boot drive and a larger spinner for the data.

I would love to replace the lone 5400 rpm spinner in my low end 15" Lenovo G570 with an SSD but I would need 500GB since I carry my music and books with me when on the road. The only 500GB SSDs worth considering would cost much more than the notebook itself (heck, even the lousy ones would) and it kinda galls me to pay more for a drive than the machine it is going in, especially since most of it is for storage only and the machine doesn't get used all that much (I may cave in eventually since I can always move the SSD to a new machine in the future). The 500GB hybrid HDD looks attractive since, although not has much as an SSD, one can get a noticeable reduction in boot times for much, much less money. Until recently, the 500GB hybrid was running around $100 but it's down to around $85 now. It also has been getting good reviews. SSD prices are also dropping but not as fast or as dramatically. I'm not far from pulling the trigger on a hybrid.

whs · 06 Jun 2013

ICit2lol said:

Hum I am now guessing the drive would suit a casual use laptop but I am not so sure it would be any advantage over what I do now and that is a 120GB SSD and 500GB drives for back ups.

Personally I prefer the smaller HDD as a 1 or 2TB dropping it's bundle is just too much data lost for my liking and I really don't store a lot of data or do a lot of gaming.

Good point. The hybrid may be a suitable solution for a laptop where you have only 1 bay. But on a desktop a SSD/HDD combination is a better solution. I also vote for 500GB drives. That's why I have 2 HDDs (plus the SSD) in this system.