[illumos-Discuss] SSD vs "hybrid" drive - any advice?

[Andre van Eyssen]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2011, Gordon Ross wrote:

> These "hybrid" drives look kind of interesting, i.e. for about $100,
> one can get:
>  Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s
> with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive
>  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591
> And then for about $400 one can get an 250GB SSD, such as:
>  Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State
> Drive (SSD)
>  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443
>
> Anyone have experience with either one?  (good or bad)

I have a Momentus XT in one of my laptops. It makes a big difference, but 
that's mainly because of the workload on that machine - it runs Windows. I 
wouldn't expect to see the same clear performance improvement on a 
development machine. Basically, if you have a lot of static data that gets 
read regularly, it'll move into the SSD cache. If things aren't static, it 
can't really offer much.

Ideal for making Starcraft 2 fire up quickly, though!

-- 
Andre van Eyssen.
mail: andre at purplecow.org          jabber: andre at interact.purplecow.org
purplecow.org: UNIX for the masses http://www2.purplecow.org
purplecow.org: PCOWpix             http://pix.purplecow.org