Hybrid HDD

[#1]

My spare desktop PC has failed ...and is ~8 years old..in parts...so time for a new build!
Thinking of buying one of these    http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/satahybridssddrives/st1000dx001.ht...
Seems to give me the best of both worlds for the new rig -loads of storage but a bit more speed at start up WITHOUT buying an expensive SSD or a small SSD  and a bigger SATA HD.
Anyone used one yet? If so, does it improve loading times particularly at start up?

[#2]

This gives a good overview - I looked because I didn't know how it works
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2025402/ssds-vs-hard-drives-vs-hybrids-which-storage-tech-is-right-fo...
I think that this video may answer the questions

[#3]

Every Seagate drive I've encountered recently has been a faulty one .....
Personally I'd go for a £35-£40 SSD which should get you around 100-120Gb and use a half decent drive with a good warranty (WD Red ?) for the main storage drive.
Eggs and basket also spring to mind - I'd rather have a few 1TB drives than 1 x 3Tb drive

[#4]

I also use Western Digital from preference
Regarding SSD or Hybrid the programs which take longest to load are games and they probably wouldn't fit into an 8GB SSD along with Windows so as far as I am concerned the advantage would be for Windows load and shut down times but as I use sleep mode it wouldn't be a factor

[#5]

Thanks both.....the video makes very interesting watching Jim!   As I don't use lots of different programmes often on either PC (no games) looks like the hybrid drive SHOULD make a positive difference.
I intend to use an "old" Maxtor 120 GB IDE hard disk in a caddy as a back up for photos ,music etc (not the drive which is failing on the current spare machine!) so I'm willing to take the risk with 1 TB disk.
As to Seagate disks failing -funnily enuf the disk that has (almost) failed is a 80GB WD drive!!
Would really like to hear from someone who is actually using a hybrid drive day to day.; I've ordered the new motherboard,processor and memory and I have liberated a midi tower case and newish PSU -so need to order the new HDD soonish.

[#6]

I know it's only 1/4 of the storage but I got a Sandisk 240Gb SSD from PC world for that price. I looked at the Hybrids but I really don't like using mech HDD's anymore since I swapped to SSD's
My Mac has flash storage and so that's even faster. Also an SSD will last a long time (around 8-9 years) and an SSD powered up but never used will last over 100.
They are coming down in price - keep an eye on UKHD also as the odd 512/1TB SSD pops up on there from time to time and silly prices.  I missed the last one which was like £89,99 for 512

[#7]

I recently built myself a gaming rig (using 2nd hand parts mostly, I'm not an uber-gamer!!) and I looked at the idea of a Hybrid HDD and to be honest I found no benefit to them over a separate SSD and a large storage HDD, plus the cost of the hybrid versus separates was the winning factor...
I used a 120GB Mushkin Chronos SSD coupled with a 1TB Western Digital Blue HDD, and that all cost less than £80 (HDD was NOS, so was cheap), works beautifully, all my games go on the HDD, the OS on the SSD, it's a speedy thing for a reasonably old Core2Duo system...
Oh, and avoid Seagate and Samsung drives, Seagate drives have gone down the pot when it comes to reliability, and as they took over Samsung's HDD manufacturing a couple of years back, they've brought those down to their poor level too, WD or Toshiba if reasonably priced are my choices, anything else is just not worth it...

[#8]

In order of preference, my manufacturers of choice are :
Hitachi - expensive but reliable and good warranties
WD - good value, reasonable reliability and more warranty than Seagate
Toshiba - hmmm - still more reliable than Seagate
Samsung - Owned by Seagate but at least it doesn't say it on the drive. Used to be great but no longer .....
Seagate - might as well store your data on a chocolate bar.

[#9]

Strange - I've always found Seagate drives to be excellent.
The others are second-rate.
Although I've got a 2006 Toshiba laptop still running on its original (Toshiba) disk...

[#10]

Technologies change, management changes and a company that was good a few years ago can be bad now and vice versa.

[#11]

the Samsung evo ssd's have the best write-ups for reliability and guarantee's, the WD hdd's have the best service package, a pair of 2tb WD black drives was £80.00 last year on an amazon sale, they both died within an hour of being installed and WD sent out replacements on a by 9am next day service which have been working fine for the last year, and with a 5yr guarantee there the best drives on the market for general use....
unfortunately the worst drives (and service) I've had in the last few years have been Seagate, all kinds of problems from there service department send out dead drives to replace dead drives to them claiming the replacements weren't available because the drives (that they had just sent as replacements) were outside of warrantee never mind the failure rate being 8 out of 8 within 12 months ...