Hybrid Vs SSD

[d000hg]

I'm continuing to mull over a new PC; I think I'll go that route rather than upgrading. As I do Mac work I'm considering a Mac Mini as my main machine (using bootcamp and/or parallels) instead of having to maintain two machines - though I'm sitting tight to see if a refresh on the range is coming first.

They currently offer the same upgrade price for a 256Gb SSD or a 1TB Hybrid drive. I have heard quite good things about hybrid drives and on paper they sound very neat but realistically how do they compare to a full SSD?

Does all the magic of hybrid drives still work if you're running virtualised systems?

[Scruff]

I would be interested in other opinions of this too, since I have purchased 4 x 4TB Hybrid drives for my NAS that I am building.

I know that the SSD is 8GB and the Mag Spindle 4 TB. I can see the advantages in a single disk system, based on the lab results that I have seen.

Clearly a "pure" SSD will give speedier results and know that Windows 8 is designed to take advantage of SSDs (no defragementation!).

I am unsure how MAC OSX is designed to work with them though?

[Unix]

I would go for a smaller SSD for OS/Programs/source code etc (256GB) and larger IDE (1TB+) for bigger files you don't use often (videos/pic/porn/ISO/backup etc). This is my current setup and it works very well.

[VectraMan]

They sell these things "as good as" the real thing, but obviously they can't be. Does it always write through to the HDD for safety? Because that would mean your write performance is only ever as good as an HDD, and it's only on the reading cached things that you gain.

[sal]

I would go for a smaller SSD for OS/Programs/source code etc (256GB) and larger IDE (1TB+) for bigger files you don't use often (videos/pic/porn/ISO/backup etc). This is my current setup and it works very well.

^This

The problem with most Hybrids is that you can hardy control what goes where and you rely on the build-in firmware/software to sort out the hot and cold data. Getting 2 separate drives allows you full control over the process and much better choice of SSD/HDDs that the hybrids.

If you don't have physical space for 2 separate drives (no idea how mini is the Mac mini) like for example in a laptop - WD offer a SSD/HDD combo in single package the size of a standard 2.5" HDD where the SSD is "glued" to the back of the HDD but the OS sees them as a separate drives and you are in full control

[d000hg]

Isn't the point that the hybrid automatically chooses which files go where, so you don't have to decide yourself... I have no idea which files a given application loads and I don't want to!

I thought a Hybrid was just a small SSD glued onto a spinny disk, and it moved files between the two based on usage patterns?

[sal]

I would be interested in other opinions of this too, since I have purchased 4 x 4TB Hybrid drives for my NAS that I am building.

I know that the SSD is 8GB and the Mag Spindle 4 TB. I can see the advantages in a single disk system, based on the lab results that I have seen.

Clearly a "pure" SSD will give speedier results and know that Windows 8 is designed to take advantage of SSDs (no defragementation!).

I am unsure how MAC OSX is designed to work with them though?

Why would you need SSD in a NAS? I'm not sure how well the hybrid firmware can cope with being in a RAID array ran by the NAS OS/Firmware. I doubt that there is any performance gain in your setup, but if the price was similar - why not.

I can only imagine that MAC OSX is designed to fully benefit from SSD giving the fact that MacBook Air is SSD only

[sal]

Isn't the point that the hybrid automatically chooses which files go where, so you don't have to decide yourself... I have no idea which files a given application loads and I don't want to!

Which is nice, the problem is that it's only as good as the algorithms governing this process and is always a compromise. What Unix and i are doing is to just install the OS + all software that you need to be fast on the SSD and stuff the large files that don't need to be that fast like movies, music, .ISO, backups on a large cheap HDD. I can't honestly think of any collection of software that will require more than 256GB

I thought a Hybrid was just a small SSD glued onto a spinny disk, and it moved files between the two based on usage patterns?

Correct (excluding the WD offering)

[SpontaneousOrder]

I've got a 1 TB hybrid in my iMac. It works great so far, but I've not got tonnes of data on it.

[NickFitz]

Isn't the point that the hybrid automatically chooses which files go where, so you don't have to decide yourself... I have no idea which files a given application loads and I don't want to!

I thought a Hybrid was just a small SSD glued onto a spinny disk, and it moved files between the two based on usage patterns?

Yes, on OS X using a Fusion drive (their name for the combination of an SSD and HD together with the OS's support for optimised use of that combination).

The "I put those files on there, these files on here" approach is a manual and inefficient way of doing something the computer is perfectly situated to do, and keep optimising, itself.