I'm searching for a new laptop, doesn't need to be superfast (once booted) but I want a biggish HDD. I'll probably go for something smaller than 15".
This looks a bit of a bargain -
www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/MCF37UK-Lenovo-M30-70_1656773.html
not the latest generation chip but 35% faster than the one I'm using, which is fine; I'll up the memory to 8GB. I see it has a hybrid drive - are these any good? This one has " 500GB Hybrid SSHD with integrated 8GB NAND flash".
As far as I can glean this is not under any sort of user control and decides what gets stored in the flash memory to make things go faster. Is it a meaningful benefit, or does it just make the drive less reliable? They have been around for a while but don't seem to have caught on which suggests that they don't make much difference or come with a drawback?
Comments welcome.
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Looks as if nobody knows whether these hybrid drives are any good. No matter, I decided it I would stick with 15" anyway...more choice and I'd rather have the DVD drive on board.
This will do what I want, almost a straight replacement for the old one that has a dislocated hinge and will be demoted to a desk job.
www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/20DH0027UK-Lenovo-ThinkPad-Edge-E555_1798693.html
for £300 and comes with Windows 7 Pro. Not the fastest CPU, and onboard graphics, but I'm not a gamer.
If anybody is looking for a cheap basic laptop (Pat?) for office stuff with 4GB and 500GB disk, this looks like OK at £225 - not fast bit one of the current-ish low power chips. Easy and cheap to up the memory.
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00SFQGTJ2
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>> Looks as if nobody knows whether these hybrid drives are any good.
Not the faintest clue.
But this helped...
www.storage-products-association.org/library/2013/06/solid-state-hybrid-drive-a-definition.html
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Thanks. They don't seem to have caught on, although not much more expensive than ordinary HDDs.
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There's two ways that hybrid SSD-HDD is implemented.
The Seagate drive in my work laptop has 8GB of NAND flash memory and caches frequently accessed data to speed up access. The drive decides what to cache but 8GB is not much.
The other way is how Apple does it with it's hybrid storage. There are is an SSD (albeit not huge) and a hard drive. The operating system decides what to cache on the SSD.
I've not benchmarked the Apple approach but my work laptop certainly seems quicker than the one it replaced. But that was nearly 5 years old. This also has quad core i7 and 32GB RAM and Nvidia Quadro graphics. It seems fast enough. And it boots a lot quicker. The previous one was slow but that's down to the full disk encryption which slowed it down when we had that installed as a default.
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>> Thanks. They don't seem to have caught on, although not much more expensive than ordinary
>> HDDs.
But they are more expensive than ordinary drives, and do not offer much of an advantage, whereas SSDs are coming down in price and have a shed load of bang for your buck.
Very large multi terabyte hybrid drives (sizes too big for current SSD technology) however, have found a commercial place in large disk arrays.
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They are a good price and would certainly do the job Manatee, but at the moment my ancient Dell is sitting on the stand, set up permanently and doing all I need it to do!
I will bear it in mind though because it really can't go on forever.
Pat
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I see Microsoft have elected to use these hybrid drives in the new Xbox Elite thing, so there'll be a whole wodge more out there in the real world soon.
Whether they have done this because they see them as a wonderful technology or because they've struck some deal to get ten billion of them on the cheap is a matter of conjecture.
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>> I see Microsoft have elected to use these hybrid drives in the new Xbox Elite
>> thing, so there'll be a whole wodge more out there in the real world soon.
>>
>> Whether they have done this because they see them as a wonderful technology or because
>> they've struck some deal to get ten billion of them on the cheap is a
>> matter of conjecture.
they probably have gazzilions left over from all the tablets they have failed to sell.
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New laptop question SSD-HDD hybrid - Manatee
