Hybrid Hard Drives Vs Traditional SATA HDD

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Hybrid Hard Drives Vs Traditional SATA HDD

Usually I have no problem making comparisons especially with the help of OWC and Crucial's websites and, of course reading here. But trying to get some kind of data to compare the new Seagate and Toshiba 1.0 TB Hybrid hard drives has been difficult. In the only recent discussion I could find here the OP stated there was only a small difference in price between the SSD and Hybrid which is not true at all when comparing same size drives. SSD above 120GB are simply not affordable. Both Toshiba and Seagate have 1.0 TB Hybrid drives which are huge compared to the 250 GB SATA 5400 RPM HD in my Macbook Model 7,1 and priced at just a bit over $100. True Solid State Drives close to that size are over $600 and traditional SATA 5400 and 7200 RPM around $75.

I don't really need an internal HD that large. I can afford the 120 GB True SSD at $99, but when OWC is making statements like "Solid State Performance" when advertising their Hybrids I have to look at what my money will buy. OWC claims SSD are 30-100X faster than traditional SATA 5400 rotational drives. I don't see any numbers being thrown around about the Hybrids anywhere. Are they twice as fast as what I have? 5X? What exactly does OWC mean by "faster" anyway?

My important data that I can't afford to lose all are documents and PDF files and takes up less than 1 GB of space. This data is backed up at Mozy and on 100 year disks. I also have a 250 GB internal HD that I made into an external and that data is also there and that's where I have a bootable back up clone that I have CCC update every week or so. Mozy updates daily and I make a new CD once a month. Looking at what's on my current in use internal hard drive, I could easily move videos,movies etc. to an external. I could easily get by with 90GB if I did this.

So, I plan on getting a 2 TB external for movies and such. If I get a 120 GB SSD I'd then have 2 250 GB externals to supplement the 2 TB external which is what I'm planning unless someone can tell me the Hybrids are anywhere near the performance of the SSD or greatly out perform what I have now.

Any advice appreciated

Thanks

MacBook (13-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Nov 16, 2013 10:01 AM

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Answer 1

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SubSpace

Level 1

5 points

Dec 19, 2014 3:55 PM in response to keith contarino

I know this is somewhat out of date, However i find it somewhat wrong that no one as even bothered to even say Sod off or Hello.

Anyway your SSDHD are around 4 x to 5 Times faster than a normal HDD.

They will store your data into the Nano Flash and load it as fast as a SSD, Now unless you're doing some High end video editing then the Hybrid is a good option, because if you're just a standard end user then you're not really going to do much data swapping, though high end video editing Then i would go full SSD.

Hope that help, even though it's out of date & you sure have an new drive by now lol.

Regards

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