Install windows 7 on a hybrid hard drive. Speed ​​up your computer using SSHD. Reasons to buy a new drive

In this article I will tell you what a hybrid is HDD why it is better than the HDD we are used to, as well as the pros and cons compared to SSD.

For most ordinary users I will now reveal a big secret - the weakest (read slowest) link in the chain computer system is a hard drive or hard drive. You can have the most fast processor, the best video card and a bunch random access memory, but the 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 their main boot disk for the operating system, which is very justified, but the high price and small amount of memory does not make it possible to use them more widely.

Manufacturing hard drives is very complex technological process, since it has many moving parts, which greatly limits the reduction in device size without losing certain characteristics (which is probably why so many modern hard drives fail now). 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 installation 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, given the structure file system,decides which data elements to place in 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 reference

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 productivity disk subsystem, especially in netbooks and laptops, where hard disks less productive and you cannot install a second disk, 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.

For the price they are this moment significantly superior to conventional hard drives. For example, at the time of writing, a 1 TB Seagate Desktop SSHD model ST1000DX001 cost about 6,000 rubles, and its competitor 1Tb Western Digital WD Blue SSHD WD10J31X about 5500 rub. At the same time, a regular 1 TB hard drive Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 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 you to increase overall performance system in which they are installed and 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 of the SSHD was to provide a low-cost replacement for SSDs and HDDs in laptops and mobile computers completed successfully. 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 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.

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. What can you say about such discs?

Hello friends! Very good question. Yes, the SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) hybrid hard drive is 30% faster than a conventional hard drive, and 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?

Production technology hard drives(the only computer component that has moving mechanical parts) has long reached a dead end and it is almost impossible to increase the performance of a hard drive through production, as evidenced by the appearance of SSDs and SSHD hybrid hard drives on the market. 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 Windows boot 8.1 installed on a regular HDD occurs within 35-40 seconds, and on an SSHD - 20 seconds, on a regular solid state drive 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 drive configuration option is system unit For a typical home user, it looks like this: you 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 (volume) 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 currently 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 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 back side drive we see a special printed circuit board Adaptive Memory, with 8 GB of fast MLC memory and a “hybrid” controller soldered.

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 read and write 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 press 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 hybrid SSHD 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 the 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.

Author IMORAL SOCIOPATH asked a question in the section Software

Tell me how to properly install Windows 7/8 on SSHD? and got the best answer

Reply from †Codename87†[guru]
What makes you think that everything is so divided between them? And how can this even be?! And why the hell is all this?! Some kind of fuss, and also useless. I bought a regular SSD and installed the system on it. I bought a regular HDD and use it as a file dump. This is what many people do.
As far as I understand, SSHD is the same HDD, only with an additional, so to speak, memory module (faster and more voluminous), which is used for cache, that’s all, i.e. it speeds up copying to some extent: useful on small kilobyte files and is practically useless on GB files, because the cache is not rubber. But to divide Windows into parts - this is the first time I’ve heard about this in my years. Most likely you misunderstood something.
†Codename87†
Enlightened
(48810)
What exactly bothers you? hidden sections whether?
Show me some screenshot, so let’s say it’s proof of all this, that Windows is so broken into parts.

Answer from Leri[guru]
The system is generally installed, all on just one active media...
there is no such thing as secondary files, here additional programs You can then at least install it on the external one...

Answer from SanSej[guru]
As far as I know, the pre-installed Windows is done like this: 2 disks are created, formatted. Then the first (which should be C:, system) volume is deleted. And the system is installed in an empty space (it appears at the front). In this type of installation, 2 partitions are created from scratch:
1.Hidden partition that contains the Windows bootloader
2.Disk C: system with Windows itself.
With this installation, the bootloader is less likely to be subject to virus attacks and crashes less often.
In your case, install Windows on a completely empty SSD
Disk D: then you can make it in Windows as a logical volume from the HDD (or several volumes-D: E: ...)

Answer from Alexander Ivanov[guru]
Perhaps by “secondary” you mean the paging and hibernation file. So it’s better to disable hibernation altogether, and it’s better to keep the paging file on the system partition

Answer from Evgeniy Kushnarev[guru]
if 64-128 gigs, all for the system. and important programs. the rest to disk2.HDD for working with it without hassle - a utility according to the platform - AMD or for Intel. Let SSD Tweaker watch. and downloading. Movies, videos, everything on the HDD is desirable.

Answer from IvAN[guru]
There is no need to mislead anyone here with your speculations. Hybrid disks are practically ordinary disks and the SSD part there is controlled by firmware to slightly speed up the operation of the system as a whole, but not dramatically. It is too small to store axis files on it, it is just a fast second-level cache in processors. There is no division of the system there and cannot be!!! Here is an article from seagate: www. seagate.com/ru/ru/do-more/laptop-sshd-upgrade-master-dm/
Normal cloning from an old disk to a new hybrid.

Answer from Brain Dumovitsky[guru]

Answer from . [guru]
Installation and Windows setup 7 on SSD drive>link

Answer from _ _ [newbie]
Don't make problems for yourself! Everything is done simply, you split the disk into two partitions, system and logical, and install Windows!

Many people have already heard about the new hybrid hard drives, but most are wondering if they are worth buying? Or maybe it’s better to take hybrids instead SSD drive small volume (or large, have a lot of money), install a 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:

• using \" quick start\” Windows 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 a high speed of 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.