Discussion Does anyone use SSHDs? I have never seen anyone use one. Why would you want to use them now that SSDs have become so much cheaper?

[Order 66]

I would like to know whether SSHDs are used when SSDs are so much cheaper than they used to be.

 

[RealBeast]

I would like to know whether SSHDs are used when SSDs are so much cheaper than they used to be.

No reason now, they had a short window that closed quickly.

 

[Order 66]

No reason now, they had a short window that closed quickly.

when were they used and what for?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

They were nothing more than a bridge between spinning drives and SSD's. They weren't all that much faster.

 

[sizzling]

Back in the days when Sony made laptops I upgraded one to a SSHD. At the time it was an excellent performance boost for the snappiness of Windows while being cost effective and providing enough storage.

I would not buy one today.

 

[Order 66]

They were nothing more than a bridge between spinning drives and SSD's. They weren't all that much faster.

Based on my limited research, SSHDs were basically an SSD and an HDD combined into one, it would store the most commonly used data on the SSD part. Would said SSD part not be fast? what do you mean by they weren't much faster? (obviously, the hard drive part didn't help with speed, but wouldn't the SSD at least partially make up for that?)

 

[Zerk2012]

Most people had no use at all for them.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Based on my limited research, SSHDs were basically an SSD and an HDD combined into one, it would store the most commonly used data on the SSD part. Would said SSD part not be fast? what do you mean by they weren't much faster? (obviously, the hard drive part didn't help with speed, but wouldn't the SSD at least partially make up for that?)

The SSD was nothing more than a large cache. Yes it was faster if you constantly accessed the same content over and over, but it could and did eventually get overwritten, which means going back to the slower spinning drive. In theory (on paper) they were much faster than a standard 16MB cache spinning drive, but in actual real world use maybe 20% or so faster at most. They were really only popular for the short time that spinning drives were available in sizes much larger than SSD's, and MUCH less expensive than an equal sized SSD at the time. They're just a footnote in history now.

 

[Order 66]

The SSD was nothing more than a large cache. Yes it was faster if you constantly accessed the same content over and over, but it could and did eventually get overwritten, which means going back to the slower spinning drive. In theory (on paper) they were much faster than a standard 16MB cache spinning drive, but in actual real world use maybe 20% or so faster at most. They were really only popular for the short time that spinning drives were available in sizes much larger than SSD's, and MUCH less expensive than an equal sized SSD at the time. They're just a footnote in history now.

How expensive were SSDs at the time? they must have been very expensive for people to buy SSHDs instead.

 

[Eximo]

There was a time when a 256GB SATA SSD would set you back 200+ dollars. This was around the time that people were still doing the 40 and 60GB SSDs as boot drives and storing everything else on hard drives in desktops.

Prior to that, if you were looking for anything close to 500GB you would be talking $600+

 

[Order 66]

There was a time when a 256GB SATA SSD would set you back 200+ dollars. This was around the time that people were still doing the 40 and 60GB SSDs as boot drives and storing everything else on hard drives in desktops.

Prior to that, if you were looking for anything close to 500GB you would be talking $600+

I shudder to think what a 2TB SSD would cost then. When did M.2 become available, and at what initial price?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

How expensive were SSDs at the time? they must have been very expensive for people to buy SSHDs instead.

The first SSD's were only 16GB & 32GB and were many times more expensive than spinning drives of 10x the size. Not that long ago (2007) and you could find one, a 4TB SSD would set one back about $40.00 per Gigabyte ($160,000.00)

 

[Eximo]

I shudder to think what a 2TB SSD would cost then. When did M.2 become available, and at what initial price?

At that time that would have been a PCIe direct plug-in card, and many thousands of dollars.

M.2 started popping up in desktops around Intel 6th gen. Though some OEM 4th gen refresh boards also had them. They first appeared in Macs I want to say, it was the 110mm standard rather than the typical 80mm that is typical today.

Not sure if I can recall early M.2 pricing. Wasn't much in the market myself.

I did buy a 7th gen desktop with a 1TB SSD. I want to say that was $400 or so? Another post on partpicker mentioned he paid $340 for the same 1TB Samsung 960 Evo so that seems about right.

 

[Order 66]

At that time that would have been a PCIe direct plug-in card, and many thousands of dollars.

M.2 started popping up in desktops around Intel 6th gen. Though some OEM 4th gen refresh boards also had them. They first appeared in Macs I want to say, it was the 110mm standard rather than the typical 80mm that is typical today.

Not sure if I can recall early M.2 pricing. Wasn't much in the market myself.

I did buy a 7th gen desktop with a 1TB SSD. I want to say that was $400 or so? Another post on partpicker mentioned he paid $340 for the same 1TB Samsung 960 Evo so that seems about right.

I have seen the PCIE SSDs, but why aren't they used more today? wouldn't the extra speed provided by a full-length PCIe slot be useful?

 

[Eximo]

I have seen the PCIE SSDs, but why aren't they used more today? wouldn't the extra speed provided by a full-length PCIe slot be useful?

