Seagate Continues Bet on Hybrid HDDs With Flash Cache
Seagate said that it has shipped one million Momentus XT solid state hybrid hard drives for laptop PCs since spring 2010.
The company indicated that it will be following this path in the foreseeable time as a strategy to leverage fast flash memory in mass storage media while maintaining the low cost level of hard drive technology.
Seagate said that its XT drives have been shipping to Alienware, Asus, Dell, Sony and Toshiba. The 7200 RPM models integrate 4 GB of flash memory and are available with capacities of up to 500 GB. They promise up to 50 percent faster boot ups than traditional 5400 RPM drives.
Seagate stated that high-performance SSDs are still not an alternative for hard drives in mainstream mass storage as "they cost as much as 10 times more than hard disk drives of the same capacity, with the price of a 250 GB SSD outstripping even the cost of many laptop PCs." According to the manufacturer, consumers are not willing to pay or simply cannot afford the higher price of the SSD. Of course, Seagate has a significant interest in the hard drive keeping its price/capacity advantage over flash as the hard drive and the technology enabling it is the company's bread and butter.
But in 24 GB worth of Flash Cache with a controller that is fast and that can distinguish data files from the OS and regularly used applications. The flash should act as nothing more than a CACHE, and during idle, all information on the flash needs to be 'backed up' on the mechanical HDD, so that even if the flash component fails, the HDD should still run.
We need ~500GB SSDs with a cost per gig that isn't leaps and bounds above HDDs. Considering I'm already filling 1 TB of my 2 TBs mostly with programs and games, even 500GB is too small.
If they get the cost down, they'll sell more units. If they sell more units, they'll have more money to invest in R&D to make them larger and faster and increase MTBF.
here the issue with what your saying.....
1. your right that it should only be used as cache(which seagate been doing since it launched these drives). problem with what your saying is, anything on the cache "needs to be backed up".
You need to read more about this drive. The drive reads what's most commonly used, (such as opening a certain app every day or most needed services for the OS to run) and stores the file on the cache from the hdd. Now it's still on the HDD. It never left, just copied into a faster place, so what is there to back up?
2. as for having 24GB's of cache..... why such an odd number? i'd more prefer the traditional numbering scheme of 2,4,8,16,32,64, ect.... make sense to me as computers love multiples of two's.
3. the reason why we wont see over 16GB hybrid drives yet is due to price.
500GB hybrid drive: $100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591
16 to 32GB ssd: $50 to $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139428
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227510
so even if you take out some of the cost of having the 4Gb's in there and put in 16 or 32GB of flash memory in these drives, your talking about a drive that can be in the neighborhood of $125 to possibly more than $150.
Kinda defeats what the drive is targeting for.
now i could see in the near future 8GB hybrid drives from seagate, but nothing bigger than that in the near future.
I think SSD is not the replacement of HDD(at least not now), it is a complement of HDD in many cases.
I'm only interest in about 100GB of SSD, that should be more than enough to keep all my current stuff, everything else can be save to my data drive(HDD) or an external drive.
Have you guys ever used SSD? Just for reference, my new MBA boots up in 15 seconds and shuts down in 1 second
Seriously?
This must be a mistake given that nobody uses a 5400 RPM drive as a boot drive (unless we are talking notebooks here) which I don't think is the case.
So what I like to know is what advantage if any would be between this drive a normal 7200 RPM drive?
When it comes to using some power.. I will go to my desktop, and I will use several regular hard drives in RAID before buying one of these.. at least until they are more cost efficient. I like the Idea but it costs too much as most newer technologies do.
You don't buy a SSD to 'hold stuff' you buy an SSD to RUN stuff. You buy it for the same reason you buy a Corvette. Speed. And unlike a Corvette on the freeway you get what you pay for, because you have no 'speed limit' for your computer, you can max out the speed (bandwidth) of the SSD to your heart's content, and increase your productivity too...
Yeah, it does seem like kind of a skimpy improvement on performance. I get, easily, 10 times the real world speed of my 2.5" 7200 RPM drives. Only about 4 times the real world speed on my 3.5" 7200 RPM drives, but still, an improvement.
Perhaps I used the wrong terminology. Cache may not be the right technical word. However, the drive should be smart enough to have the OS and regular applications on the Flash.
24 GB isn't a random number. Between my installation of Windows 7 x64 pro, PhotoShop, Office, and a few other apps, I am using approx 19 GB. I figure 24 GB is a nice round number for some wiggle room for various other applications.
The price of 24 GB of flash memory, without a controller, is about 30 dollars. Add a controller, that is another 15 to 20 dollars. A 1TB 2.5" drive can be had for about $100, USD. So you could have a 2 TB 5400 RPM drive, with 24 GB of flash memory and a controller to parse the data, for Approx $150. Since the idea is that most notebook computers (which would be the only practical application I can think of for a hybrid 2.5" hard drive, as you could just have Intel's SSD Core implementation or a manually managed SSD/HDD solution) do not have 2 drive bays, so there is no chance to have a storage drive AND an OS drive. You get a slightly more expensive HDD with the benefits of both an SSD and HDD.
With only 4 GB of SSD cache, you don't have enough space for both your OS and Applications, and therefore, have some performance boost, but not enough to warrant the added cost.
You also could 'neglect' to have the 24GB be backed up on the mechanical drive. That is fine. But when you are dealing with a 1 TB drive, what is a mere 24GB for peace of mind?
The thing is, when I am on the go, that is when I need the speed and power savings the MOST. I need to be able to sit down and power up my notebook instantly, and close it just as fast. That saves battery life. I don't want to be tethered to a wall, and have to carry around a charger. Every little bit counts, and SSDs help a LOT with this.
Besides, notebook HDDs, even 7200 RPM ones, are so painfully slow for general use. Switching to SSD is like night and day. If Seagate can give me even half that speed in a hybrid solution, for a reasonable price, I am game. So far, I am not convinced.
If I need to store my music while I am on the go, I'll keep it on a SD card or a portable HDD. (Although, not really interested in a portable HDD when I don't want to even carry a power brick with me).
Bro, 24 is an even number XD.
And I think you mean powers of 2. 24 is a multiple of 2 as well so your argument doesn't hold.
Other than that, +1.
Seriously?This must be a mistake given that nobody uses a 5400 RPM drive as a boot drive (unless we are talking notebooks here) which I don't think is the case.
From THE FUCKING HEADLINE: Seagate said that it has shipped one million Momentus XT solid state hybrid hard drives for LAPTOP PCs since spring 2010.
Try reading next time, douchington.
The 4Gb of cache did absolutely NOTHING.