Replacement laptop HD: SSHD at 5400 or HDD at 7200 for best general performance? Bought 2.5 Firecuda/second thoughts

[anouk]

The hard drive in my Toshiba Satellite C55-C5241 died. I did some research, and purchased the Seagate 2.5 Firecuda, 1TB. After a few days, I ran the Seagate diagnostic tools, and it informed me that it has a error, should backup all of my information, and return it. Great.

It is a 5400 RPM, and I'm wondering whether I should buy the same product, or get something like the HGST Travelstar 7K1000 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200 RPM or the WD Black. I'm not looking for a super quick boot up time, and I'm not gaming; just trying to 1) get the fastest overall system performance and 2) get something reliable (one reason I do like the Firecuda, despite getting a bum one now, is the 5 year warranty).

I'm on a budget and can't afford something spectacular--looking at ~$80 or less.

My understanding is that the two alternatives listed above are HDDs--no flash/SSHD. So basically: am I better off getting a 7200 RPM HDD or a 5400 RPM SSHD, for best performance? When I was researching this, I saw a few comments implying that if a SSHD wasn't at least 7200 RPM, it really wasn't worth it (but they might have just been grumps).

By the way: I'm a little irked at the Seagate site and tools. When I checked for a firmware update, it didn't initially recognize my serial # (the one provided by Seagate tools itself); further, it says there is no new firmware available. But I never got any firmware, so far as I'm aware. It took the standard Windows 10 SATA driver (circa 2006!). I bought this directly from Amazon. I've read everything I could find about the drive, looked at videos on YouTube, etc., and haven't found anything about firmware. Just diagnostics and SeaTools (which provides backup solutions--provided you buy the full Acronis package).

Anyone know off-hand if there is a different driver/firmware for this than the standard Microsoft driver? If so, where I can get it? Cuz sure looks like I can't get it on the Seagate site. 🙁

Here are my system specs:

*Satellite C55-C5241 (I know it's cheap and old, but the CPU etc. are fine; again--on a budget; my only real alternative would be finding some incredible deal given the processor I have, or else getting a Chromebook), i5-5200u 2.2ghz;

*8GB 1600 Ghz RAM (considering upgrading if new storage doesn't improve performance);

*Windows Home 10 x64.

Oh--and it has a SATA III connection.

Thanks for any help you can give!

 

[popatim]

How much space do you actually need? There are many budget ssd's in that price range, they just don't have huge capacities.
SSD's are faster, lower power, require no spin-up/spin-down time, and more durable (in most cases)

 

[anouk]

How much space do you actually need? There are many budget ssd's in that price range, they just don't have huge capacities.
SSD's are faster, lower power, require no spin-up/spin-down time, and more durable (in most cases)

At least 500 gb. I keep a lot of media files on my computer; unless I can figure out some networking solutions (for P2P) directly from a HD attached to my router--which I know is possible--that is the low range.

While an SSD would be ideal, do you have any idea whether an SSHD at 5400 beats an HDD at 7200--not for program start-up, but for sustained performance (background apps on top of browsing on top of having, say, Excel open)?

Thanks!

 

[rkzhao]

In theory, a SSHD should have better overall performance than a 7200rpm HDD, but it's somewhat dependent on workload.

Random performance will be better on a SSHD. Sequential performance is likely comparable and possibly slightly worse depending on the transfer size due to the slower rpm of the base drive and how firmware likely handles it.

For background tasks, the workloads tends to be more random so a SSHD should show some benefits. But really, a storage device isn't going to affect stuff like browsing that much. The type of performance you're talking about gets more impact from memory than storage.

It's really up to you. For purely storage reliability, I personally would rank it HDDs, SSDs, then SSHDs, especially when it comes to cheap client ones.

Also, firmware is not the same thing as a driver. Firmware is on the device itself, a driver is for windows to use the device. Considering that FireCuda is relatively new as part of Seagate's rebranding, I wouldn't be surprised that there's no new firmware for the drive. Not sure about the driver but it's possible that you just don't need a new driver since it's just SATA.

 

[anouk]

Thanks. I think I get the picture now--kind of--on the read/write needs etc. I wish there was a Firecuda benchmark around, but even for all of the hype it's getting, I haven't found anything. That way I could compare it directly to a 7200 HDD.

Also, firmware is not the same thing as a driver. Firmware is on the device itself, a driver is for windows to use the device. Considering that FireCuda is relatively new as part of Seagate's rebranding, I wouldn't be surprised that there's no new firmware for the drive. Not sure about the driver but it's possible that you just don't need a new driver since it's just SATA.

Firmware--I understand, but wouldn't I be able to somewhere see what the firmware is? I ran AIDA etc.; even Seagate's own tools don't list the firmware version. I feel like there isn't any installed or something. I'd like to know how to find out--if possible--whether there's just nothing on there and that's why I'm getting a disk failure with this. Would save me waiting on Amazon and a third freaking install of Windows 10. 🙁

Any idea?

Thanks for your answer, great!

 

[rkzhao]

If you can talk to the drive at all, it means there's firmware on it.

I would think SeaTools should display firmware revision. The firmware revision for a drive is reported as part of the SATA identify command along with stuff like serial number and model number so it should be pretty standard.

I found this on Seagate's website. http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/004206en