Installing windows 10 on a hybrid drive. Hybrid hard drive - neither fish nor fowl
A hybrid hard drive combines the performance of a solid-state drive with the capacity of a mechanical drive. They're bigger than SSDs and faster than ever hard drive.
It is sometimes referred to as a solid-state hybrid drive (SSHD). The drive automatically caches data into solid-state storage for faster file access.
Solid state drives are much faster than mechanical drives. Prices have dropped noticeably, so it makes sense to upgrade to an SSD. But even cheaper drives are less capacious. 1 GB of solid state drive costs $0.58, and 1 GB of mechanical drive costs $0.06. An affordable solid-state drive has a maximum capacity of 256 GB, while a mechanical drive has a capacity of 2 or 3 TB. Mechanical drives are slow, but have enormous capacity at an extremely low cost per gigabyte.
To take advantage of both types of drives, many people equip their computers with both solid-state and mechanical drives. The solid state drive is used for system files and programs that need speed. A large mechanical disk is used for long-term storage of files that are not particularly needed. quick access, - for example, collections of films. This requires installing both drives into the computer and choosing which programs and files to put on each drive. You have to move files to another drive yourself. Moving a program to another disk means deleting it and reinstalling it in another location.
A hybrid drive consists of a magnetic disk and a solid-state drive with a small volume solid state drive. This disk appears to the operating system as a single disk. You are not responsible for which files go to the mechanical drive and which to the solid state. The drive's firmware determines what makes it onto the solid-state drive and what doesn't.
The SSD part of the disk serves as a “cache” - files that are often accessed - files of the operating system and programs, the firmware is stored in the SSD drive. The cache is stored in non-volatile semiconductor solid-state memory, surviving reboots and thereby speeding up the boot procedure.
Access to system and program files is performed at the speed of a solid-state disk, while simultaneously providing the capacity of the magnetic disk for other files. The drive handles this on its own—you don't have to move files back and forth or decide what goes where.
Most hybrid drives have a small SSD storage capacity. Some of them have 1 TB of mechanical capacity and only 8 GB of semiconductor memory. 8 GB is enough to store system and program files, but this volume is not comparable to 128 or 256 GB, which can accommodate all system and program files.
Apple's Fusion Drive is also a hybrid and is equipped with a magnetic capacity of 1 to 3 TB along with 128 GB of solid-state memory.
Hybrid drives are cheaper than solid-state drives because they contain less solid-state memory. A 2TB hybrid drive with 8GB of cache is more expensive than a regular 2TB mechanical drive, but cheaper than a 256GB SSD, which has even less free space.
A major advantage is that hybrid drive is a single physical disk. If your laptop only has room for one drive, but you need the speed of a solid-state drive and the capacity of a mechanical drive, then a hybrid drive is the best solution.
It's all about price and capacity. If magnetic and solid-state drives were the same in cost, then hybrid drives would not be needed at all. Solid state drives would be better in every way.
Hybrid drive is slow when first used. When it first starts working, caching has not yet been done, which means that the disk will be just as slow as a classic magnetic one. As you use it, the drive will learn which files to cache and speed will gradually increase.
It's up to you to choose which drive to use, but our team prefers a hybrid drive with at least 32GB of solid-state memory.
Many have already heard about the new hybrid hard drives, however, most will wonder if they are worth buying? Or maybe it’s better to take hybrids instead SSD drive small volume (or large, have a lot of money), install a system on it, and install a regular hard drive for data? Now I will try to shed light on this issue.
After my laptop fell off the table, the hard drive had to be replaced. There is no space in the laptop for a separate SSD drive, so you can only plug one device into it. I settled on a Seagate ST1000LM014-1EJ164 hybrid hard drive with a capacity of 1 TB, and an SSD cache of approximately 8 GB. This is certainly not as much as we would like, but it’s better than nothing at all. This hybrid drive cost me almost 7,000 rubles.
The hybrid disk cache is entirely hardware and there are no programs to configure or optimize it. Programs and files that are frequently used, including system files, are cached.
