Now that the legendary snapshot software "FirstdefenseISR" (InstantRecovery) was born again I noticed that my 120GB SSD (OCZ-Agility3) would not be big enough for the way I use the snapshot software. So I decided to buy a Hybrid drive (Seagate 2TB ST2000DX001). I Thought I might give my impression about a hybrid drive if someone is contemplating whether to buy one or not. The price diference is not that big really, SSHD is only about $60 cheaper than a moderate SSD with 256GB here in Sweden, but 2 terabytes storage is 2 terabytes storage I have not done any advanced testing with hard drive testing software, just my senses and Windows performance check. The boot process takes about 10 seconds longer (from 15 on the SSD to 25 seconds on SSHD until you are at the login screen and after that maybe 20 seconds until everything is loaded, but I do have alot of software that loads at boot) Windows Performance score drops from 7,8 to 5,9 for the hard drive (the rest of the tests has the same score of 8,1) But this test is done only after 3 or 4 of reboots (I understand that with a hybrid drive there is a learning period for the drive to optimize how it works for best performance) I cant say that program starts is much slower. Palemoon 64, wich is the software that I use the most, maybe takes a second or two longer to start.
Why don't you use the hybrid drive to store snapshots of your SSD? It'd be safer than using one drive for everything.
I guess you mean archives? because you can not store snapshots on an external drive with IR. But it is a good idea! Havent thought of it that way. Maybe I´ll do that when I dont need so many snapshots.
Sounds like Id be finding an alternative. You should never store snapshots or recovery images on the drive that they are made of.
I noticed you said external drives. Does that mean it can store snapshots on a separate internal drive? That's what I would do, with archives on an external just in case.
No, sorry for bad chice of words, I meant "external" from the system drive. It stores the snapshots on the system drive but "archives" on a different drive (external, USB, DVD, Network and so on). The archives you can then import as an snapshot. I guess that is a good practice but I use an imaging backup solution to make differential back images of the system drive so I dont see that as a problem.
The better comparison for hybrid drives is to compare their performance with standard hard disk drives. They don't really compare with full SSD drives. Hard drives have integrated "buffers" - typically 32 - 64Mb of cache memory to improve performance. Standard drives use regular RAM as buffers. Hybrid drives use faster SSD technologies for the buffer memory. But the rest of the drive (platters, read/write heads on mechanic arms, rotation motors, and stepping motors) is exactly the same. So being primarily mechanical, a hybrid drive will always be closer in performance to a standard hard drive than a SSD. That said, because the price difference between a standard and hybrid drive is so little, especially if you spread the difference over the life of the drive, hybrid drives are surely worth considering - if full SSD is not in the budget.
Hi Whitedragon While normally I'd agree, Instant Recovery is not an imaging program and is a bit unique in the way it works. Snapshots have to be stored on the c: drive as they are bootable, archives can be stored anywhere. Pete
I migrated from a Samsung 500GB Sata-HDD to Samsung EVO 840 SSD. Bootup time seems to be only a few seconds better. (8-10 secs vs 15-16 secs including windows7 splash screen). Starting software isn;t that much quicker. But maybe because my AV (nod32-7) scans the software all the time before loading. But even that seems a bit odd. PS by migrated I did not mean I migrated the OS. I freshly installed it on my SSD with AHCI enabled. Sata-ports are Sata-2
