I am always messing about with my drives and considering whatever options.
I have bought a few of the SSHD drives, and IMHO they are not really worth bothering with if you can help it.
In other words, and this depends on what space you have of course, but if you only have space for one drive, then go for it. Thats when they are worth it, but if you can use 2 drives, then an SSD and a HD is the choice to go for ( unless you have Megabux and then a huge SSD is how to do it )
I mean, in my Laptops for example I have a 120SSD for booting and a 1TB for my data
Now, in one of my PCs, I had a 2TB SSHD and it was ok. I still used a SSD for C: and using the SSHD did feel at first to be a nippy drive, but only when I compared it to a slow drive... Compared to a WD Black for example, it was no quicker.
But what I have done, is bought a second 2TB SSHD and set them up as RAID0 just to see how its performance was then, and again, I was massively underwhelmed.
Correct me if I am wrong here ( and I usually am ) but the Seagate SSHD drives work by having a huge cache that contains the most used files, and so if you are constantly using one app in particular, then that app will load up much quicker than normal, and of course that also goes, if you use that drive to boot, it wil contain the most used files that Windows might be wanting to access all the time, and so sure, it will be quicker than a stock drive this way, much quicker, but if you are using lots of random files all the time, then you wont really see any real benefit perhaps?
One other thing... Whn I first gave one of these a shot, I had it for a laptop that I could only use one drive in, and that laptop definitely benefitted from using the SSHD. Its was an old Samsung R60 1.8Ghz Pentium Dual core IIRC? and it certainly felt like it had a bit of a kick up the bum. So again, if you only have the option of one rive then its an option that is worth considering, but if you can use 2 or more, then go for SSD and HD.
EXTRA BIT:
For data that does not need speed, then external storage is not a bad idea either. An external HD or a NAS would be an option perhaps?
2TB SSD is very much total overkill to be honest, unless you are going to be dealing with massive files only.
For what its worth, I also use RAMDisks and that is even quicker than an SSD and in most cases, my games etc dont really load up any quicker and so again the SSD + HD option would be the better and most cost effective option surely?
