SSHD - fast performance for an external 5400 rpm drive!

[NickK]

I bought a seagate 1TB SSHD last year as an astronomy data drive. It's a laptop drive that's a 5400 rpm job and deals with data transfers pretty well. It's a hybrid - with a HD but also about an 8GB SSD as part of the controller. Nothing external indicates it's an SSD so my initial thoughts about TRIM support were unfounded.. up till now it has been connected by USB2.0 as a data drive..

However with the 2011 MBP GPU dying and now in for fixing and a new battery, I had to migrate it's old 7200rpm 500GB drive OS image over. An easy task using the 2009 Mac Mini - cmd+R then restore the MBP's OSX partition over to the SSHD. I've been using the MBP's drive as an external Firewire 800 connected drive and running the OS off of it... once copied over, the old MBP drive was erased and a new OS installed before reinstalling it into the dead MBP.
The SSHD was moved to the Firewire 800 connection... and the machine started (using the same old image)...

It should be pointed out that I have a generation 1 SSD that used to use in my previous MBP.. so I'm aware of the speed of them.

The old 7200rpm drive on the same FW800 connection took long enough to make a coffee, or have a shower to boot and get all the desktop done.. I know it had a few issues.. but it's a soldier..
The 5400rpm SSHD on FW800 is way way way faster.. everything - booting, desktop use, applications etc. All seem to benefit heavily from the small 8GB SSD.. yet behind it is a massive 1TB that doesn't seem to be really impacted by the 5400rpm speed (the density helps but the SSD really nails it).


So SSHD - not just a hybrid fad.. cheaper than an SSD.. and works really well even on an external connection!

I know the modern MBPs etc all have SSDs, however the use of SSHD as an external drive shouldn't be discounted in my opinion.

/Happy rant over

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

I'm a bit yes/no with SSHDs... I've got a Seagate 500gb one in an early 2008 MBP, and whilst I'm happy, there are times when it behaves like what it is, 5400rpm.

For apps that I use all the time, it's pretty quick, boot times are ok, and it's quiet.
The only problem, is when you go to use the lesser used apps, that haven't been cached.
I think it's a decent speed boost, going from knackered 5+ year old mechanicals, but it's only good if you NEED the extra space.

 

[NickK]

I'm a bit yes/no with SSHDs... I've got a Seagate 500gb one in an early 2008 MBP, and whilst I'm happy, there are times when it behaves like what it is, 5400rpm.

For apps that I use all the time, it's pretty quick, boot times are ok, and it's quiet.
The only problem, is when you go to use the lesser used apps, that haven't been cached.
I think it's a decent speed boost, going from knackered 5+ year old mechanicals, but it's only good if you NEED the extra space.

I tend to use the system for development with large amounts of data. I have the option for simply using an old SSD for a data cache if needed.

Having a 7200rpm 500GB SSHD would be fine for me.. but as apple has replaced internal HDs with SSDs, it's only the older machines that will use them internally but for external drives they're still good.