Pros of a hybrid hard drive
I list the advantages that I was able to identify when using a hybrid from Seagate:
- when using \" quick start\” Windows system loads 25-30 percent faster,
- applications that we often use launch several times faster,
- copying files up to 500 MB, even within different logical drives, occurs at high speed, equal to approximately 200-300 MB/sec (I think the file is first copied to the cache, and then transferred to the hard drive during idle time),
- the whole machine works faster and there are fewer bottlenecks.
Cons of a hybrid drive
Let us note some disadvantages, but they are not critical:
- the cost is almost 2 times more than a regular hard drive,
- low SSD cache volume (in general, there are all sorts of disks, they have 32 and 64 GB, but the cost is appropriate).
Conclusion, is it worth buying?
Let's move on to the most important thing, and here I have two answers, and they depend on your operating conditions for the computer.
I think it’s worth buying them only for laptops when it is not possible to install a second separate drive in it. If you have a desktop computer and there is space in it (usually there is always some), then it would be best to take a separate SSD drive with a capacity of 64 GB to 128 GB (this is if you plan to keep only the system on it). And if finances allow, then you can fork out for a 1-2 TB SDD, I think it will be great.
In this article I will tell you what a hybrid hard drive is, why it is better than the usual HDD, as well as the pros and cons compared to an SSD.
For most ordinary users I’ll now reveal a big secret - the weakest (read: slow) link in the chain of a computer system is the hard drive or hard drive. You can have the fastest processor, the best video card and a bunch of RAM, but the slow and, excuse the expression, “dumb” hard drive nullifies all the work of this cool hardware.
This was the case until recently. Now there are SSDs or solid state drives. They helped get rid of this bottleneck in computer performance. Many people use them as their main boot disk under operating system, which is very justified, but the high price and small amount of memory does not make it possible to use them more widely.
The production of hard drives is a very complex technological process, since there are many moving parts in it, which greatly limits the reduction in the size of the devices without losing certain characteristics (which is probably why so many modern hard drives now fail). Manufacturers find themselves at a technological dead end. There is no room to further increase the capacity of disks and their density.
To solve this problem, solid-state drives were created, and in 2007, Seagate developed the world's first hybrid hard drive or SSHD (solid-state hard drive). This is a physical data storage device in which data storage technologies of the 60s (hard disk on magnetic disks, HDD) and modern times (SSD drives on) are intertwined.
In general, this looks like an ordinary hard drive with significantly increased flash memory. The first samples had 128MB, but now there are models with 32GB.
The result is a very interesting and practical product. It inherited a large capacity from a regular disk, and a large, one might even say huge, data cache from a solid-state drive.
Speed parameters or HDD and SSD vs SSHD
The process of increasing the speed of the operating system and applications using such hybrid drives is as follows:
After installing the operating system on a hybrid hard drive, the first boot will occur at normal speed, but after several reboots, the time will decrease due to the device's microcontroller entering the most frequently used operating system data areas into a large cache. Tests have shown that booting a system with an SSHD is only 5-10% slower than a regular SSD. The same will happen with various applications, games, etc. The main thing is that the disk has enough flash memory for everything you need.
In late 2011 and early 2012, speed tests showed that hybrid SSDs with a 750 GB HDD and 8 GB cache were slower than SSDs in random read/write and sequential read/write, but faster than HDDs when running applications. and turning off.
The amount of cache memory significantly affects the cost of the final product. Therefore, when choosing a drive, you must take into account how resource-intensive applications you are going to run on it and their number.
At the heart of hybrid drive technology is deciding which data elements are prioritized by flash memory and which are not. Therefore, SSHDs can operate in two main modes:
Automatic mode or self-optimized
In this mode, the hybrid hard drive independently makes all decisions related to data distribution and does not depend on the operating system.
Host-Optimized Mode or host-hinted
In this operating mode, the Hybrid SSHD enables the extended SATA "Hybrid Information" command set. Based on these commands, the operating system and device driver, given the structure file system,decides which data elements to place in NAND flash memory.
Some specific features of SSHD, such as host-hinted mode, require software support in the operating system. Support for host-hinted operations appeared only in Windows 8.1, while patches for Linux kernels available since late 2014. They are expected to be included in the Linux kernel in the future.
Historical background
In 2007, Seagate and Samsung introduced the first hybrid drives: Seagate Momentus PSD and Samsung SpinPoint MH80. Both were 2.5-inch and had 128 MB or 256 MB of flash memory. The products are not widely available.
