Hybrid hard drives (SSHD) and data recovery. Hybrid hard drives: are they worth buying? How to install windows 7 on a hybrid hdd

Two-in-one devices have always attracted buyers because combining technologies in one device often improves the performance of the devices. Naturally, the price for the set will be decent. Take, for example, a video dual device, a laptop-tablet or an MFP. Manufacturers of hard drives also decided to resort to crossing the two technologies, introducing inexpensive SSHD drives to the market. The article focuses on the hybrid hard drive, the pros and cons of the device, as well as reviews from happy owners.

A holy place is never empty

The expensive technology of very fast SSD drives and affordable but very slow HDD magnetic disks have created a huge gap in the hard storage media market, both in the price and speed categories. There was an urgent need for a golden mean that could satisfy the user not only with its characteristics, but also at an affordable price. This is how a symbiosis appeared - SSHD disks. Nothing depends on the user in the operation of the device. Everything works automatically. In fact, for the owner the process of operation of the hybrid drive will be invisible in terms of installation and installation. There is no need to install any drivers; the controller is detected and controlled by the computer's BIOS. You can only see the result - a significant increase in performance, which is noticeable when loading the system and launching resource-intensive applications, including games.

How does this work

The principle of operation is quite simple and is somewhat reminiscent of the operation of a central processor. Magnetic hard drives have long used caching technology, where frequently used information is read from a magnetic disk and written to the memory of the built-in chip on the hard drive. The chip size is disproportionately small (8-128 MB), but this is quite enough for the system to operate. Naturally, the chip is able to communicate with the processor at enormous speed. The technology used by hybrid hard drives involves the presence of another chip created using SSD technology, but with a larger capacity. As a result, the processor turns to the hard drive for information.

If the information is in the level 1 cache, it is provided instantly.
If the information is not in the 1st level, the access is transferred to the 2nd level cache. Since the second level uses an SSD, information is also quickly provided to the processor.
Information is read from the surface of the magnetic disk, which slows down the operation of the entire system.

Feasibility of installation

At first glance, it may seem that the main consumers in the market for these drives are owners of personal computers. After all, for a laptop, devices without rotating components are preferable for safety and shock resistance reasons. However, judging by numerous reviews from owners, hybrid hard drives are purchased specifically for laptops. Portable devices require volume first and then performance. And if for a personal computer it is not problematic to install several storage devices of different form factors, then a laptop has a serious limitation. In addition, installing an SSD is impractical due to limited capacity and high price.

Reasons to buy a new drive

For most laptop owners, the main problem in their work is the failure of the hard drive with the loss of important information for the user. As an alternative solution, the seller offers three options.

Install the same HDD drive, for example a 500 GB hard drive, but with increased shock resistance of 1000 G. In this case, the purchase costs will be minimal, as will the performance.
Install an SSD, losing capacity, spending a lot of money, but gaining in performance.
Install a hybrid SSHD drive, getting high performance, affordable cost, and large capacity.

Naturally, thanks to this approach of sellers, judging by the numerous reviews from happy customers, hybrid drives have conquered the portable device market.

Two hard drives in a laptop?

It is not necessary to install a hybrid hard drive for a laptop instead of a standard device. Due to the presence of a mass of various adapters on the market, it is possible to install an additional hard drive in the system. There are many options. Starting from the USB and eSATA interface, ending with the desoldering of unused SATA ports on the motherboard of a portable device. And only one option deserves special attention from users. We are talking about a device called Second HDD Caddy, which resembles a pocket for connecting hard drives to a running personal computer.

Due to its size and interfaces, this pocket should be installed instead of a standard DVD optical device. Naturally, it can only be installed in laptops where this drive is preinstalled. As a result, the user receives a second hard drive, which, in addition to a huge amount of storage capacity, provides excellent performance at an affordable price.

