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Mac Pro 3,1 - SSD vs. 10K RPM HDD
- Thread starter BigYellow
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My vote is 2 as 4 (Fusion drive) won't work.
Then option 3, then 1.
Having gone from a velociraptor to an SSD I would NEVER go back.
Then option 3, then 1.
Having gone from a velociraptor to an SSD I would NEVER go back.
Just curious, do you have info that the Seagate Hybrid SSHD drives won't work - or do you just mean Apple's Fusion?
Funny how people think the idea of a combo drive like Fusion will prevail. It will die soon when SSD's become more affordable over time, which is inevitable.
The Seagate hybrid drive is dead in the water. The Apple Fusion is a better idea, but it's not going to live too long, especially on mobile devices such as laptops.
The Seagate hybrid drive is dead in the water. The Apple Fusion is a better idea, but it's not going to live too long, especially on mobile devices such as laptops.
Agree. I'd rather recoup my battery life elsewhere. Not to mention the mobility aspect and vibration loss.
Fusion Drive - the Seagate drives act just like a normal HDD and therefore have zero compatibility issues.
Hybrid drives are NOT dead in the water. Whilst their long term projections suggest they are a stop-gap until SSDs catch and surpass HDDs for GB per £/$, they are a very useful technology.
I currently use a Seagate drive in a server of mine which is a cache + apps drive, I need lots of space for temporary transfers (HDD) but 4GB of fast storage (which is the apps + data caches for those apps). Perfect use for one.
Not to mentions in laptops!
Both HDDs and SSDs continue to improve on the GB/$ metic... and they do not seem to be converging. Hence, for the foreseeable future... HDDs will continue to out perform SSDs on GB/$ (but obviously not on IOPS/$)
The real question is when the usable GB/$ gets to the point where SSDs are inexpensive enough for the capacity users need at a price they can afford.
So for a hypothetical example. If right now, in 2013, people had a choice of two "base model" configurations at the same price... one being a 2TB SSD and the other being a 10TB HDD... I predict that a lot of people (but not all) would be buying the SSD only model even though the GB/$ would still favor the HDD. I believe that many would prioritize SSD benefits (IOPS) over having more capacity that would go unused for their needs.
/Jim
It is very dubious that SSD (leveraging current Flash technology) will every catch and pass HDD in terms of GB/$. Flash is about to hit a physics wall before it can catch up. ( as Flash gets smaller it starts to be more unstable and ever more complicated error correction has to be engaged). There is very little likelihood that double or triple digit TB (and up) is ever going to catch HDDs in mainstream usage. Likewise for PB and up range in more centralized machine room settings.
What will happen is that Flash SSDs will get cheap enough that most users can get by with a "low enough" GB/$ ratio that is close to what they have built up expectations from a long history with HDDs. The other issue is that high single digit TB drives will be "good enough" for most people. Not everyone is going to become massive data pack rats. ( duplicating non unique, e.g., movies/media, data becomes an every larger problem as scale up to massively large libraries)
In contrast, HDDs will just keep cranking up the GB (while keeping $ relatively constant).
http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...ough_Seagate_promises_60TB_drives_this_decade
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storag...ves_Densities_to_Double_by_2016_Analysts.html
HDD's GB/$ isn't standing still and Flash as some problems coming. Flash can catch up to where HDDs have been, but pass; not really (that typically is just hand waving analysis ).
The major problem with some other solid-state solution catching and passing HDDs is that none of them ( besides RAM which isn't going to compete at all on GB/$ ) have been deployed in the mainstream. Will they scale cost effectively to multiple PB shipped per year is an open question.
The single primary competitive advantage that HDDs have left is storage density. The HDDs folks are going to throw billions of R&D at cranking that number higher. Flash has multiple dimensions of improvement they'll be perusing.
Hybrid Flash+spinning drives will probably become the mainstream "HDD" storage. ( just like how HDDs all now have RAM inside. It will just be three layers RAM+Flash+platters. ). They probably are not a stop-gap. They are going to be permanent offerings.
Fundamentally, flies against the increase integration trends in the overall computer industry. Most PCs are going from Boxes+monitors to laptops. Numerous devices are going to SoC implementations. The on going trend to "smaller and more integrated" has a 40 year track record that doesn't show signs of stopping.
Apple's solution is a good interim stop gap until Hybrid Drives becomes mature. Apple doesn't have to pick out who has gotten a hybrid implementation right. They just have to pick a good SSD for the utilization they will engage and a good HDDs. They take ownership of distributing the data for now but they'll punt when a couple of Hybrid vendors demonstrate they can pulled it off.
Laptops are always making demands to condense components into less space. A single 2.5" drive is smaller than a 2.5" drive and a mSATA stick.
Whether 2.5" drives stay in Laptops long term is more so driven by the top end storage requirement laptop users are going to have long term. As long as that keeps going up for a large fraction of laptop users the Hybrid 2.5" drive will stick around.
All-in-one desktops... in the same boat with an even larger fraction of users with upper half percentile storage capacity demands.
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Applies the SSD to what you will be primarily using it for. Especially, if have 1-2 empty drive bays. If later change to a more even split get an even faster OS/Apps/User-directory drive for OS X that is likely less expensive because buying it in the future. (e.g., another 120-160GB drive a year from now will likely be less expensive. )