In May 2010, Seagate introduced a new hybrid product called the Momentus XT drive and used the term " Solid State Hybrid Disk (SSHD). It includes 500 GB of HDD memory with 4 GB of integrated NAND flash memory.
In April 2013, WD introduced 2.5-inch WD Black SSHD drives, including 5 mm thick SSHD with 500 GB of regular memory and flash memory in sizes of 8 GB, 16 GB and 24 GB.
Pros and cons of hybrid HDDs
The main advantage of a hybrid hard drive is a significant increase in the performance of the disk subsystem, especially in netbooks and laptops, where hard drives are less powerful and you cannot install a second drive, as in a regular PC. It’s not for nothing that the very first SSHD disks were developed in the 2.5-inch laptop format. Later, 3.5-inch hybrid drives were released. Although now in laptops with a disk drive, it is possible to replace it with a hard drive or solid-state drive, but I will tell you how to do this in one of the following articles.
The disadvantages include the inability to fit all critical data on the flash memory of an SSHD disk. But it also doesn’t make sense to install more than 32GB on a hybrid SSHD, since it will be cheaper to buy a regular 64GB SSD.
For the price they are at the moment significantly superior to conventional hard drives. For example, at the time of writing, a 1 TB hard drive Seagate Desktop SSHD model ST1000DX001 cost about 6,000 rubles, and its competitor 1Tb Western Digital WD Blue SSHD WD10J31X cost about 5,500 rubles. At the same time, a regular 1 TB Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 hard drive will cost you 3,600 rubles. And this includes models with only 8GB of memory. With more quantity the difference will increase. But this is still several times less than the cost of an SSD of similar size.
Conclusion
Hybrid hard drives are a compromise solution that allows you to both increase the overall performance of the system in which they are installed and reduce its price.
You could say this is an evolutionary development of conventional HDDs. Due to the increased cache, it was possible to reduce the number of disk accesses, which was reflected in reduced power consumption and heat dissipation, durability and reduced noise during operation. All this makes them much more productive and practical than HDDs, and several times cheaper than SSDs.
The original purpose of the SSHD was to provide a low-cost replacement for SSDs and HDDs in laptops and mobile computers completed successfully. After testing the technology and eliminating the shortcomings, manufacturers began to produce 3.5-inch formats for a regular PC.
Thus, for an expensive PC and laptop, it is still better to choose a high-speed solid-state drive with a large capacity on which to install the operating system and the programs and applications necessary for work, but for a regular PC and especially a laptop, an SSHD is ideal, which will replace obsolete and slow ones hard disc drive.
Read about what a hybrid hard drive is and what they are. Features of data recovery from SSHD. Hybrid hard drives or SSHD (Solid-State Hybrid Drives or solid-state hybrid drives) are not yet very common devices, but they are gradually gaining popularity. Combining the properties of traditional magnetic hard drives and the well-known properties of solid-state drives with their extremely high speed capabilities, hybrid hard drives promise to offer the best of both worlds.
At least in theory. Is it worth buying a hybrid hard drive, what are its advantages, and what to do if the SSHD fails? To find out, read our comprehensive review.
First, identify the problem. Is your HDD drive still in working order, or has it failed due to mechanical damage? If it fails due to mechanical damage, you can take the HDD drive (with or without SSD parts) to a repair shop and ask them to save the information from of this drive to another medium. You can also use signature-based data recovery technology (available in tools like Hetman Partition Recovery) to scan the SSD part at a low level in order to recover files that may be cached on it. But due to the nature of hybrid storage media, your chances of recovering anything other than a group of system files are very slim.
If your hard drive is still operational and you have determined data loss, simply treat your hybrid system as you would a normal one. hard drive. Download the appropriate data recovery tool and recover your data as if you were using a regular hard drive. In most cases, it will be better if you disable the SSD part in your computer's BIOS; but this is not necessary.
But what if you have an SSHD from one device? Your actions should be the same, with some exceptions. If the SSD part fails (for example, due to wear due to large quantity overwrites), you are better off replacing the SSHD drive completely, or continuing to use it, but with the SSD part disabled and Smart Response Technology deactivated. You will have access to all your data, albeit at a slower speed. Do not use an SSHD drive with a worn out SSD part in hybrid mode! If you do this, you risk damaging data or losing information written to the disk. If the SSD part fails, disconnect it.
