Seagate SSHD vs Performance 7200RPM HDD

[anonalchemist]

Hi all,

I've read through a bunch of previous threads discussing HDDs vs SSHDs but I'm in a situation where none of those solutions apply (i.e. SSD for OS + HDD for other or solely SSD).

I've been asking around between a performance 7200RPM vs a SSHD for a new computer I am getting (Alienware Alpha Base) which only has room for 1 2.5" HDD. I'm also not keen on the idea of having an SSD as the internal, and then hooking up a regular HDD via external enclosure.

I'm looking for a high capacity drive (750GB+) so a sole SSD is out of the question for my budget (~$100 CAD).

Generally speaking from discussions, it would seem that people would prefer a straight 7200RPM drive over a SSHD that's currently available from Seagate since outside of the 8GB cache-SSD lies a 5400RPM drive. On the contrary, most review sites favour the hybrid over a regular HDD.

So is there are particular 7200RPM that would be the best buy up here in Canada? ~$100 or less? I've heard that 7200RPMs in this form factor are harder and harder to come by nowadays.

(I've also considered the WD Black2, but the pricing up in Canada makes it outside my budget).

Thanks!

 

[goodyfresh]

Hi all,

I've read through a bunch of previous threads discussing HDDs vs SSHDs but I'm in a situation where none of those solutions apply (i.e. SSD for OS + HDD for other or solely SSD).

I've been asking around between a performance 7200RPM vs a SSHD for a new computer I am getting (Alienware Alpha Base) which only has room for 1 2.5" HDD. I'm also not keen on the idea of having an SSD as the internal, and then hooking up a regular HDD via external enclosure.

I'm looking for a high capacity drive (750GB+) so a sole SSD is out of the question for my budget (~$100 CAD).

Generally speaking from discussions, it would seem that people would prefer a straight 7200RPM drive over a SSHD that's currently available from Seagate since outside of the 8GB cache-SSD lies a 5400RPM drive. On the contrary, most review sites favour the hybrid over a regular HDD.

So is there are particular 7200RPM that would be the best buy up here in Canada? ~$100 or less? I've heard that 7200RPMs in this form factor are harder and harder to come by nowadays.

(I've also considered the WD Black2, but the pricing up in Canada makes it outside my budget).

Thanks!

I myself have a HP Envy 15t laptop with a Seagate SSHD with 8gb NAND cache installed, just as you are considering getting. In terms of boot-time, as well as starting my most commonly-used applications, it tends to perform much faster than any traditional HDD I have ever seen, despite the magnetic portion spinning at only 5400 rather than 7200 RPM. I assume this is because of Seagate's "Adaptive Memory Technology" built-in to the hard-drive caching all my most commonly used files on the SSD portion. When I had just started using the laptop, my boot-times were generally around 20 seconds. . .as I've kept using it, it seems that the Adaptive Memory Technology has "learned" my usage-patterns, and I now get boot-times as fast as eleven seconds, very quick application startup times for Firefox and Symantec Endpoint Protection, and near-instantaneous loading of my desktop and taskbar upon logon. So I definitely have good things to say about these Seagate's SSHD's with their Adaptive Memory Tech.

That being said, the actual main storage portion of this 1TB drive is magnetic, and spins at only 5400RPM. For very large file reads and writes, the drive works no faster than any traditional 5400 RPM HDD, as opposed to a 7200RPM where there would be very noticable performance-gains for such operations. And when I have had an application minimized for a long time and then reopen it, it has a noticable delay, since the paging-file is being kept on the magnetic portion of the drive. Of course, ANY magnetic spinning drive, whether at 5400 or at 7200, will run into such issues as compared to a pure SSD. Personally, based on my experience, whether you get the SSHD or the 7200RPM HDD thus depends on the following question: What will you mainly be doing? Will you be using the same applications a lot, such as a web browser, certain games, etc., or will you be doing a whole lot of very large file read/write operations of some kind? Or some mixture of the two?

Personally, I do love my Seagate SSHD, it's pretty awesome

P.S. It's too bad you can't quite budget for the WD Black Dual-Drive, as THAT right there would REALLY be the way to go, for anyone who can afford it but doesn't quite want a large-storage SSD.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I have several of the old Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm drives and they rock. No experience with the newer 5400 rpm jobs.... still don't understand why Seagate made this move

I saw that Newegg has the 500Gb model still and Amazon still has the 750 Gb

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00691WMJG/?tag=pcpapi-20

 

[anonalchemist]

I myself have a HP Envy 15t laptop with a Seagate SSHD with 8gb NAND cache installed, just as you are considering getting. In terms of boot-time, as well as starting my most commonly-used applications, it tends to perform much faster than any traditional HDD I have ever seen, despite the magnetic portion spinning at only 5400 rather than 7200 RPM. I assume this is because of Seagate's "Adaptive Memory Technology" built-in to the hard-drive caching all my most commonly used files on the SSD portion. When I had just started using the laptop, my boot-times were generally around 20 seconds. . .as I've kept using it, it seems that the Adaptive Memory Technology has "learned" my usage-patterns, and I now get boot-times as fast as eleven seconds, very quick application startup times for Firefox and Symantec Endpoint Protection, and near-instantaneous loading of my desktop and taskbar upon logon. So I definitely have good things to say about these Seagate's SSHD's with their Adaptive Memory Tech.

