Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD- is it only good for OS?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Sort by date Sort by votes
We have not bought a HD in over 6 years ....

a) If budget is there, SSD + SSHD
b) If budget tight, SSHD only.

The SSD does squat for anything which is not stored upon it so the SSHD has significant advantages.

1. In the workplace, you tend to work on the same projects / files day to day and as each is completed and no longer accessed, these will be switched off the SSD portion of the drive tot he mechanical portion. Meanwhile, the files that you are now accessing more often get moved to the SSD portion.

2. Same thing when gaming .... as you move thru a game, frequently used files will be put on the SSD ... when you finish say Fallout 3 and move on to Fallout 4, after a few loads, the F3 files will be moved off and F4 files moved onto the SSD. Of course if ypou play 9 different games every night, then you won't be in a position to take advantage of this.

Here you see that the SSD is about 54% faster in Gaming than a typical high performance drive like the WD Black
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/-17-PCMark-7-Gaming,2915.html

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thank you for your reply. I don't do any gaming or office work on that computer. If I was to buy this drive, it would be to replace regular HDD when I build my new system. How big is the SSD part of it?

The drive would be used to store Sonar (audio editing software) project files that contain audio files. The audio files will be stored in the folder and loaded when the project is loaded. Currently I have HDD for this purpose. I clearly understand the advantage of SSD itself and use SSD for OS drive and samples storage drives. But this particular drive is the drive I RECORD audio on. I am not sure how audio gets recorded- I dont know if it gets stored in memory while track is in process of recording and then written to the drive or if it writes on the drive as it records. But I was told that SSDs are not as good for repeated writing and with recording I often record the same part over and over. So where would this drive record this audio?

Yes, I have several projects I am working on and access frequently and other projects that are done and not in use. But let's say- one project is 1GB. Will it be able to get in to SSD part of the drive? I can understand that if we were talking about C drive, it would do the catching and remember which Office documents I use most frequently. But will it be able to do it if it is E drive? Will my computer see it as E drive or as two drives? This is why I ask- is it only works when it is C drive and is there a benefit if it is E drive? Thank you.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I can't speak to your audio software but for video editing, Adobe Premier likes to use a "scratch disk" for temporary files; this comes from users we have built for asking em to put in one, not from persona;l experience using the software. The SSD works like this.

The drive decides what gets stored where ...so let's say you have a 2 GB files and you start working on it today.... it will note that you loaded "Jack's Karaoke 2007-01-10" today at 10 am... when you load it again at 2 pm and again the next morning, it's logic goes that way of "I'm noticing that Astra likes to load this file frequently, why don't I move it to the SSD portion of my space and help him out w/ loading times a bit".

Going back to the video processing analogy, you can look here and again see a much lesser advantage (lil over 5%) over say a WD Black.. other uses:


4% in Windows Media Center Performance
3% in Adding music to Windows Media Player
411 % in application loading

So obviously, loading the program will happen much faster .... as for how the software "does it's thing", I just don't know ... if it creates loads of temporary randomly named files, then there will be an advantage but likely in the single digits.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Well- the software itself runs from C drive which is SSD. But the projects are on E drive and it takes few seconds to open the project so I guess it would help if it faster. But I am not sure I like it to move my projects- what if it masses it up and it is some one's paid session and it is unique song they will never write again? I would be more comfortable if it was storing some mirror shadow version of original files. So- when I am looking on E drive, I will see one drive, right? And I will not see which file it moved to SSD?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
An SSHD is a single drive ... it's not two drives. For all practical purposes, from a user perspective, you can not even tell a SSHD from a HD.

There's also no risk here.... here's what I would do.

1. Install SSHD as drive F.
2. Download F-Backup and have it "back up your entire E drive" to F.
3. Keep the E drive

One approach might be to make two folders on E:\

E:\ Original Paid Session Files
E:\ Final Edited Files

F:\Progress Files

1. You receive a file and store it in E:\ Original Paid Session Files\Lenard Cohen\2017-01-10 Session
2. You open the file and store it in F:\Progress Files\Lenard Cohen\2017-01-10 Session
3. You work on the file for few hours, days, weeks and save in same spot on F
4. Do your final save
5. Save it back to E:\ Final Edited Files\Lenard Cohen\2017-01-10 Session

You now have a copy of the original file on E and two copies of your edited file , one on each drive....or

1. You receive a file and store it in F:\Lenard Cohen\2017-01-10 Session\Track 01 - Original.***
2. You open the file and save it as F:\Lenard Cohen\2017-01-10 Session\Track 01 - Progress.***
3. You work on the file for few hours, days, weeks and save in same spot on F while work is onging
4. You finish the file and save it as F:\Lenard Cohen\2017-01-10 Session\Track 01 - Final.***
5. Each night while you are sleeping, F-Backup mirrors the entire drive back to E:\ so you have 2 copies of everything.... backups are incremental so it will only have to back up each days work.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Wow- you got me confused. But I admire your imagination and vision. Please, go on

So- does it have to be F? I have DVD on F. I asume- any letter would do? Lets say K.

You wrote, "Download F-Backup and have it "back up your entire E drive" to F.".

Can I use Acronis True Image or Windows backup utility?

Actually I can always save twice- once on that SSHD, and then at the end of night- back to E drive... But that will cause more chances for opening wrong file or saving in the wrong place. I know me. I would write file name, "Sunrise Final Mix", and then open "Sunrise with Vocal" and work on it for a week only to realize- half of work I did last month was in "Final Mix" and it would not merge.

But you think- the SSHD would be able to fit entire 1GB project on SSD portion? There got to be specs to see exactly how big the SSD is.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F-backup up is free and does exactly what I want... gives more control than Windows backup and I don't have to pay for a backup program anymore that does way way more than I could possibly benefit from.

http://www.fbackup.com/

Scheduling backups is an easy thing ... set it once and forget . I have it run the same exact jobs every day and the same time to the exact same place so no opportunities for a wrong save. You don't have to do anything at all.... it just makes an exact copy of one drive or folder, set of folders to another ... you can even exclude file extensions. For example AutoCAD makes *.bak files every time you use a file... no reason to "back up" these to another drive.

I also make a save to an external drive and remove it off site rotating out two drives so if there's a fire, nothing is lost

To stop the opening wrong file thing, rank your files in the explorer window by date modified. The most recently used file in the folder will be at the top of the list.

Here's a speed comparison
https://www.youtube.com/v/YodPHMBlr8M

The SSD portion holds 8 GB on consumer drives, 32 Gb IIRC on enterprise drives (15000 rpm)

http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/firecuda-family/firecuda/files/firecuda-ds-1903-1-1606us.pdf

Yes the SSD is 8 GB
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom