Hybrid Hard Drive installation

[robjduk]

Hello all,

Just ordered one of these for someone as part of a new PC...

Seagate 2TB Desktop 3.5inch 8GB SSD SSHD - Ebuyer

 

Just wonder if there is anything I have to do to get it working as a hybrid correctly? Does Windows just figure it out? Seagate seem to claim its software free and am assuming the processing is done onboard the hard drive but pointers would be welcome.

 

Thanks all

[mac_shinobi]

From reading around the hdd deals with all of it. The most used data is stored in the 8gb ssd flash which allows the hdd to catch up and read or write what it needs to

 

Job done. How much difference it makes, well. Let us know !!

[Norphy]

It's handled entirely by the drive. No setup aside from plugging the thing in is required. I have one of the 2.5" models in my old MacBook at home.

[mac_shinobi]

It's handled entirely by the drive. No setup aside from plugging the thing in is required. I have one of the 2.5" models in my old MacBook at home.

 

Presumably with the drive having 8gb ssd flash , may help setting the SATA Mode to AHCI in the BIOS / UEFI and getting the relevant AHCI Drivers installed on the OS ?

Edited August 1, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[Norphy]

That would enable some SATA features such as hotswapping and NCQ but would make no difference in terms of the drive's caching to flash ability.

 

The drive isn't presented as two discrete drives, the firmware on the drive detects which file blocks are most frequently accessed and copies those blocks to the SSD. Whenever data on one of those blocks is requested, the firmware sends it from the SSD cache rather than from the spinning rust and therefore frequently used files are retrieved faster than they would be otherwise.

 

It does make a difference. It takes a while for the drive to learn what needs to be copied but when it does, it's very noticeable.

[mac_shinobi]

That would enable some SATA features such as hotswapping and NCQ but would make no difference in terms of the drive's caching to flash ability.

 

The drive isn't presented as two discrete drives, the firmware on the drive detects which file blocks are most frequently accessed and copies those blocks to the SSD. Whenever data on one of those blocks is requested, the firmware sends it from the SSD cache rather than from the spinning rust and therefore frequently used files are retrieved faster than they would be otherwise.

 

It does make a difference. It takes a while for the drive to learn what needs to be copied but when it does, it's very noticeable.

 

I thought with it being flash based memory the NCQ command set ( within AHCI ) would help some what , I know with SSD's when you have it set to compatibility mode it hinders the SSD to read / write to its full potential vs if you set the S-ATA Mode to AHCI the SSD then starts working correctly and you get the full read / write speeds

 

I have never had or owned or used a hybrid drive so am only going on experience with SSD's

[Norphy]

You're probably right in terms of performance. In terms of actual functionality though, it makes no difference.

[localzuk]

I've been running one of their 750GB SSHD's for a couple of years now. There's no user config at all - it just learns what it needs to cache by itself. I have my Steam library on it, so steam itself opens almost instantly for me and whichever game I'm using the most lately ends up being cached quite nicely and performance flies.

 

Regarding AHCI - if your machine is anything less than 5 years old, I'd be *really* surprised if it wasn't in AHCI mode already. SATA isn't exactly a new technology!

[SYNACK]

The usefulness of NCQ and the like is probably down to how smart the firmware is in the drive. It should still queue writes for files in fast RAM that are close to each other and spit them out in a more contiguous block which will make it easier for the SSD chunk to write out. AHCI itself should add a little speed boost as it does not have to emulate the 1980s on each side and can talk directly. Each would be small or unmeasurable gains depending on how much optimisation of the code and hardware they have done to deal with the past but at the very least it should save you a few picowatts of power a year I would still chuck all the settings to the most modern one supported in any system I was messing with though.

[mac_shinobi]

The usefulness of NCQ and the like is probably down to how smart the firmware is in the drive. It should still queue writes for files in fast RAM that are close to each other and spit them out in a more contiguous block which will make it easier for the SSD chunk to write out. AHCI itself should add a little speed boost as it does not have to emulate the 1980s on each side and can talk directly. Each would be small or unmeasurable gains depending on how much optimisation of the code and hardware they have done to deal with the past but at the very least it should save you a few picowatts of power a year I would still chuck all the settings to the most modern one supported in any system I was messing with though.

 

^^^ Exactly this