That being said, the actual main storage portion of this 1TB drive is magnetic, and spins at only 5400RPM. For very large file reads and writes, the drive works no faster than any traditional 5400 RPM HDD, as opposed to a 7200RPM where there would be very noticable performance-gains for such operations. And when I have had an application minimized for a long time and then reopen it, it has a noticable delay, since the paging-file is being kept on the magnetic portion of the drive. Of course, ANY magnetic spinning drive, whether at 5400 or at 7200, will run into such issues as compared to a pure SSD. Personally, based on my experience, whether you get the SSHD or the 7200RPM HDD thus depends on the following question: What will you mainly be doing? Will you be using the same applications a lot, such as a web browser, certain games, etc., or will you be doing a whole lot of very large file read/write operations of some kind? Or some mixture of the two?

Personally, I do love my Seagate SSHD, it's pretty awesome

P.S. It's too bad you can't quite budget for the WD Black Dual-Drive, as THAT right there would REALLY be the way to go, for anyone who can afford it but doesn't quite want a large-storage SSD.

Yeah, if that WD Black2 goes on sale in the coming week, I'm definitely grabbing one since it gives me the best of both worlds.

I'm mostly gaming + browsing + random apps. The biggest files I would be moving around are probably just videos/movies (nothing to render or edit though).

 

[anonalchemist]

I have several of the old Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm drives and they rock. No experience with the newer 5400 rpm jobs.... still don't understand why Seagate made this move

I saw that Newegg has the 500Gb model still and Amazon still has the 750 Gb

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00691WMJG/?tag=pcpapi-20

Great, thanks for your input!

I don't understand why they discontinued producing 7200RPMs; that could've been the best of both worlds for me.

I found the same drive on Amazon.ca, but sadly, they are not priced simlarly

 

[goodyfresh]

I myself have a HP Envy 15t laptop with a Seagate SSHD with 8gb NAND cache installed, just as you are considering getting. In terms of boot-time, as well as starting my most commonly-used applications, it tends to perform much faster than any traditional HDD I have ever seen, despite the magnetic portion spinning at only 5400 rather than 7200 RPM. I assume this is because of Seagate's "Adaptive Memory Technology" built-in to the hard-drive caching all my most commonly used files on the SSD portion. When I had just started using the laptop, my boot-times were generally around 20 seconds. . .as I've kept using it, it seems that the Adaptive Memory Technology has "learned" my usage-patterns, and I now get boot-times as fast as eleven seconds, very quick application startup times for Firefox and Symantec Endpoint Protection, and near-instantaneous loading of my desktop and taskbar upon logon. So I definitely have good things to say about these Seagate's SSHD's with their Adaptive Memory Tech.

That being said, the actual main storage portion of this 1TB drive is magnetic, and spins at only 5400RPM. For very large file reads and writes, the drive works no faster than any traditional 5400 RPM HDD, as opposed to a 7200RPM where there would be very noticable performance-gains for such operations. And when I have had an application minimized for a long time and then reopen it, it has a noticable delay, since the paging-file is being kept on the magnetic portion of the drive. Of course, ANY magnetic spinning drive, whether at 5400 or at 7200, will run into such issues as compared to a pure SSD. Personally, based on my experience, whether you get the SSHD or the 7200RPM HDD thus depends on the following question: What will you mainly be doing? Will you be using the same applications a lot, such as a web browser, certain games, etc., or will you be doing a whole lot of very large file read/write operations of some kind? Or some mixture of the two?

Personally, I do love my Seagate SSHD, it's pretty awesome

P.S. It's too bad you can't quite budget for the WD Black Dual-Drive, as THAT right there would REALLY be the way to go, for anyone who can afford it but doesn't quite want a large-storage SSD.

Yeah, if that WD Black2 goes on sale in the coming week, I'm definitely grabbing one since it gives me the best of both worlds.

I'm mostly gaming + browsing + random apps. The biggest files I would be moving around are probably just videos/movies (nothing to render or edit though).