Priorities for PC

A hybrid hard drive for a computer will be more useful for game lovers. After all, most synthetic tests on office computers show that the weak link is the processor or video adapter, but not the magnetic disk. And only in gaming systems, when there is a powerful video card, a strong central processor and fast RAM, does the hard drive become the culprit of all the problems.

Installing an SSD can solve performance problems, but the high price and small amount of memory do not suit half of potential buyers. Judging by numerous reviews, the hybrid device is also used under the system. The 8 GB Level 2 cache can accommodate a working Windows system with all its services and drivers, including the page file. This offload will not only allow games to run faster on the processor and memory, but will also significantly speed up the work of applications related to video encoding and working with flash.

How to see performance

Hybrid hard drives are the only drives that allow you to see first-hand system performance, as well as measure and compare the results before and after improvements. It sounds fantastic, but it's a fact. It's very simple. After mounting and installing the operating system, the controller on the drive needs time to capture frequently used files, which it will place in the second-level cache. Sometimes you have to perform 5-7 system reboots for the drive to start working in the desired mode, providing high performance. If the SSHD disk was purchased as an additional drive, for games, for example, then you need to launch the game, play, exit, and restart the computer. The result of the controller's operation will be noticed immediately when the operating system or favorite game loads several times faster.

What's on the market for PC

When choosing, the user may encounter the problem of selecting the required device. We are talking about the assortment - it is too small for the huge market of computer components. Market leaders Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba introduced devices with SSHD technology to the world. But only Seagate provided the buyer with a choice; the rest were limited to a couple of models. Judging by numerous expert reviews, all developed countries have long replaced magnetic drives with SSDs. And only in third world countries, where not every buyer can afford a device at a high price, are such hybrid miracle devices sold. The manufacturer Seagate offers customers SSHD drives in all sorts of variations, ranging from memory capacity and cache sizes of the 1st and 2nd levels, to spindle speed.

Decent model

Hard drives with a capacity of several terabytes will not surprise anyone today. In pursuit of volumes, the user loses sight of many other factors.

Speed of chaotic reading from disk. The larger the volume, the more difficult it is for the read head to find information. Even though this parameter is measured in milliseconds, the result is quite noticeable in a synthetic test.
Rationality of purchase. Reading reviews from many buyers, we can conclude that there is no point in purchasing a drive larger than 1 TB. Having spent a large amount for excess space, the user is not able to fill it with data.

Apparently, the manufacturer Seagate also came to the same conclusions, focusing on a 500 GB SSHD hard drive with a spindle speed of 5400 rpm. It is the ST500LM000 model that participates in all synthetic tests to compare performance with other hard drives; judging by the results, it has few competitors in terms of operating speed.

To take or not to take?

In any case, the rhetorical question will concern the buyer when choosing a hard drive. After all, SSHD technology is not the best hard drive for PC and laptop owners. The goal of producing a hybrid drive, first of all, was to saturate the market with devices that combine large capacity and fast NAND memory at a low price. You need to stop here and make decisions based on the needs of use.

A high-capacity drive that was always full to capacity failed - an SSHD drive will be an excellent replacement. With a difference of 300-500 rubles, the buyer will receive increased productivity.
You need an ultra-fast computer for games, and the information on the hard drive rarely exceeded 100 GB - you can’t find a better SSD. It may be more expensive, but it's worth it.
There is a need for additional storage media for documents and multimedia - a regular, cheapest HDD drive will be the best purchase.

In conclusion

By summarizing the information, it is possible to draw conclusions, thanks to which any user will make his own decision, as did specialists from popular computer publications. And judging by numerous reviews, these findings are quite interesting.

For users who have a gaming computer with high-performance components, buying one or two SSD drives will not hurt their pockets, because for them the FPS (frames per second) in the game is more expensive than any banknotes.
In search of an inexpensive magnetic drive, very often the buyer resorts to buying it on the secondary market. In our country this is a fairly common option.
Only a handful of people who are looking for compromises, eager to get maximum performance and know how to count their money will look at hybrid hard drives.

