Hybrid Storage Solutions Compared

Vigile writes "While few would argue with the performance advantages of solid state drives, the relative cost compared to spindle-based disks still make them a luxury item. The promise of hybrid storage solutions is to combine the benefits of both — large capacities with standard drive technology and performance advantages of solid state. PC Perspective published an article comparing several different solutions that vary in their approach to hybrid storage. The OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid combines a standard 2.5-in drive with a PCI Express-based SSD that offers the best overall performance and largest cache size. Seagate's new Momentus XT 2.5-in solution embeds the cache on the PCB of the drive, allowing notebook users to install this solution easily. Finally, the Intel chipset-based caching option combines either a 2.5-in or mSATA SSD with a standard hard drive on either desktop or mobile platforms, allowing the most flexibility of any other hybrid solution. All three have advantages for specific consumers, though, and varying performance levels to go along with them."

Re:Um

[mollymoo]

That article talks about enterprise drives which use SLC flash. SLC has 20 - 30 times the write endurance of the MLC flash you get in consumer-grade SSDs.

SSD controllers are good enough now that I wouldn't worry about the MLC flash in my laptop's SSD for general use, but I'd take a very close look at the numbers if I was using it to do anything that was write heavy (like video work or building a big codebase).

Re:Performance numbers

[Rockoon]

From a performance perspective it might be interesting, but from a power consumption perspective the SSD blows away a handful of DDR3 sticks.