Tag: Ultrabook

Seagate Upgrades Hybrids, Phases Out 7,200RPM HDDs

Seagate's New SSHD FamilySeagate made two important statements on two successive days – March 4 and 5: First, the company disclosed plans to phase out its 7,200 RPM 2.5″ notebook HDDs, and second, Seagate announced a new line of Momentus XT hybrid hard drives, which the company calls: “Solid State Hybrid Drives” or “SSHDs.”

Are these two announcements related?  Well, The SSD Guy thinks they are!

Higher-RPM HDDs help to accelerate disk accesses by a small percentage while a hybrid can boost speeds significantly.  According to Seagate, Continue reading “Seagate Upgrades Hybrids, Phases Out 7,200RPM HDDs”

Apple’s Fusion Drive – An SSD Cache for the Macintosh

Apple's Chart of Fusion Drive Performance for the new Mac MiniOn October 23 along with the highly-anticipated announcement of the iPad 4, Apple rolled out new Macintosh computers that for the first time in an Apple product pairs an SSD with a conventional HDD to get the best combination of capacity, speed, and price.  The company calls this its Fusion Drive, not to be confused with Fusion-io’s highly-regarded products.

The SSD Guy did not attend the announcement, and there is little on the Apple website.  I contacted Apple, and they don’t have very much detail to share at this time.  This is important to note, since Continue reading “Apple’s Fusion Drive – An SSD Cache for the Macintosh”

WD Introduces Hybrid HDD

Western Digital's new hybrid HDD is only 5mm thickWestern Digital Corporation on Monday announced that it is sampling its long-awaited hybrid HDD.  WD claims that the 500GB 2.5″ device is the thinnest in the industry at 5mm. So far Seagate has been alone in this field with its Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive.  There are some significant differences between the two drives:

  • Seagate uses SLC flash while WD uses MLC.  There is more than a 10:1 price premium for SLC flash
  • Seagate’s hybrid ships in 750GB and 500GB capacities while WD’s is 500GB
  • Seagate’s device is 9.5mm thick, while WD’s is 5mm

The last point is extremely Continue reading “WD Introduces Hybrid HDD”

PC Caching Software is Not All the Same

NVELO Dataplex Benchmarks Consistently Outperform Intel iSRTThe folks at NVELO recently provided The SSD Guy with some benchmark data comparing their Dataplex software’s performance against the Intel iSRT caching software that is becoming prevalent among Ultrabooks.

For those unaware of these two technologies, they are both caching software that automatically maintains “Hot” data within a low-capacity SSD while leaving “Cold” data on the system HDD. The end result is that the PC performs as if it boasts a large SSD when, in truth, it uses Continue reading “PC Caching Software is Not All the Same”