Hello admin! I want to buy a 1-2 TB hard drive, one computer geek I know advised me to buy an SSHD drive (a hybrid of a hard drive and an SSD solid state drive), since it works noticeably faster than a regular HDD, but is not as expensive as an SSD solid state drive. What can you say about such discs?

Hello friends! Very good question. Yes, the SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) hybrid hard drive works 30% faster than a conventional hard drive, and is about the same amount more expensive. If a regular 1 TB hard drive costs 4,000 rubles, then an SSHD can be bought for 5,400 rubles. Such disks are produced both for regular computers and for laptops.

Firstly, What is a hybrid hard drive?

The technology for the production of hard drives (the only component of a computer that has moving mechanical parts) has long been at a dead end and it is almost impossible to increase the performance of a hard drive through production, as evidenced by the appearance on the market of solid-state drives SSDs and hybrid hard drives SSHD. But if a solid-state drive is a completely non-mechanical storage device based on memory chips, then a hybrid hard drive is, first of all, a regular hard drive with an MLC fast flash memory card (8 GB capacity) soldered onto it, used in the production of solid-state drives. that is, it turns out that SSHD is a hybrid of a regular hard drive and an SSD..

Secondly, why is an SSHD hybrid hard drive faster than a regular hard drive?

Seagate SSHD hybrid drives use self-learning technology - Seagate Adaptive Memory, which examines the operating system installed on the disk from the first seconds of operation, as a result, the most frequently used programs and files are copied to the flash memory of the SSHD disk, such files include, first of all, the elements involved in loading the operating system, which means that Windows will be installed from the second or third time boot faster, because Windows will be loaded from flash memory. For example, on my computer, loading Windows 8.1 installed on a regular HDD takes 35-40 seconds, on an SSHD - 20 seconds, on a regular SSD - 15 seconds. The same applies to applications you constantly use; they will launch a little faster. Let’s take, for example, a modern game that requires computer resources and that you constantly play; according to my observations, such a game will load three times faster than on a regular HDD.

Hybrid SSHD hard drive is the golden mean

In general, the ideal configuration of drives in the system unit of an ordinary home user looks like this: buy two drives, the first is an SSD (volume 120-240 GB) for installing the operating system, and the second is a regular HDD for storing files (capacity) 2-3 TB , you need about 10,000 rubles for all this. And if you purchase one 1 TB SSHD hybrid drive, it will cost you 5,400 rubles, and a 2 TB SSHD will cost you 7,000 rubles. Of course, everything won’t fly (as is the case with an SSD), but maybe you don’t need such speeds. A hybrid SSHD drive is coming out, this is the golden mean - for little money you get good performance and a large amount of disk space.

Which SSHD to buy

Until recently, SSHD hybrid drives were produced by the company that developed them - Seagate. In total, there are now three Seagate Desktop SSHD models on the market with capacities of 1, 2, 4 TB.

Seagate Desktop SSHD ST1000DX001 1 TB

Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001 2 TB

Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001 4 TB

Also, recently Western Digital began to produce SSHD, but they are few on the market, and the model that I came across - WD Blue SSHD, WD40E31X with a capacity of 4 TB, was no different in speed characteristics from the similar model Seagate ST4000DX001 4 TB.

In today’s article, I suggest you consider the Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001 2 TB model and here’s why. If we take the Seagate Desktop SSHD 1 TB model, then 1 TB of disk space is no longer enough for a modern computer user. If we take the Seagate Desktop SSHD 4 TB model, then on the contrary, not everyone needs a large volume of 4 TB of disk space, and its price is quite high (11,500 rubles), and what is also important is the spindle speed of this drive: 5900 rpm, that is, it is slightly slower than other SSHDs with a capacity of 1 and 2 TB (spindle speed 7200 rpm) and this will certainly affect the performance of the operating system.

So, I persuaded you and we have a model in front of us Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001 2 TB

Upon closer inspection, the Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001 2 TB hybrid drive turned out to be an ordinary hard drive, only it says SSHD on it.

