Why Do People Buy HDDs AND SSDs?

SSD space is expensive.

OS and applications on the SSD.
Result? Speed

Other stuff lives on the large HDD.
My 40GB music playlist does not play any faster if living on an SSD. Nor does my 1.2TB of movies play any faster.

Backups from multiple dirves? On a 3TB HDD.

Games would be stored on whatever drive you select when installing them. Ideally on the SSD for faster loading times..

Only if you have a large enough SSD.
The only benefit games really see from living on the SSD is level loading time. FPS does not change.

My main PC is now SSD only (mostly), because I got a 960GB SSD really cheap last week.

250GB boot drive
250GB other drive (photo work)
960 GB for a bunch of stuff, incl 75GB games
3TB HDD for backups and long term storage.

Previous to that 960GB SSD, games lived on a regular spinning drive.

Other stuff lives on other PC's.

To tell ya the truth .... I have no idea why anyone buys a HD today

Ya buy a SSD to get faster boot times and load large files faster..... but the cost / GB is only now getting to the point where even enthusiasts will buy say a 1 or 2 TB SSD.

A 2 TB SSD (Samsung Evo) will cost ya $670. So if ya want 2 TB or so of storage, a 250/256 GB SSD + a 2 TB Hard Drive is a common choice. Personally, we haven't bought a Hard Drive in over 4 years for any of our builds.

-Budget systems get a 2 TB SSHD's ... no SSD / no HD
-With bigger budgets available, we'll install one or more SSDs and one or more SSHDs

An SSHD is basically a mechanical drive with a SSD "built in". The firmware will place ypur most frequently used files on the SSD portion and the more rarely used stuff on the HD portion.

A SSD boots in about 15.6 seconds
A 7200 rpm SSHD boots in about 15.5 seconds
A 7200 rpm HD boots in about 21.2 seconds

When doing blind tests, we found users could not determine the difference between a SSD + HD and a SSHD. Users did observe a difference between the SSD and HD and between the SSHD and HD, You could with benchmarks .... and you could say buy say timing how long it takes to load / transfer a 10 GB file, but these are not things one does every day.

With a SSD having an advertised size of 250 GB, you actually only have 232 GB of file space; set aside 15% for free space as recommended and you have just 197 GB.... allocate 80 GB for Win 7 after 6 months or so and ya down to < 120 GB .... so, with today's AAA games going to 30, 40 or 65 GB, most of ya games wind up on the HD in the SSD + HD scenario where the SSDs speed does absolutely squat for those game loading times.

The SSHD may or may not be a real boon here.....

In one scenario where you're a person who plays mainly one or two games until finishing and moving on to another, the SSHD will be huge bonus as it will store the most frequently used files on the SSD portion.

In another, where you are going to open 7 or 8 games every day, if the game you elect to play next has not been used recently, then it's files will be on the slower mechanical portion of the drive and you will see no benefit.

As you can see here, the SSHD (9.76 MB/s) is about 50% faster than say a WD Black (6.34 MB/s). Since we first bench tested SSHDs inn laptops and desktops, we have not bought a single HD.... on the lappies, no one was able to tell the difference between identically configured laptops (SSD + HD vs SSHD). On the desktop, we use
SSD + SSHDs. Works well in both office and home settings as at work, you tend to work on the same documents day to day as it's revised and edited ...Once the document is complete, the firmware will recognize that you are no longer accessing it anymore and move it off the SSD portion and put current files on. The SSHD is partitioned with a backup of the OS so if SSD dies, puter is still functional.

read more here:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/5748/seagate-desktop-2tb-sshd-st2000dx001-review/index.html

A situation like this left most power users using an SSD for their operating system, while still running a secondary mechanical drive for storage and games. A typical setup such as this would allow the OS to load very quickly, while leaving you stunned at how long it took to load a game. With the introduction of the Desktop SSHD, Seagate has again switched up the game, offering a substantial performance boost to those of you in this situation.

Now, if you are one that chooses to use a single drive for your operating system, and have held onto your standard desktop HDD for the benefit of capacity, the Desktop SSHD is calling your name. The 8GB of NAND cache in conjunction with Seagate's application optimized algorithms should offer a tremendous performance boost, and again the more you use, it the faster the drive will get, as it learns how you use your system.

In every case seen here today, the Seagate Desktop SSHD excels, whether it be a synthetic point and click benchmark like HD Tune or ATTO, or even application traces via PCMark 8, the drive just performs.

Click to expand...

If you are budget limited, the SSHD is an easy choice ..... losing the SSD can oft get you into a better GFX card and adding the SSD later is very easy... and as per above, nice having that original OS install sitting on the HD if the SSD goes south. (Note: Disconnect the SSHD data cable before installing OS on SSD)

My own system has:

256 GB SSD 1 (Samsung Pro) - OS and work programs (AutoCAD etc)
256 GB SSD 2 (Samsung Pro) - Primary games

SSHD 1 (2 TB Seagate) - All work files (30 years of CAD Drawings, photos, spreadsheets, reports, financial records)
SSHD 2 (2 TB Seagate) - Rest of Games / office network backups

External HD docking station w/ Several HDs used for backups which are rotated off site on weekly basis.