Seagate Desktop Sata Drive(ST2000DM001) vs Solid State Hybrid Drive(ST2000DX001)

[Akhilrajau]

Can anyone please share the difference between these two. The price difference is around INR2000. So my confusions are

1. I am buying new system for my work and gaming. So if i buy SSH any difference from the Desktop Drive?

2. Is SSH alternative for SSD. So if i bought Seagate SSH 2 TB, I don't want any separate SSD?

Please help me to understand well

 

[JackNaylorPE]

An SSHD is a HD witha small SSD on it, that dynamically moves the most frequently used files to the faster portion of the drive.

I think this will explain it all

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/5748/seagate-desktop-2tb-sshd-st2000dx001-review/index9.html

With the increasing market penetration of the SSD, a lot of users have now had the chance to upgrade their PCs. Now we all know while SSDs offer massive benefits in terms of performance, they have always lacked in one area - capacity.

A situation like this left most power users using an SSD for their operating system, while still running a secondary mechanical drive for storage and games. A typical setup such as this would allow the OS to load very quickly, while leaving you stunned at how long it took to load a game. With the introduction of the Desktop SSHD, Seagate has again switched up the game, offering a substantial performance boost to those of you in this situation.

Now, if you are one that chooses to use a single drive for your operating system, and have held onto your standard desktop HDD for the benefit of capacity, the Desktop SSHD is calling your name. The 8GB of NAND cache in conjunction with Seagate's application optimized algorithms should offer a tremendous performance boost, and again the more you use, it the faster the drive will get, as it learns how you use your system.

In every case seen here today, the Seagate Desktop SSHD excels, whether it be a synthetic point and click benchmark like HD Tune or ATTO, or even application traces via PCMark 8, the drive just performs.

Here's results of in house testing:

Boot time SSD = 15.6 seconds
Boot time 7200 rpm SSHD = 16.5 seconds
Boot time 7200 rpm = 21.6 seconds

We also did blind testing with user with two desktop and two laptop setups:

1. SSD + HD
2. SSHD

No one who used with the laptop or desktop systems ever noticed that we switched them half way thru. Now if you are into benchmarks, the SSD will kill. But in everyday use, the differences are not subjectively observable.

Also, as per the article above, the SSD makes you system boot faster, but every game, program or file on the HD gets squat benefit from the SSD. The SSHD moves the most frequently used files to the faster SSD portion and them moves them off when they are no longer in high demand. We have not installed a HD in a system in 4+ years.

Budget systems get an SSHD
Moderate systems get SSD + SSHD
Higher end systems get multiple SSDs + SSHDs

 

[Akhilrajau]

ok thanks. I planned to buy 2 TB HD and 250 GB SSD afterwards. So better to avoid and go with SSHD is best correct? So how much SSD portion in Seagate 2 TB SSHD

 

[SkyNetRising]

NAND memory on SSHD has limited writes like on SSDs, right?
NAND amount on SSHD is very small - only 8GB and is constantly being written.
What will happen, when all the writes on that NAND have been used up?

I wish someone would have done endurance tests on SSHDs like they have done for SSDs.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

We have been using 2 TB SSHDs for 4+ years in server, production (CAD Workstation)and gaming environments. All remain in active usage.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling-endurance-test-blows-away-ssd-durability-fears.html

Worrying about the endurance of modern SSDs makes no more sense than worrying about the endurance of the spinning drive you use now...

The big takeaway is that you shouldn’t fear the SSD. There are plenty of justifiable reasons to stick with HDDs over SSDs, including price and capacity. But holding back because you’re afraid an SSD is not as reliable as an HDD shouldn’t be a concern.

http://superuser.com/questions/581169/ssd-cache-in-sshd-compromises-the-lifecycle-compared-to-standard-hdd

Given the write speed of a typical HDD, the write endurance of a typical SSD, and the logic of a typical SSHD, this is an almost impossible failure mode to trigger. Long before you hit the write endurance of the SSD, the HDD would likely have mechanically failed. Honestly, this is basically the last thing you should worry about.

Update: Unlike with a standard SSD, an SSHD never has to write anything to flash. It only writes things to flash if its firmware decides to. If the write volume is high, there's no point in using the flash to buffer them (because it will just fill up eventually and stop providing any benefit). If the write volume is low, then it won't age the flash significantly. Similarly for reads from the HDD, it only makes sense to cache things that are frequently read and rarely changed. There can't be much of that, it's mathematically impossible. Because all modern OSes access their drives through a cache, there's no point in caching data that has just been read or written because the OS will never read it back again soon -- it's already in the OS cache.