Hybrid drive upgrade for laptop?

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Jonski

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#142713 21-Mar-2014 14:00

I'm wondering whether a upgrading to a hybrid drive would be worth it for my slightly old laptop.

My existing laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15R, (N5010) with a Core i3, 8 GB memory and a 500 GB 7200 RPM HDD (I think SATA2), bough back in late 2010. Win 7 x64. I use it mainly for Adobe Lightroom, and the usual mail & web. No gaming or anything. Lightroom handles a large bunch of RAW files, each ~25MB in size. HDD Space is only partly an issue, as although the current HDD is full of photos, I push everything older than 12 months to a NAS. Space is tight, but manageable.

So I've looked at Pricespy, and see I have a choice of 64 GB SSD cache with 5400 RPM spindles, or 32 GB on 7200 RPM spindles.

I'd like to upgrade to a 1TB hybrid drive, but I'm not sure if the performance hit of going to a slower spindle for photography work would offset any gains made by the SSD cache. Otherwise, a 7200 RPM drive, with its smaller cache and also smaller capacity, at only 750 GB.

I imagine scrolling in LR through a catalogue of photos could tax the slower drive, but I'm not sure how significantly.

Has anyone experience or thoughts about this?

TIA
Jon

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#1010617 21-Mar-2014 14:34

I recently upgraded a 2011 model laptop (i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, Win7) with a 1TB WD Black dual drive.
(Western Digital Caviar Black2 WD1001X06XDTL Dual Drive (120GB SSD + 1TB HDD) SATA3 6GB/s)
This comes with a VERY useful SATA - USB adapter lead, so I was able to clone my old HDD before removing it.
Expensive ($400+) but very good.
Much faster than a conventional HDD, but slower than a SSD (but what would a 1TB SSD cost?).

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Jonski

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#1010658 21-Mar-2014 15:25

A nice piece of kit. And $$ to match. However it's over my budget and TBH I don't want to need to manage the extra partition. And it's on a 5400 RPM spindle too.

But thanks, I'll keep it in mind.

Cheers
Jon

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#1010718 21-Mar-2014 16:37

Jonski: A nice piece of kit. And $$ to match. However it's over my budget and TBH I don't want to need to manage the extra partition. And it's on a 5400 RPM spindle too...

The old drive that I replaced was 5400 rpm. Now everything goes much faster (probably because the OS runs much faster).
Yes, you do have to make (at least) 2 partitions - one of them the operating system drive - but I always do that anyway.
Yes, it is overpriced - a niche product designed for single-bay laptops.
Good luck

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Dynamic

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#1012081 24-Mar-2014 21:33

Jonski: A nice piece of kit. And $$ to match. However it's over my budget and TBH I don't want to need to manage the extra partition. And it's on a 5400 RPM spindle too.

We've installed two so far, both in (I can't remember the correct term) SSD-caching mode. You only see the 1Tb drive, and the SSD portion caches the most frequently accessed files quietly in the background. After a few boots while it learns your frequent files, the startup is at SSD speeds (I hear) but you get the nice big 1Tb partition to work with.

I'm thinking of putting one in my home PC which is an USDT sized computer with only a 2.5" bay. I am kinda waiting to see if they bring out a 2Tb version though as the PC is used as a media centre.

My laptops (work and personal) only get a straight SSD so there is no spinning drive to damage when they are moved around.

Cheers
Mike

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#1012123 24-Mar-2014 23:15

hybrid is a waste of time unless you do the same thing over and over again.

get a proper SSD if at all humanly possible.

if a spinning drive is a bicycle a hybrid is a bicycle with a 9V battery and SSD is a superbike

richms

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#1012126 24-Mar-2014 23:26

I have always just swapped the OS drive for a 120G SSD and then stuck the spinning disk into a caddy where the useless optical drive was to store all the big stuff on.

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macuser

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#1012167 25-Mar-2014 07:41

richms: I have always just swapped the OS drive for a 120G SSD and then stuck the spinning disk into a caddy where the useless optical drive was to store all the big stuff on.

Yeap, that's the way to go.

I did that with my 17" Dell... I have a 512GB SSD as boot disk, a 750GB HDD as my second hard drive, and a 750GB HDD in a disk drive caddy.

Works great.

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#1012194 25-Mar-2014 08:32

I wish more 17" laptops had space for a second internal 2.5" hard drive for this exact reason.