Finally, what if you have a real SSHD drive, without any visible separate SSD and HDD partitions, and the SSD part fails? IN in this case To recover files from such a drive, you can still use a data recovery tool like Hetman Partition Recovery. In some cases, you will even be able to read the files normally without having to use a data recovery tool. However, you should not continue to use such a device, as you will probably end up with damaged files sooner or later.
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Hi all.
It's time to get acquainted with the concept of a “hybrid hard drive”, as it is increasingly being heard. Would you like to increase the speed of your computer? I have no doubt that yes. And at the same time, naturally, you want to save money? Then read on.
Hybrid drive - what is it?
A hybrid hard drive, or in English SSHD (solid-state hybrid drive), is a cross between the old hard drive that is in your computer and, compared to it new technology - solid state drive. To make the situation clearer, you need to understand what one and the other are.
The one we are used to consists of plates and read heads that spin at incredible speeds.
Such a mechanism takes up a lot of space, makes noise and is prone to breakage when shaking.
Therefore, manufacturers came up with an improved version - which does not have any rotating elements, but consists only of a memory chip.
Despite the fact that solid-state drives appeared in the 80s, they are still not going to become cheaper. True, the high price is justified by the ultra-fast work. To balance the situation, the developers created a hybrid version between the first and second - SSHD. And yet, what is it?
It looks like the same simple screw, that is, it also works thanks to the plates and heads. Only they added flash memory to it, like in a solid-state drive.
How did you come to this decision?
To understand the cause-and-effect relationships, let’s look at the operating principle of the drive. When you give it a command with the keyboard and mouse, it first accesses the data in the first level cache. This is the area where the information you use most often is temporarily stored.
Depending on the HDD model, its volume varies between 8-64 MB. Catastrophically few, right? Therefore, the computer freezes (or rather, the screw itself freezes) if it suddenly does not find the necessary information in the cache and begins to select it from what it has in stock.
In order to prevent the computer from slowing down, we added a level 2 hard cache in the form of flash memory. Its volume can reach 8 GB. Better now, right? And although the additional cache has a lower speed than the main one, with a hybrid hard cache you are unlikely to have to worry about waiting for a response from the computer to your request.
After all, SSHD can add much more information to its temporary storage than HDD. True, there is no way to interfere in the election process: the drive itself decides what is more important to you.
For this, self-learning technology is used, which, from the first seconds of work, examines on the disk those files that have already been used several times, and if you reuse them, they will launch faster. That is, only the most frequently used files work quickly on such drives.
But the buffer size is known to be limited, therefore the disk will not process all your files faster (the files are replaced by others you use).
Advantages and Disadvantages
Like everything in our world, this device has pros and cons. Let's start with the good:
- Works faster than the old screw by about 30%;
- Costs less than SSD;
- Flash memory and screw have a single housing.
The hybrid drive has only one drawback - a small cache size. But this is temporary, as technology develops. By the way, do not confuse the cache with memory intended for storing multimedia and other data - its volume can be calculated in terabytes.
Do you need a hybrid hard drive?
As you can see, when buying a hybrid propeller you can only win. But is it worth buying this hard one while the old one works flawlessly? The answer is yes if you want to speed up your computer.
I can say the same to those whose propeller has broken. I mean, you'll have to buy a new one anyway, so why not a hybrid? The price is not much more expensive than a regular disk, but it works much faster.
If you decide that you need a drive, when choosing, pay attention to the following main features:
- Form factor - size.
Initially, these screws were intended only for mobile gadgets, so they were produced in a 2.5-inch form factor (size).
But manufacturers also took care of owners of desktop computers by releasing 3.5-inch devices.
- Interface - the way the disk is connected to motherboard. The data exchange speed also depends on this parameter. The most common now is SATA. The first and third generations of this bus are found in many computers. Do you have very old hardware? It may have an obsolete IDE interface.
- Capacity. In this case, choose according to your personal needs.
My conclusion is this: since this disk generally works faster only with frequently used files, it would be more rational to buy it to install the OS on it. I just don’t see the point in using it for regular files.
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Good luck with the upgrade.
