tale of an SSHD

[ray hughes 165]

About 5 months ago my trusty Seagate HDD Failed on me (1TB) 7200 RPM internal.

I was not ready to make the financial leap to SSD so instead paid extra dollars over the base HDD and purchased a Seagate SSHD which offered an increased performance compromise.

The drive was configured as my Boot Startup Drive with Win 7 64bit

It performed flawlessly for these past 5 months when 2 days ago I noted FSX seemed to be running poorly (O/C watercooled I7 4770K with an Nvidia GTX 980 4GB card)

I have 3 x HDD in my drive bay next to a 120mm Fan, so air flows regularly over the drives - the fan is working - i checked

The SSHD was not an initial culprit, but I couldn't put my finger on why the sudden slow down in FSX as everything seemed normal. I thought at first the Graphics drivers were playing up so reinstalled them and in fact downgraded them - no change

Just couldn't figure things out so shut down the PC and went off to bed

Next day I get up boot up my system and notice that it takes forever to boot up  --  in fact so bad I thought I had better shut it down - maybe there is something wrong the BIOS?? Memory ?? Power??. It was taking forever to shut down - I mean I left it for over 20 mins - finally forced shut it down

Went to reboot - No System ??

Went into BIOS dropped everything to default and tried again - no System.

Luckily I have another HD with a backup system on  it. I unplugged the other two drives and just plugged in the back 1TB HD and the SSHD I left plugged in. As it booted into the backup system I was greeted with a "Smart HD" warning.. the SSHD drive was in prefail - I have had it less than 6 months. Boy am I ticked

What caused this ?? Not sufficient cooling? I doubt it .. it just seemed weird.

I took it back to my supplier - they said they would replace it with a credit which i took and upgrade to a western Digital Black .

Comments from the tech department and the sales department matched as I took the WD Black to the check out counter.. That's a good drive.. u  will be happy with that - so sorry about the SSHD - but they are known to be slightly less stable than a regular HD ???!!Q!

 

Just wondering what opinion readers of this piece have regarding SSHD's.

 

 

 

[Charlatan 68]

To be honest, I'm not a fan of Seagate drives, had quite a few fail on me over the years.

[Luke 782]

SSHDs struck me as an interim step that will be obsolete in a year or two. I went all SSD, and a NAS with spinning rust for bulk storage.

 

Cheers!
 

Luke

[martin-w 3,234]

Just wondering what opinion readers of this piece have regarding SSHD's.

 

 

 

I agree with Luke, most hybrid technologies are an interim measure. That includes cars and the hybrid aircraft currently under development..

 

I don't think you can definitively blame SSHD technology though, you could well have just been unlucky and suffered a random failure.

[TurboKen 221]

No experience with the hybrid drives, but I can say I've been using WD black and rapter drives for a long time and yet to have one fail... (crossing fingers).

[ray hughes 165]

Ended replacing it and another Seagate 2 TB with x2 times WD Black 2 TB.

A little noisy, but fast !!

 

when SSD's come down in price to near mechanical drive levels I will consider them...

[goates 576]

I've had a Seagate SSHD running smoothly in a laptop for a few years now. Although this model was somewhat pricier as it used SLC based flash storage vs the more common and cheaper MLC now used in most SSHDs (and SSDs too).

 

http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_momentus_xt_750gb_review

 

As said above, they are definitely a stop gap measure until pure SSDs come down in price.

[martin-w 3,234]

Mechanical hard drives are dirt cheap at the moment though, primarily because SSD technology is taking over. So don't expect SSD's to come down in price to mechanical HD levels. You could say mechanical HD prices are artificially low thanks to the pressure from SSD sales. It's old technology, so bound to be cheap.

[OmniAtlas 93]

I use Intel Storage Raid Technology -- Windows is installed on a regular hard drive, and I have a 60 GB 'cache' SSD. The system is setup in some sort of raid mode. 

 

Is SSHD similar to this? 

 

I guess with the intel solution there is more flexibility -- I can use any HD, and any SSD. 

[ray hughes 165]

 

 

You could say mechanical HD prices are artificially low thanks to the pressure from SSD sales

 

Yes and No.Pricing will remain high until more manufacturers come online with SSD's then competition should drive down pricing as they will be no longer a rare commodity - unless of course the larger corporations buy up all the small SSD manufactures to maintain their pricing levels. (Western Digital recently bought up SanDisk in order to shortcut into SSD manufacturing)

[martin-w 3,234]

Well yes ray, SSD prices are fairly high, and yes, prices will drop as you suggest. But I was referring to your post...

 

when SSD's come down in price to near mechanical drive levels I will consider them...

 

 

Mechanical hard drives are dirt cheap.

You can bet that if SSD's didn't exist, mechanical HD's would be far more expensive.

My point, is that we shouldn't expect SSD's to drop to the price of mechanical drives for quite a while, as mechanical drives are ridiculously cheap as a result of being old technology, in an environment where there's a more up to date technology available.

 

Unless of course you're prepared to wait for U.2 to be as common as today's SSD's, then maybe SSD's will be cheap. But then you'll always be settling for outdated tech.

[stans 702]

I never cared for Seagate drives and this goes back to the days of the Commodore Amiga.  SSHD's... don't really see much point in them.  SSD's are the future, mechanically simple and seem to be reliable, at least with the quality makers.