hybrid ssd or ssd ?

I'm still running all sata drives and have been waiting for affordable sdd drives but still feel they are a little over priced.
One major thing that put me off is that unlike disk drives, when ssd drives fail there is no warning whatsoever and retrieving data is expensive.
 
So, what's the view on the hybrid drives ? Do you get any warning that they might be failing.
Are they silent or at least a lot quieter than my sata drives. I'm sure ssd drives will give better performance
but the hybrid drives claim to be 4 times faster which is still very good.
 
Cheers
 
Steve

jcschild
just go ssd they are more than cheap enough now. hybrids were never any better than standard.
unless you are doing lots of samples an ssd is pointless anyway
if you back up like you should a dead drive is no biggy

Thanks for the advice Skott
 
I don't know how much they sell for in the US but here in the UK if I were to replace my 500GB sata 6 OS drive
for an equivalent SSD drive comparatively speaking the cheapest SSD drives I have found are about an extra £100.
In my experience the cheapest are often a waste of money.
 
I have a 1 tb drive for drums and a 500GB drive for other samples so that would cost a minimum of between £300 - £400 to replace them.
 
Sadly I'm not made of money and am currently unemployed so times is tough which is why I was contemplating the hybrid drives as an option. I'm just wondering how much of an improvement they would be over what I currently have.
 
 
Steve

The drum library drive is 1tb but only 400GB have been used.
My other sample drive is a 500GB drive which is just over half full.
 
I've always been led to believe that once a disk drive gets to around 75% full the performance decreases quite badly so you should never let them get over 75% full.
So can the same be said of ssd drives ?
 
 
Steve

I can't find any 1TB internal 3.5 SSD drives on line.
 
They all seem to be 2.5. I'm not sure if I can connect 2.5 drives in my machine ?
I was thinking of a 2 TB drive but it seems that 1TB is the largest and they seem to be  £300 and upwards.
 
 
Steve

tecknot
When does HDD warn you it's about to fail?
 
...just asking...

 
Usually it starts performing badly and the most obvious sign is a clicking noise from the drive.
Sometimes you'll get read or write errors when trying to copy data to the drive and windows might report bad sectors and ask you to scan the drive before booting or on next boot but I think its less frequent for windows to do that although it has happened to me in the past.
 
 
I've had two drives that went that way, one of them was a usb drive in a caddy and quite often it wouldn't show up when windows booted or would just disappear. This went on for quite a few months before I asked someone about it they said to back everything up while I could and replace it.
 
SSD drives don't have any moving parts so there isn't the slow disintegration but that's not to say that sata and ide drives  don't occasionally just go poof without warning.
 
Steve

dcumpian
Not sure that you are going to find any 3.5" SSD drives anywhere. If you only have a 3.5" bay open, use a 2.5 -> 3.5 carrier/converter. They are usually around $10-15.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

 
Thanks for that Dan
Wasn't sure if I could use the 2.5 ones but if there's a converter that's good to know.
 
Steve

tecknot
When does HDD warn you it's about  http:// to fail?
 
...just asking...

If your drive and Mobo report SMART status, you will likely get a warning at boot. I just built a system and one of the mechanical drives was bad. A SMART warning came up on boot. Drive has been RMA'd :-(
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/about/whitepaper07.html

Mirrored hard drives and external backups every time. Total peace of mind.

dcumpian

orangesporanges
a little off topic, but what do you even do with 400GB worth of drum samples? That's like having 100 acoustic guitars to choose from. Which one do you choose?
 

The one that fits the current song you are working on. Seriously, the newer drum libraries are huge. It doesn't take many kits before you get to 400GB...
 
Regards,
Dan
 
 

Indeed...EastWest ProDrummer's 2 sets cover 100 Gb total...40 for Chiccareli and 60 for Stent...

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ultrabook-performance-degrades-time-samsung-tlc-ssd/
Not sure what others have seen but apparently some SSD performance disappears with time, for some brands.  Samsung is named in this article but could be others as well.  I have considered moving to SSD but laziness and tech concerns hold me back.

cwestmont
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ultrabook-performance-degrades-time-samsung-tlc-ssd/
Not sure what others have seen but apparently some SSD performance disappears with time, for some brands.  Samsung is named in this article but could be others as well.  I have considered moving to SSD but laziness and tech concerns hold me back.

That is an interesting article. SSDs do require specific setup and maintenance precautions, since what degrades them the most is intense write operations. Being aware of this and researching how to properly set one up is important for longevity.
 
I got a Patriot Wildfire 240GB four years ago and just reformatted/rebuilt this machine and benchmarked it after it was fully loaded. It has slipped about 10% in 4 years, but is now on par with its benchmark (was faster then).
 
One thing of note is that excessive heat (same as the excessive writes) will degrade electronics more quickly, so a "laptop" application will see even more heat (mine is in a desktop). This would also be something to consider with using one, but the read/write speeds of pretty much any SSD will put a HDD to shame - no moving parts.
 
I did find it interesting that none of the Samsung 850's were mentioned in that article. Another interesting item is that the smaller (128/256) 850 EVO outruns the 850 PRO (I thought the PRO was the top of the line model, but not looked at Samsung in a while).
 
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html

I have a 1TB HHD with an SSD cache which I use for my third party Kontakt libraries. It does provide a noticable improvment in loading recently used libraries (ie still on the cache). Of course for ones that have not been used for a while there is no uplift.
 
My system drive is a SSD, booting up is fast but has it been cost effective, probably not.

One thing to be aware of (since I didn't even realize they existed), is there are now SSDs that plug into PCIe 3 slots (which I do not have). Samsung designates these as "M.2" in the title, and their speeds are through the roof (around 3x their SATA counterparts), but they are not "chop and swap" for a SATA drive.