Seagate's New SSHD Hybrids Have Dual-Mode Flash Caches 141
crookedvulture writes "Seagate's has revealed its next-generation hybrid drives, and for the first time, there's a 3.5" desktop model in the mix. The new family of so-called SSHDs includes standard and slim notebook variants with 500GB and 1TB capacities, plus 1TB and 2TB desktop versions. All of them combine mechanical platters with 8GB of NAND in a dual-mode SLC/MLC configuration. The SLC component is largely reserved to cache host writes, while the MLC portion is filled with frequently accessed data to speed read performance. Despite MLC NAND's lower write endurance, Seagate claims the SSHDs have more than enough headroom to last at least five years with typical client workloads. More impressively, the mobile SSHDs are supposed to be faster than the old Momentus XT hybrid even though they have slower 5,400-RPM spindle speeds. The mobile models are slated to start selling shortly at $79 for 500GB and $99 for 1TB, while the 1TB and 2TB desktop flavors are due in late April for $99 and $149, respectively. Unlike other NAND caching solutions, Seagate's tech requires no software or drivers, making it compatible with any OS."
What is the point? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why is this better than having 1/2 boot SSDs and an HDD RAID for storage?
Sure of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Seagate claims the SSHDs have more than enough headroom to last at least five years with typical client workloads.
The typical client workload is that user powers on own computer, windows starts and then user opens WWW browser and browse web and then does some files with MS Office and turns off the computer.
How about those typical client workloads where almost every day is needed to manage 16-30 gigabytes of new data, what gets edited and copied multiple times?
Re:What is the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
It allows you to treat all your work equally, regardless of how often you access it. You can still have a dedicated SSD for the system if you want to but if you start to work on a smaller project frequently this disk will keep it in the faster memory and move your none-active projects to slow storage without you having to do so manually.
Every damn comment section is filled with people arguing that a product is completely useless for everyone just because it doesn't fit their immediate need. Is it really that hard to figure out a theoretical situation where something could be useful?
8 GB of flash in the disk vs 8GB of RAM on board? (Score:5, Interesting)
For a mere 8GB acting as cache in the drive, I'd rather spend $30 on RAM and let the OS use it for buffering/caching data (which Linux at least will do pretty intelligently for me even without changing /proc/sys/kernel/whatever).
I love my SSD but that's way more than 8GB. As an extra bonus, the RAM can be allocated as necessary, is faster, and there are no write/erase issues with it.
Now, come up with say 2TB on platters and 128GB flash and we're talking a different proposition.
8GB might be sufficient for those who care about how quickly they boot up (assuming the bulk of the kernel etc ends up in the flash cache and stays there until shutdown) but I only reboot about once a month at most.