Is it worth it to replace my current hdd ?

[Good guy Greg]

Hey,

I had this HDD for about 4 years now, the model number is st31000524as

I think it is this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148697

I'm considering to get an SSHD, is it worth the money ? I know this question has been asked a lot but I've seen only one case where the original poster had an SSD like me.

I have an SSD of 256GB and I will divide it to two parts one for each operating system (linux/windows), the two parts will contain only the operating systems and most used programs. While games and such will be installed on the HDD if I didn't replace it.

What do you guys think ?

 

[nukemaster]

I would generally say use the drive as long as it is not showing smart errors. Having a backup is ALWAYS recommended no matter how old a drive is(any drive can fail).

As for the SSHD, They have a small nand(SSD) section normally about 8gigabytes. They WILL speed up data that you access often(and should have some write improvements as well), but depending on your workload you may or may not notice it.

Make sure the drive is still 7200rpm since you still want better access times when you are not in the SSD portion.

I personally use my hard drives for storage only so speed is not much of an issue for me(5200-5400 rpm drives all around).

 

[audie-tron25]

Unless the HDD is failing, I would keep it. I think the best part about having a traditional HDD is that they rarely fail catastrophically and data can usually be retrieved off of them otherwise. When SSD's fail, their data is gone/non-accessible. If you do replace it, consider replacing it with another HDD. I'm not sure about how SSHD's fail, but that would be the way I would do it.

 

[Good guy Greg]

@nukemastera Thanks for your reply, I would actually keep my HDD, but what I meant is that is it worth it to replace the HDD with SSHD to install games in, will I notice improvements mainly in games loading times and huge programs such as photoshop? until now I download and store the games on the HDD while programs and the operating systems remain in the SSD.

Another question if it is OK with you, you said and I quote "personally use my hard drives for storage only" what are you using to install huge programs and games ? an SSD or another HDD ? or an SSHD ?

@audie-tron257 Thanks for your reply, my question was that if I replace the HDD with an SSHD for installing huge programs and games, will it be worth it ? because if it doesn't then it is not even worth it to buy another HDD because this HDD is enough for me, but I want speed in loading times and such.

 

[nukemaster]

I store anything that needs speed on SSDs(and that is not allot on my media center with 128 gigabyte SSD).

My other system uses 2 x 256gigabyte SSDs for storing games and programs.

The amount of performance gained from SSHDs is kind of dependent on the firmware. Data used often will stay in the SSD portion(cached), but anything used less frequently will not be as fast. I can not see large games being kept in that small section just because it is so limited and other things may be access more often.

Remember when a game loads into memory it does not need the hard drive as much any more. MMO and other games that load on the fly will use the drive more to load things are you play.

I kind of see SSHDs as a stopgap(while waiting for larger/cheaper SSDs). Think of placing your OS on such a drive would lead to faster startup because the OS is always access and this stays cached. For games, if you play many games it will never be able to cache them all(Even Intel SRT[ssd cache] had more space to play with).

 

[Good guy Greg]

Thank you for your reply, well I guess an SSHD will not be a big improvement anyways, since I actually switch between games a lot, if the mechanism was to just store the most frequently used data in the SSD portion, then it will not help me.

Sorry for bothering you guys, and thank you.