I had one a while back, when ssd's were ridiculously expensive. Not impressed, now ssd's are pretty darn reasonable and they actually do deliver better performance on a laptop, faster boot and program load times and using less power. I have managed to live with the smaller size constraints of ssd's, I kind of like the size now as it forced me to use external drives for data and the boot drive only for programs, the other side benefit of smaller boot drives is that you can quickly create ISO backups or clone drives.

If you're going to have only one drive in a computer then this hybrid tech might make some kind of sense e.g. in a laptop. I know Apple were offering them as an option in their laptops and they did perform.
For anything else use SSDs for what they're good at and spinning disks for what they're good at.

Bob.

I was hoping it would do the size up-bump without needing to add an external data drive (= clutter). Trying it tonight, so will report back. FWIW Seagate/Acronis Discwizard does not seem to recognise drives connected via USB (USB-Sata caddy) , so just picked up an esata cable today - fingers x-ed.

geoff

About 15 months ago I configured a Lenovo T430 laptop with every option available. I wanted the largest hard drive possible, so I didn't get an SSD, but they offer a large built-in SSD that is "hard-wired" as a cache. I opted for that.

Boot time and overall performance (Windows 7 64-bit) are extraordinarily fast, so the SSD cache is clearly doing its job.

Having said that, most posts I've read on other forums claim that using an SSD to cache the boot drive is much, much slower than actually using an SSD as the boot drive, I have no way, with this laptop, of measuring that claim, but since I know a little about disk caching, I don't see why there would be much difference, if the cache operates correctly, and if the SSD is large enough to to hold all the files used during boot and normal operations.

So, in summary, on my Lenovo T430 laptop, the SSD cache really speeds up operation.

It could possibly depend on whether the cache drive retains the boot files when the system is powered down. If it doesn't, then the system really does have to boot from the regular HD each time anyway.

I still wonder why boot times are so important. Booting is a *very* rare occurrence for me. My desktop gets rebooted maybe 3 times a year and my laptop maybe 6 times. Are there people out there who boot up their computer so often that a couple minutes really matters?

The cache is definitely retained between boots, and the laptop definitely boots from SSD.

As for not re-booting very often, I would not recommend that. I re-boot several times a day. Windows is better than it was, but there are still all sorts of issues that only get cleared from a a re-boot.

I boot once a day, in the morning and the system is on the whole day. I don't leave it in standby because if found rather the opposite; certain hardware drivers and software doesn't come back out of standby or hibernation and then I would have to reboot it anyways.

I have the same issues with standby, although I do use it on my laptops.

Just to be clear: the problems I am referring to usually relate to programs not entirely clearing from memory; crashes that don't entirely resolve, and similar issues.

As just one example, while I absolutely love iZotope RX (I'm using RX3 Advanced), it is somewhat prone to crashes (it has to do with the rapid start/stop approach to my editing). When it does crash, it does not clear from memory, and even using Task Manager to kill the remaining process does not work. What is more, I cannot run RX3 again until I re-boot.

I have many more examples, not just on my computers, but on client computers. Also, when people call for help, about one out of four times I can solve their problem simply by having them reboot.

I get issues with the monitor calibration software, coming back from standby sometimes it applies the color profile sometimes it doesn't.

You guys really re-boot multiple times? Which OS?

As you know I'm still happily stuck back in XPpro-land, but this desktop system runs 24/7 and does all my editing including everything else I do with a PC. A re-boot is a rare event. Even my laptop doesn't do re-boots; it just hibernates and then comes back. But perhaps these systems are not being pushed as hard as others.

Just to be clear, I am talking about re-boots that I initiate, not the extremely rare re-boot that results from a catastrophic hardware or software malfunction.

I run Windows XP 32-bit most of the time, but run Windows 7 64-bit on the same computer when I absolutely must (mostly for Vegas 13). Nine of my ten other computers also still run Win XP 32-bit. There's nothing wrong with Windows 7&8, but since they provide absolutely zero benefit, measured in getting something done more quickly, I'd rather not spend the time to reconfigure each computer.

At my age you become even more aware of the basic fact of life that every minute you waste is a minute you never get back.

Precisely johnmeyer, i am as old as well or maybe older, and I really do not choose to waste time anymore.

Well, not wasting time is the big reason i don't reboot very often. I rarely ever see any stability issues because of it. Most of my (very few) reboots are necessitated by either OS updates or antivirus updates.

Standby OK on my laptop (i7 can live for a week, whereas my previous Core2 one would kill the battery in a day).

On my 'office' desktop, about 1 time in 10 it will BSOD coming out of standby - possibly memory corruption occurring while slumbering ....

My Video/DAW computers are either on or off - never sleep - just one more thing to potentially get complicated !


geoff

Finally got it to clone with Discwizard, which seems fine when it works ! Saw new drive as 'Seagate' when e-sata, but couldn't recognise it connected via USB2 or 3.

Now - the new drive works. First couple of boots where slower, with a device driver loading and some other disc activity while it presumably sorted a few things out within itself, but after a few reboots seems almost as quick as the previous pure SSD. But now I have a 600GB+ data partition ;-) . A few this seem not quite a snappy, but could be my imagination.

I'm not planning on replacing it with a pure HDD to compare speed during work. But I guess the next change is when huge SSDs are inexpensive and more durable wrt write-degradation.

geoff