Disk space - 2 TB

SSD buffer capacity - 8 GB

Cache memory size - 64 MB

Spindle speed - 7200 rpm

On the back of the drive we see a special Adaptive Memory printed circuit board, with 8 GB of fast MLC memory and a “hybrid” controller soldered on.

It’s very easy to install the drive into the system unit.

SMART hard drive in the CrystalDiskInfo and Victoria program.

The hybrid drive is new and has been used for 0 hours.

Read and write tests

To make sure that our disk is really good, let's perform several tests on reading and writing using special programs: CrystalDiskMark 2.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark and SiSoftware Sandra. These utilities will sequentially read and write information to our hybrid disk in small blocks, then show us the result.

CrystalDiskMark 2.0

The simplest and most frequently used program in this regard, you can download it on my Yandex.Disk

The utility is very simple, select only the desired drive letter (in our case E:)

And click AII, the SSHD disk performance test will begin.

1. Test of sequential reading and writing of large blocks of data;

2. Test of random reading and writing in 512 KB blocks;

3. Test of random reading and writing in 4 KB blocks;

I can say that the result is very worthy, especially the recording in 512 KB and 4 KB blocks.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Let's test the hybrid disk with another program - ATTO Disk Benchmark.

Select the drive letter of the SSHD hybrid drive and click Start.

Result.

SiSoftware Sandra

A global program capable of diagnosing all computer components and having its own official rating.

As a result, our disk is ahead of 94% of the results. Excellent performance.

Disadvantages of SSHD

In my opinion, the only disadvantage of SSHD is the small amount of built-in flash memory 8 GB, it would be great if its size increased to 32 GB, then more running programs would be placed in the solid state cache and the performance of Windows would be exactly the same as if it was installed on the SSD.

In this article I will tell you what a hybrid hard drive is, why it is better than the usual HDD, as well as the pros and cons compared to an SSD.

For most ordinary users, I will now reveal a big secret - the weakest (read: slow) link in the chain of a computer system is the hard drive or hard drive. You may have the fastest processor, the best video card and a ton of RAM, but a slow and, excuse the expression, “dumb” hard drive nullifies all the work of this cool hardware.

This was the case until recently. Now there are SSDs or solid state drives. They helped get rid of this bottleneck in computer performance. Many people use them as the main boot disk for the operating system, which is very justified, but the high price and small amount of memory do not make it possible to use them more widely.

The production of hard drives is a very complex technological process, since there are many moving parts in it, which greatly limits the reduction in the size of the devices without losing certain characteristics (which is probably why so many modern hard drives now fail). Manufacturers find themselves at a technological impasse. There is no room to further increase the capacity of disks and their density.

To solve this problem, solid-state drives were created, and in 2007, Seagate developed the world's first hybrid hard drive or SSHD (solid-state hard drive). This is a physical data storage device in which data storage technologies of the 60s (hard disk on magnetic disks, HDD) and modern times (SSD drives on) are intertwined.

In general, this looks like an ordinary hard drive with significantly increased flash memory. The first samples had 128MB, but now there are models with 32GB.

The result is a very interesting and practical product. It inherited a large capacity from a regular disk, and a large, one might even say huge, data cache from a solid-state drive.

Speed parameters or HDD and SSD vs SSHD

The process of increasing the speed of the operating system and applications using such hybrid drives is as follows:

After installing the operating system on a hybrid hard drive, the first boot will occur at normal speed, but after several reboots, the time will decrease due to the device's microcontroller entering the most frequently used operating system data areas into a large cache. Tests have shown that booting a system with an SSHD is only 5-10% slower than a regular SSD. The same will happen with various applications, games, etc. The main thing is that the disk has enough flash memory for everything you need.

In late 2011 and early 2012, speed tests showed that hybrid SSDs with a 750 GB HDD and 8 GB cache were slower than SSDs in random read/write and sequential read/write, but faster than HDDs when running applications. and turning off.