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Jonski

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#1012213 25-Mar-2014 08:58

joker97: if a spinning drive is a bicycle a hybrid is a bicycle with a 9V battery and SSD is a superbike

Well, yes. The superiority of SSD over HDD is not in question, but that's not what I asked.

What I'm really trying to establish though is the relative performance of 32GB/7200RPM against 64GB/5400RPM. Or even more specifically, would a 32GB cache cut it? I can see a performance hit moving from my existing 7200 to 5400 RPM, would that be counterbalanced by the larger 64GB cache?

It's a tricky question, because every situation is different. In my case, I'd want (realising that exactly what gets cached is down to the drive controller) my OS files (including hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys) and the LR DB, along with my web browser, to be in NAND. Is it possible to flag specific files to a specific drive affinity?

I am limited by form factor to one 2.5" drive bay otherwise I would just throw a SSD into the machine and be done with it.

Cheers
Jon

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- Adam Savage, Mythbuster

Jonski

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#1012215 25-Mar-2014 09:01

richms: I have always just swapped the OS drive for a 120G SSD and then stuck the spinning disk into a caddy where the useless optical drive was to store all the big stuff on.

Tell me more about this caddy...? I'm intrigued.

Cheers
Jon

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- Adam Savage, Mythbuster

tchart

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#1012307 25-Mar-2014 10:40

Jonski:
richms: I have always just swapped the OS drive for a 120G SSD and then stuck the spinning disk into a caddy where the useless optical drive was to store all the big stuff on.

Tell me more about this caddy...? I'm intrigued.

Cheers
Jon

I assume its the same as my HP one but you pop the DVD drive out and replace with a caddy (got mine off ebay) that looks like a DVD drive but takes a second hard drive. I ran this on my Elitebook for ages.

Just upgraded to a HP ultrabook which came with SSD. The same model can be purchased with a spinning disk so there are actually two drive slots. Ive put a 1TB spinning disk in the second slot - was a bugger to find a 7mm (height) 1TB disk though but found one in the end (any other height doesn't fit the chasis).

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macuser

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#1012557 25-Mar-2014 16:16

Jonski:
richms: I have always just swapped the OS drive for a 120G SSD and then stuck the spinning disk into a caddy where the useless optical drive was to store all the big stuff on.

Tell me more about this caddy...? I'm intrigued.

Cheers
Jon

http://pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=ENCTIT0001&name=Titans-12.7mm-SATA-to-SATA-2.5-Hard-Drive-Caddy-wi

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#1012574 25-Mar-2014 16:50

richms: I have always just swapped the OS drive for a 120G SSD and then stuck the spinning disk into a caddy where the useless optical drive was to store all the big stuff on...
http://pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=ENCTIT0001&name=Titans-12.7mm-SATA-to-SATA-2.5-Hard-Drive-Caddy-wi

Nice hardware

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ajobbins

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#1012602 25-Mar-2014 17:37

Most of the hybrid laptop size drives I've seen are only 8GB of SSD. Is that enough to be useful?

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#1012607 25-Mar-2014 17:47

Jonski:
joker97: if a spinning drive is a bicycle a hybrid is a bicycle with a 9V battery and SSD is a superbike

Well, yes. The superiority of SSD over HDD is not in question, but that's not what I asked.

What I'm really trying to establish though is the relative performance of 32GB/7200RPM against 64GB/5400RPM. Or even more specifically, would a 32GB cache cut it? I can see a performance hit moving from my existing 7200 to 5400 RPM, would that be counterbalanced by the larger 64GB cache?

It's a tricky question, because every situation is different. In my case, I'd want (realising that exactly what gets cached is down to the drive controller) my OS files (including hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys) and the LR DB, along with my web browser, to be in NAND. Is it possible to flag specific files to a specific drive affinity?

I am limited by form factor to one 2.5" drive bay otherwise I would just throw a SSD into the machine and be done with it.

Cheers
Jon

it's not just the rotational speed, but storage density. a 500gb 7200rpm will perform better than 500gb 5400rpm. but I am guessing a 1tb 5400rpm probably performs better than the 500gb 7200rpm, or at least no real difference.

you cannot decide what goes into the SSD as far as I know. the drive puts whatever you use most into that thing. if you use the same files over and over it is fast. if you use every file in your 1TB every week ... who knows

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