Hybrid drive MTBF

[BoredBloke]

What sort of performance boost do you get from having the OS on a SSD over a fast HD?

[Ignis Fatuus]

In most laptops it is possible to fit two drives, usually by replacing the mostly useless DVD drive.

Looking at prices of current "hybrid" drives it makes more sense to just go with SSD.
If 120-250GB is not enough for you, then store you porn collection on an external drive perhaps?

That's what I currently do. And it's not nearly so interesting as porn, it's mostly the results of the folly-infested habit of shooting Medium Format photos and then scanning them at 4000dpi 16-bit.

I suppose a bit of (self-)organisation and a decent external disk will do the trick. In which case I don't need the upgrade, so the question of what to upgrade to goes away.

[xchaotic]

In most laptops it is possible to fit two drives, usually by replacing the mostly useless DVD drive.

Looking at prices of current "hybrid" drives it makes more sense to just go with SSD.
If 120-250GB is not enough for you, then store you porn collection on an external drive perhaps?

[Ignis Fatuus]

I agree with xchaotic. Unless there is a really big financial saving from a hybrid drive (or your system can only fit 1 drive) I would go for two separate drives. It will be more upgradeable in the future.

Seems fair enough but I am indeed looking at a laptop that only takes 1 drive. I am looking at an upgrade from current 160Gb (too small), but 500Gb all-SSD is over the budget. So it's got to be e.g. 500Gb, 1 2.5" disk only, seems like choice is HDD or hybrid. Still don't know which is better out of those choices.

[yorkshireman]

I agree with xchaotic. Unless there is a really big financial saving from a hybrid drive (or your system can only fit 1 drive) I would go for two separate drives. It will be more upgradeable in the future.

[xchaotic]

Easiest thing to do is to buy two separate drives - one SSD, one HDD.
You will get better performance, better price and better control.

But also having OS only on the SSD is:
a) micromanaging
b) underutilising

In my current setup I happen to have 160GB SSD, I plan to upgrade with two 120GB sandforce ones in RAID-0.

For my usage I don't normally exceed 100GB for OS, Apps and data.
All the content is backed up hourly, which is further backed up daily and then off-site very other week or so.

[Ignis Fatuus]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but would it be possible/a good idea to get a hybrid drive, then partition it so that the OS was on the SSD part and all your data on the HDD part? So a failure in the SSD means a bit of hassle but no lost user data?

Of course, backing up tends to do that too...

In fact, wouldn't that be what tended to happen anyway, since user data would be less volatile?