The amount of cache memory significantly affects the cost of the final product. Therefore, when choosing a drive, you must take into account how resource-intensive applications you are going to run on it and their number.

At the heart of hybrid drive technology is deciding which data elements are prioritized by flash memory and which are not. Therefore, SSHDs can operate in two main modes:

Automatic mode or self-optimized

In this mode, the hybrid hard drive independently makes all decisions related to data distribution and does not depend on the operating system.

Host-Optimized Mode or host-hinted

In this operating mode, the Hybrid SSHD enables the extended SATA "Hybrid Information" command set. Based on these commands, the operating system and device driver, taking into account the file system structure, decide which data elements to place in the NAND flash memory.

Some specific features of SSHD, such as host-hinted mode, require software support in the operating system. Support for host-hinted operations appeared only in Windows 8.1, while patches for the Linux kernel have been available since late 2014. They are expected to be included in the Linux kernel in the future.

Historical background

In 2007, Seagate and Samsung introduced the first hybrid drives: Seagate Momentus PSD and Samsung SpinPoint MH80. Both were 2.5-inch and had 128 MB or 256 MB of flash memory. The products are not widely available.

In May 2010, Seagate introduced a new hybrid product called the Momentus XT drive and used the term " Solid State Hybrid Disk (SSHD). It includes 500 GB of HDD memory with 4 GB of integrated NAND flash memory.

In April 2013, WD introduced 2.5-inch WD Black SSHD drives, including 5 mm thick SSHDs with 500 GB of regular memory and flash memory in sizes of 8 GB, 16 GB and 24 GB.

Pros and cons of hybrid HDDs

The main advantage of a hybrid hard drive is a significant increase in the performance of the disk subsystem, especially in netbooks and laptops, where hard drives are less powerful and you cannot install a second drive, as in a regular PC. It’s not for nothing that the very first SSHD disks were developed in the 2.5-inch laptop format. Later, 3.5-inch hybrid drives were released. Although now in laptops with a disk drive, it is possible to replace it with a hard drive or solid-state drive, but I will tell you how to do this in one of the following articles.

The disadvantages include the inability to fit all critical data on the flash memory of an SSHD disk. But it also doesn’t make sense to install more than 32GB on a hybrid SSHD, since it will be cheaper to buy a regular 64GB SSD.

At the moment, their price is significantly higher than that of conventional hard drives. For example, at the time of writing, a 1 TB hard drive Seagate Desktop SSHD model ST1000DX001 cost about 6,000 rubles, and its competitor 1Tb Western Digital WD Blue SSHD WD10J31X cost about 5,500 rubles. At the same time, a regular 1 TB Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 hard drive will cost you 3,600 rubles. And this includes models with only 8GB of memory. With more quantity the difference will increase. But this is still several times less than the cost of an SSD of similar size.

Conclusion

Hybrid hard drives are a compromise solution that allows both to increase the overall performance of the system in which they are installed and to reduce its price.

You could say this is an evolutionary development of conventional HDDs. Due to the increased cache, it was possible to reduce the number of disk accesses, which was reflected in reduced power consumption and heat dissipation, durability and reduced noise during operation. All this makes them much more productive and practical than HDDs, and several times cheaper than SSDs.

The original purpose that SSHD was supposed to fulfill - a low-cost replacement for solid-state drives and hard drives in laptops and mobile computers - has been successfully achieved. After testing the technology and eliminating the shortcomings, manufacturers began to produce 3.5-inch formats for a regular PC.

Thus, for an expensive PC and laptop, it is still better to choose a high-speed solid-state drive with a large capacity on which to install the operating system and the programs and applications necessary for work, but for a regular PC and especially a laptop, an SSHD is ideal, which will replace obsolete and slow ones hard disc drive.

Many people have already heard about the new hybrid hard drives, but most are wondering if they are worth buying? Or maybe, instead of hybrids, it’s better to take a small SSD drive (or a large one, there’s a lot of money), install the system on it, and install a regular hard drive for data? Now I will try to shed light on this issue.

