SSHD vs DIY Hybrid Drive Performance

[Rayolan]

Hello everyone.

Please do not use this thread to tell me how terrible SSHD is and how I should just get an SSD.

I have a 1Tb WD Black and a 120gb Kingston SSD from 2011. I recently purchased a 120Gb Adata XPG 930 ($50) to replace the old (10k iop) Kingston as my boot drive. My intent is to use the Kingston as cache for my WD Black. I intend to further upgrade my storage with an additional HDD. My question is this:

What performance difference, if any, exists between a pre-made SSHD, such as Seagte FireCuda w/ 8Gb NAND cache, and a DIY Hybrid, such as my WD Black with 64Gb SSD cache from the 120GB Kingston?

 

[Karsten75]

How exactly are you intending to create this hybrid drive? You can't use RAID, sicne it will operate at the lowest capacity and slowest speed of all drives in the RAID set.

You can use the Intel Rapid Storage technology, but that has a limitation on the size of the SSD cache and allows only one hard drive in the set.

RST isn't bad, about the same performance as the Seagate SSHD solutions, which are resonable.

 

[Rayolan]

How exactly are you intending to create this hybrid drive? You can't use RAID, sicne it will operate at the lowest capacity and slowest speed of all drives in the RAID set.

You can use the Intel Rapid Storage technology, but that has a limitation on the size of the SSD cache and allows only one hard drive in the set.

RST isn't bad, about the same performance as the Seagate SSHD solutions, which are resonable.

RST, max cache size is 64Gb, which can be a partition. Also, I believe the mobo needs to be set to RAID in order to use RST. You made me wonder if you could partition a 128GB SSD to cache 2 HDDs...

"About the same" and "similar" performance isn't really what I'm looking for. Would the 8Gb Nand cache out perform the 64Gb SSD cache?

Does the speed of the SSD matter in an SSHD application?

 

[anonymousdude]

There's no harm in just trying it seeing as you already have everything. I would think it would be similar in performance with the added benefit of just having the larger cache. I know similar isn't what you want to hear, but really that's the best we can do without actually testing it.

 

[rgd1101]

Depend on what is on the WD Black drive. data or apps. data doesn't help much. apps, sure.
Then again might be better off just install the apps or your freq used data on the Kingston

 

[USAFRet]

Why not just use the Kingston as its own 120GB space? Applications, docs, a few games.

That will be fast across the whole size, rather than just the 64GB cache portion.
And either way would be faster than an SSHD. That is only 'fast' across 8GB. And you don't get to choose what ends up on that 8GB in the SSHD.