Hi all. I sorely need to increase the storage in my PC.... I was going to go for one of the new Western Digital Blue 3dNAND 500gb drive Then I saw the Firecuda SSHD's from Seagate. The one that piqued my interest was the 2tb 2.5inch one. I wanted to stick with 2.5 as these fit neatly on the caddy at the back of the motherboard in my Meshify C. Firstly I was hoping to see if anyone had experience with SSHD's, what their opinion of them was and then how noisey they found them. Now you might think it weird that I'm worried about the noise with an open chassis like the Meshify C but currently I'm only running with SSD's and bequiet Fans and at idle the system is whisper quiet. Something I want to retain. I shelved my old mechanicals as they were by far the loudest part of my PC and I found the sound of them annoying... I do however need a lot of space as currently with a 500 gig drive for games I can only fit a couple on there it seems! Thanks in advance!
The 2TB data drive in my desktop's an SSHD - not deliberately, it was in something else as the main drive then when that was scrapped made it over here. It's no louder than any other 5,400 RPM 2.5" hard drive, with the added bonus of being silent if you configure it to spin down and it has the data you're looking for in the SSD cache. Don't expect massive performance out of it, though. It'll make your most commonly loaded stuff nice and nippy, but the SSD section's only small so it won't perform miracles.
I used to used sshd they work fine if you are reapeatedly accessing the same data but if yiu are doing a lot of random stuff or big file transfers the base drive tends to be a lot slower than a 3.5. Provide a nice boost in loading times for PS3/PS4
If you want fast boot up, and fast read/write speeds, then get an SSD. I have a 500GB SSHD in my system, and it's the slowest drive. My Toshiba 2TB P300 it twice as fast.
Boot times aren't really an issue I have an M.2 for my OS drive (albeit a SATA one, I didn't read the description of what I was buying and then was too excited by my new build to want to wait for an exchange to a PCIe one) I also have a secondary drive that is a SATA 500GB SK Hynix SSD. What I want it for is games. Not sure if the 8gb of NAND they have on them would really pay dividends in that scenario. Perhaps I would be better to go for the WD drive to keep the quietness of my system.
An SSHD will help with game loading times, assuming you are the type to play the same game for a few times a week the 8Gb caching will work quite well. Just have to bare in mind the drives can be slower than some large 3.5 spinners if you are not doing repeated work. Example here with consoles, no reason a PC doesn't benefit in the same way for games, my experience was similarly good on both Playstation and PC. Got me some nice fast storage where at the time SSDs could not touch for the dough. https://hddmag.com/seagate-firecuda-sshd-review/ Clearly it is not night and day but then an SSD or M2 PCi-e isn't all that for games either. If there is little price penalty, go for it.
I'm gonna go for the Firecuda 2tb 2.5 drive come pay day I think. Even if it just ends up being a stop gap till I replace it with SSD's at 80 quid from Ebuyer and with AssCreed Oranges thrown in kinda makes sense to me. I do see myself not wanting to keep it around for too long because of noise, I;ve become very sensitive to noise in my old age you see.... However the price of SSD's means unless I'm willing to sell a kidney its gonna be awhile till 1tb SSD's are gonna hit a price I'm willing to pay.
I notice you have quite a highend motherboard, does it not come with software to do this with a cheap SSD( 20-30Gb piece of junk ) on any HDD you fit? I know a few of my boards do. In fact it might just be from Intels Rapid storage Tech. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/smart-response-technology.html
Ah yes, you make a very good point. It Does have Intel Rapid Storage supported. I assume then that you think I should use my current 500gb SSD in conjunction with a high capacity spinner to achieve the same result (but with a bigger SSD component) as I would getting with the Hybrid drive
Another alternative: Use ROG Ramcache: https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/MAXIMUS-VIII-RANGER/HelpDesk_Download/
Exactly, it would require a reformat of your SSD though as the Intel software will partition it into SSD Cache and leave the rest to be used as normal SSD drive. I'm not 100% sure what it needs I'm an AMD boy these days but do remember using it in the past and it was useful. Hybrid drive is less faff though. It is an option at least.
I'm a Intel man at the moment however I was planning on jumping ship, for the CPU at least, when Ryzen+ launches. So probably still best going forwards to stick with the hybrid drive. Like you say less faff, good price and when I feel the urge (and have the funds) to add more SSD's to my system I can either put it in a caddy or into a laptop...