Too bad we can't all just afford a large storage size PCIe SSD and be done with all these messy little hangups over what to use as our boot-drive 😉

 

[anonalchemist]

I myself have a HP Envy 15t laptop with a Seagate SSHD with 8gb NAND cache installed, just as you are considering getting. In terms of boot-time, as well as starting my most commonly-used applications, it tends to perform much faster than any traditional HDD I have ever seen, despite the magnetic portion spinning at only 5400 rather than 7200 RPM. I assume this is because of Seagate's "Adaptive Memory Technology" built-in to the hard-drive caching all my most commonly used files on the SSD portion. When I had just started using the laptop, my boot-times were generally around 20 seconds. . .as I've kept using it, it seems that the Adaptive Memory Technology has "learned" my usage-patterns, and I now get boot-times as fast as eleven seconds, very quick application startup times for Firefox and Symantec Endpoint Protection, and near-instantaneous loading of my desktop and taskbar upon logon. So I definitely have good things to say about these Seagate's SSHD's with their Adaptive Memory Tech.

That being said, the actual main storage portion of this 1TB drive is magnetic, and spins at only 5400RPM. For very large file reads and writes, the drive works no faster than any traditional 5400 RPM HDD, as opposed to a 7200RPM where there would be very noticable performance-gains for such operations. And when I have had an application minimized for a long time and then reopen it, it has a noticable delay, since the paging-file is being kept on the magnetic portion of the drive. Of course, ANY magnetic spinning drive, whether at 5400 or at 7200, will run into such issues as compared to a pure SSD. Personally, based on my experience, whether you get the SSHD or the 7200RPM HDD thus depends on the following question: What will you mainly be doing? Will you be using the same applications a lot, such as a web browser, certain games, etc., or will you be doing a whole lot of very large file read/write operations of some kind? Or some mixture of the two?

Personally, I do love my Seagate SSHD, it's pretty awesome

P.S. It's too bad you can't quite budget for the WD Black Dual-Drive, as THAT right there would REALLY be the way to go, for anyone who can afford it but doesn't quite want a large-storage SSD.

Yeah, if that WD Black2 goes on sale in the coming week, I'm definitely grabbing one since it gives me the best of both worlds.

I'm mostly gaming + browsing + random apps. The biggest files I would be moving around are probably just videos/movies (nothing to render or edit though).

Too bad we can't all just afford a large storage size PCIe SSD and be done with all these messy little hangups over what to use as our boot-drive 😉

That would be highly ideal!

I'm willing to pull the trigger for the WD Black2 at the right price, even though a 5400RPM drive is in there; I feel like the SSD portion would be enough for me to manage.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I have several of the old Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm drives and they rock. No experience with the newer 5400 rpm jobs.... still don't understand why Seagate made this move

I saw that Newegg has the 500Gb model still and Amazon still has the 750 Gb

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00691WMJG/?tag=pcpapi-20

Great, thanks for your input!

I don't understand why they discontinued producing 7200RPMs; that could've been the best of both worlds for me.

I found the same drive on Amazon.ca, but sadly, they are not priced similarly

I bought my last HD almost 4 years ago.... no going back

SSD + SSHD is mt desktop solution and on lappies.... well i'm kinda stalled....the last two I bought w/o storage and installed the Momentus XT, 750 Gb 7200s on my own.... dunno what we'll do if there's no new models tho maybe by then a 750 GB SSD won't be so bad price wise.

 

[anonalchemist]

I have several of the old Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm drives and they rock. No experience with the newer 5400 rpm jobs.... still don't understand why Seagate made this move

I saw that Newegg has the 500Gb model still and Amazon still has the 750 Gb

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00691WMJG/?tag=pcpapi-20

Great, thanks for your input!

I don't understand why they discontinued producing 7200RPMs; that could've been the best of both worlds for me.

I found the same drive on Amazon.ca, but sadly, they are not priced similarly

I bought my last HD almost 4 years ago.... no going back

SSD + SSHD is mt desktop solution and on lappies.... well i'm kinda stalled....the last two I bought w/o storage and installed the Momentus XT, 750 Gb 7200s on my own.... dunno what we'll do if there's no new models tho maybe by then a 750 GB SSD won't be so bad price wise.

Yeah, if I was going all out on a gaming desktop, that's what I would aim for, a high capacity SSD.

But this is HDD upgrade is for a budget gaming desktop/console I bought on impulse (I grabbed an Alienalpha for <$400CAD) so I want to keep it as a budget desktop (with reasonable speeds....the 500GB 5400RPM drive just doesn't do it for me).

Also had a dream about SSHDs last night, might be a sign. Going to pull the trigger on the Seagate 1T 5400RPM SSHD (unless the WD Black2 drops in price).

Just wish there were models (available on the consumer end) that had >8GB of cache-SSD