SSD

Looking at the questions on Amazon (and the answers), it seems that the Seagate is simply a HDD with 8Gb of SSD for quick access, whereas the Samsung is a pure SSD.

Less to fail on an SSD and quicker as well??

SSHDs are not as fast as SSD when reading all the time, complicated automatic pre fetch routines need be in place at the hardware and software level and you don't get to manually choose what stuff goes where in the speed stakes.ee

SSDs are faster, cooler, lighter, thinner, less power hungry. SSHDs are a cludge, of course its the only way you can get large capacity (1-2Tb) cheaply. At the moment.

...access speed and "wear" rate characteristics of SSDs are considerably better.

...I'm still somewhat wary of them.

I have a small one in my HTPC, handling mainly the OS and a few programs. Most of the write activity is still to a separate, large, mechanical drive.

It's fiddly to make the changes that should extend their life (e.g. moving paging files off them, disabling indexing/superfetch, disabling hybrid sleep, overprovisioning, etc. and I'm not sure I'd bother on a mainstream machine.

The indications are that they are more prone to power outages, and fail "harder" than mechanical disks (the few of which that I've had go I've largely had warning of, and managed to recover all/most of the data).

Having said that, we built my son's latest m/c with an (OS-biased) SSD and conventional hard-drive, taking similar configuration choices. His gets hammered, and is still performing admirably.

If MS were to tailor their install processes to give options to move highly volatile datasets off the install disk, rather than having to do it "longhand" so to speak, my opinion might change.

So did I......

Zero's points suggest I shoudl give the SSHDs a miss.

Given that, and then the comments above, especially T&E's and Crankase's, it seems that I should ;


1) just not bother and stay with "normal" drives.
2) go for an SSD just big enough for the operating system and not put anything else there
3) go for the biggest SSD I can get and use it as a normal system disk.
4) something else

??

??

..for me, it is either 1 or 2.

The thing about SSDs is that they (on average) have a limited life compared with conventional drives. This is largely dictated by the fact that the cells have an absolute limit on writes (which mechanical drives don't). Controller algorithms and "overprovisioning" (i.e. allowing more of the physical capacity to provide a smaller logical capacity) can overcome this to some extent, and the type of SSD memory used is also fairly critical.

Nonetheless, the working life is largely dictated by the number of writes, and thus SSDs are much more suitable for read-heavy use, rather than write-heavy. (they are best the closest you can get to "WORM" usage - write once, read many).

If you can configure an OS-only drive to be mainly read-only, then installing the OS on an SSD (rather than a small hard-drive, allowing cloning) can make sense, since it will be responsive, and won't have to spin-up from low-power states. Windows, however, in its native install state, does much to undermine this, placing many write-hungry files on the default install medium, many of them not immediately apparent, and all desirable and viable elsewhere when using SSD.

If you also accept that SSDs are more prone to extraneous issues, such as power dips, then you need to be ready to reprovision/replace at or within the warranty period (since the latter for SSDs is not based on the (variable) mechanical life, but on the absolute life of the cells. (Odds on a hard drive having a long life increase after the initial use period!).

If you accept this risk, and are prepared to do some homework on how to minimise writes to (an OS and other program install-biased) SSD, (by invoking certain install options and altering parameters post-install) then installing the OS on an SSD and tweaking it is an interesting learning curve, and can add performance. If performance isn't the be-all and end-all, then I'd use a small mechanical disk for OS and programs (allowing for ease of cloning and re-installing) and a large, mechanical, data disk. 

Frankly, with the proliferation of SSD devices, MS really ought to provide an SSD install option, splitting capabilitires across a solid-state and mechanical drive (but, as yet, they don't). 

Much is a matter of personal interpretation and preference, but I (unlike Zero) would at least move the swap/paging file to mechanical disk, since, if it is a heavy write load it will over-exercise an SSD, and if it isn't, then the performance hit is sustainable (and it is one of the easier things to do).