After my laptop fell off the table, the hard drive had to be replaced. There is no space in the laptop for a separate SSD drive, so you can only plug one device into it. I settled on a Seagate ST1000LM014-1EJ164 hybrid hard drive with a capacity of 1 TB, and an SSD cache of approximately 8 GB. This is certainly not as much as we would like, but it’s better than nothing at all. This hybrid drive cost me almost 7,000 rubles.

The hybrid disk cache is entirely hardware and there are no programs to configure or optimize it. Programs and files that are frequently used, including system files, are cached.

Pros of a hybrid hard drive

I list the advantages that I was able to identify when using a hybrid from Seagate:

when using "quick start" Windows, the system loads 25-30 percent faster,
applications that we often use launch several times faster,
copying files up to 500 MB, even within different logical drives, occurs at high speed, equal to approximately 200-300 MB/sec (I think the file is first copied to the cache, and then transferred to the hard drive during idle time),
the whole machine works faster and there are fewer bottlenecks.

Disadvantages of a hybrid drive

Let us note some disadvantages, but they are not critical:

the cost is almost 2 times more than a regular hard drive,
low SSD cache volume (in general, there are all sorts of disks, they have 32 and 64 GB, but the cost is appropriate).

Conclusion, is it worth buying?

Let's move on to the most important thing, and here I have two answers, and they depend on your operating conditions for the computer.

I think it’s worth buying them only for laptops when it is not possible to install a second separate drive in it. If you have a desktop computer and there is space in it (usually there is always some), then it would be best to take a separate SSD drive with a capacity of 64 GB to 128 GB (this is if you plan to keep only the system on it). And if finances allow, then you can fork out for a 1-2 TB SDD, I think it will be great.

Read about what a hybrid hard drive is and what they are. Features of data recovery from SSHD. Hybrid hard drives or SSHD (Solid-State Hybrid Drives or solid-state hybrid drives) are not yet very common devices, but they are gradually gaining popularity. Combining the properties of traditional magnetic hard drives and the well-known properties of solid-state drives with their extremely high speed capabilities, hybrid hard drives promise to offer the best of both worlds.

At least in theory. Is it worth buying a hybrid hard drive, what are its advantages, and what to do if the SSHD fails? To find out, read our comprehensive review.

First, identify the problem. Is your HDD drive still in working order, or has it failed due to mechanical damage? If it fails due to mechanical damage, you can take the HDD drive (with or without SSD parts) to a repair shop and ask them to save the information from this drive to another medium. You can also use signature-based data recovery technology (available in tools like Hetman Partition Recovery) to scan the SSD part at a low level in order to recover files that may be cached on it. But due to the nature of hybrid storage media, your chances of recovering anything other than a group of system files are very slim.

If your hard drive is still operational and you determine data loss, simply treat your hybrid system as you would a regular hard drive. Download the appropriate data recovery tool and recover your data as if you were using a regular hard drive. In most cases, it will be better if you disable the SSD part in your computer's BIOS; but this is not necessary.

But what if you have an SSHD from one device? Your actions should be the same, with some exceptions. If the SSD part has failed (for example, due to wear and tear due to a large number of rewrites), you are better off replacing the SSHD drive completely, or continuing to use it, but with the SSD part disabled and Smart Response Technology deactivated. You will have access to all your data, albeit at a slower speed. Do not use an SSHD drive with a worn out SSD part in hybrid mode! If you do this, you risk damaging data or losing information written to the disk. If the SSD part fails, disconnect it.

Finally, what if you have a real SSHD drive, without any visible separate SSD and HDD partitions, and the SSD part fails? In this case, to recover files from such a drive, you can still use a data recovery tool like Hetman Partition Recovery. In some cases, you will even be able to read the files normally without having to use a data recovery tool. However, you should not continue to use such a device, as you will probably end up with damaged files sooner or later.

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