All about parallelism and cost reduction on the flash controllers. It is cheaper to put 4 M.2 sticks on a card than build a bespoke PCIe storage card that must have a very wide bandwidth flash controller. You can just have 4 controllers and put them in RAID, or use them as a JBOD with no hardware or software.

Last popular PCIe SSDs would be Intel Optane drives.

Besides, most people can't take advantage of the performance of a PCIe 3.0 drive, let alone the 4.0 and 5.0 drives. And having multiple, not a pipe big enough coming out of the system for that to ever matter.

Such things are reserved for the server and enterprise market.

 

[Order 66]

All about parallelism and cost reduction on the flash controllers. It is cheaper to put 4 M.2 sticks on a card than build a bespoke PCIe storage card that must have a very wide bandwidth flash controller. You can just have 4 controllers and put them in RAID, or use them as a JBOD with no hardware or software.

Last popular PCIe SSDs would be Intel Optane drives.

Besides, most people can't take advantage of the performance of a PCIe 3.0 drive, let alone the 4.0 and 5.0 drives. And having multiple, not a pipe big enough coming out of the system for that to ever matter.

Such things are reserved for the server and enterprise market.

What was Intel Optane used for? I have heard of it, but never really understood the appeal. I also understand that intel has killed off their Optane division.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

What was Intel Optane used for? I have heard of it, but never really understood the appeal. I also understand that intel has killed off their Optane division.

What? Did Google suddenly break down?

Information about the Intel® Optane™ Memory M Series

Basic information and questions about the Intel Optane Memory M Series

www.intel.com

 

[Order 66]

What? Did Google suddenly break down?

Information about the Intel® Optane™ Memory M Series

Basic information and questions about the Intel Optane Memory M Series

www.intel.com

So it was essentially a cache for hard drives? Could it be used on it's own? I noticed that it said it was not recommended, sounds like a challenge.

 

[artk2219]

I would like to know whether SSHDs are used when SSDs are so much cheaper than they used to be.

I used a few of them in the past, I remember the performance was quite variable. Anything that was used often and was cached was quite snappy, then you would open something that wasn't in the cache, or you were running software that had to reach out of the cache for more data, and it would slow significantly. It didn't help that they would typically cheap out on the hard drive side as well and figured since it had an SSD cache we might as well make the hard drive portion a 5400 rpm max drive, not like it'll ever need to seek or anything -_- . Like everyone else said, once SSD prices dropped the need for hybrid drives did as well, I still use plenty of regular hard drives, they're just now used mass storage for things where speed isn't a priority, music and video storage. Honestly I still keep my steam library on an 8TB hard drive, yeah it takes longer to load the game but its never a big wait, and I can always walk away to get a drink or quickly use the restroom while it loads. The only exception to that are games that dont optimize, or have a path for that situation and would rather load from storage rather than keeping data in flight in ram or vram. Diablo IV had a problem with that initially but it was smoothed out by patches, I may have a problem with Starfield, but I haven't started playing it yet, ill probably have to swap to an SSD game store in the near future, but for now its fine.

 

[Eximo]

Intel did make PCIe plug-in cards that were large enough to actually use as standalone drives. They never really got the M.2 drives to a useful size, so they basically just lost the density war against NAND flash.

Very good for low queue depth scenarios which is more typical of average desktop use. But generally not a significant difference to the average end user.

 

[stonecarver]

Do you want to see what a 5 mb hard drive looked like in the past.

Amazing Facts and Figures About the Evolution of Hard Disk Drives - Pingdom

It took 51 years before hard disk drives reached the size of 1 TB. This happened in 2007. In 2009, the first hard drive with 2 TB of storage arrived. So, while it took 51 years to reach the first terabyte, it took just two years to reach the second. This article looks back at how hard disk...

www.pingdom.com

 

[Order 66]

Do you want to see what a 5 mb hard drive looked like in the past.

Amazing Facts and Figures About the Evolution of Hard Disk Drives - Pingdom

It took 51 years before hard disk drives reached the size of 1 TB. This happened in 2007. In 2009, the first hard drive with 2 TB of storage arrived. So, while it took 51 years to reach the first terabyte, it took just two years to reach the second. This article looks back at how hard disk...

www.pingdom.com

Thanks, that was an interesting read! that $700,000 per GB figure really shocked me.

 

[stonecarver]

Oh and one more weird factoid until the end of WW-2 our recorders used wire to save voice or music a wire! . Later we had tape but it trips me out wire?

But I think that old tech wire recorder plays a part with modern mechanical hard drives.

 

[Order 66]

I understand that RAID itself is for redundancy, but what do the different types of raid mean and what are they used for? I have heard that RAID 0 is an awful idea for SSDs, but why?

 

[USAFRet]

I understand that RAID itself is for redundancy, but what do the different types of raid mean and what are they used for? I have heard that RAID 0 is an awful idea for SSDs, but why?

RAID 1 and above are only for physical drive "redundancy". NOT, I repeat NOT, for data redundancy.

In the consumer world, RAID 0 is a poor idea, no matter what drive type.

Standard RAID levels - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org