Planning on upgrading hard drive from HDD to SSHD, any tips?

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  1. Posts : 74
    Windows 10 Home 64-Bit
       #1

    Planning on upgrading hard drive from HDD to SSHD, any tips?


    Since the holiday season is here, I thought it would be a good idea to spend some money on upgrading my PC. One of the things I'm thinking of upgrading is the hard drive. It's a 7200 RPM 1 TB HDD that I've had ever since I bought my system it came in with.

    When it comes to hard drives, I've always preferred disk space over loading times as I'm used to waiting patiently for a PC to boot up or other things taking time to load. As of right now, however, I'm thinking of upgrading the hard drive to something faster since one of the games I'm interested in getting in to requires something faster than an HDD to have at least decent loading times, for multiplayer that is.

    I don't think I'll want an SSD because I like to keep some of my games installed (and most of these games take up a lot of disk space) and I don't want to spend no more than $100 (before tax and potentially shipping) for a new drive. So, I decided to go for a compromise with an SSHD. There's a SSHD I found on Newegg that I'm thinking of buying because it's a 2 TB drive for $99.99 which is only about $20 more expensive than the 1 TB option so that's a good deal for me.

    Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb Internal Hard Drive ST2000DX002 - Newegg.com

    Now if the drive I'm planning on buying is a good idea to get, I want to know if there's any tips or suggestions about transferring the content from my old hard drive in to my new one. I have used Macrium Reflect to transfer my C: drive to my laptop's hard drive through a network transfer because of a long and complicated issue that's pretty much said here: Wanting to use unallocated space on my hard drive, any dos and don'ts? - Windows 10 Forums

    I assume it's easy to do, although of course there are considerations to deal with when doing it. Just wanting to make sure I know everything what to do and not to do before making the appropriate actions. That is all!
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  2. Posts : 42,737
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #2

    You won't reduce your boot time significantly by using a SSHD, if that's what you were hoping. Nor will it reduce load times of large programs. The (small) SSD buffer will likely not contain the files - or part of any large file- if it is loaded occasionally, so no performance increase.

    See e.g.
    What is an SSHD? A Guide to Hybrid Drives
    https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/tech-i...shd-master-ti/
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  3. Posts : 4,453
    Win 11 Pro 22000.708
       #3

    dalchina said:
    You won't reduce your boot time significantly by using a SSHD, if that's what you were hoping. Nor will it reduce load times of large programs. The (small) SSD buffer will likely not contain the files - or part of any large file- if it is loaded occasionally, so no performance increase.

    See e.g.
    What is an SSHD? A Guide to Hybrid Drives
    https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/tech-i...shd-master-ti/
    It appears that the links don't entirely support your opinions. I can't comment from personal experience, as I've never owned an SSHD, and I don't keep a lot of games installed.

    The FireCuda has an 8 GB SSD cache. I have no idea how helpful the OP would find it for loading large games. Seems like it could be large enough to help with the OS, perhaps at the expense of everything else.

    My personal recommendation would be to get a large-ish SSD. 1TB 2.5" SATA SSDs can be had at Newegg for not much over $100. Combine that with a $50 2TB spinner for storage of things that are less frequently used, and get an uncompromising storage solution. (There will be free shipping, but I don't know whether Newegg will collect sales tax for Indiana. They certainly do for Connecticut.)

    It may be convenient to clone the OS drive with Macrium. I have most recently done it with the single-purpose software that is available from some manufacturers (WD, Seagate, Samsung, etc.) for use with their drives.
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  4. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #4

    I would not waste your money on the SSHD. I have one in one of my computers and can't tell much of a speed difference. I would get a 500 GB SSD for $80 and keep your 1 TB HDD as a data/backup drive.
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  5. Posts : 42,737
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #5

    bobkn said:
    It appears that the links don't entirely support your opinions. I can't comment from personal experience, as I've never owned an SSHD, and I don't keep a lot of games installed.

    The FireCuda has an 8 GB SSD cache. I have no idea how helpful the OP would find it for loading large games. Seems like it could be large enough to help with the OS, perhaps at the expense of everything else.

    My personal recommendation would be to get a large-ish SSD. 1TB 2.5" SATA SSDs can be had at Newegg for not much over $100. Combine that with a $50 2TB spinner for storage of things that are less frequently used, and get an uncompromising storage solution.
    I'm interested that you challenge my opinions, as you are entitled to do, of course, but then recommend an SSD without presenting any justification for that or citing any evidence. So could you advise the basis of your preference please? Thanks!
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  6. Posts : 74
    Windows 10 Home 64-Bit
    Thread Starter
       #6

    So I guess an SSHD isn't worth it I assume? I'm not saying I'm expecting SSD speeds with an SSHD on anything, I'm just saying I would like to see an improvement to some degree over my old hard drive. Nothing dramatic is all.

    Okay, to describe the reason why I want something faster than an HDD is that one particular game takes forever to load stuff on my old hard drive. The game in particular is DCS: World. Hopping into multiplayer sessions with my friends takes forever, longer than other games I've ever played have taken. I guess it's because of the size of the map and everything that makes the game take forever to load. I would like to see an improvement particularly in this area since it's basically my biggest complaint.

    By the sounds of it, I guess you all are trying to explain that an SSHD will only make little to no improvement over an HDD. If that's right, then I guess I could go for an SSD to go with my HDD instead. The only problem I've noticed is that my motherboard doesn't seem support any RAID functions if I need to utilize my new SSD and HDD simultaneously if that's going to be a roadblock.

    My MoBo is an ASUS H110M-A (H110 series): LGA 1151 - Wikipedia

    Anything else?
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  7. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #7

    You don't want to mix an SSD and HDD in a raid array. You want the SSD connected to a SATA port and the SATA controller to be in AHCI mode, not raid.
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  8. Posts : 4,453
    Win 11 Pro 22000.708
       #8

    dalchina said:
    I'm interested that you challenge my opinions, as you are entitled to do, of course, but then recommend an SSD without presenting any justification for that or citing any evidence. So could you advise the basis of your preference please? Thanks!
    Did I touch a nerve? Sorry. But from the first link you provided:

    "Desktop SSHD can load the latest games twice as fast as a standard 2TB HDD. This drive provides a hefty chunk of storage while saving money to spend on enhancing other parts of the PC – such as a better GPU, CPU or peripherals."

    That's pretty much the opposite of your opinion. I tend to agree with you, but I think that you made a poor choice of a link to support your ideas.

    What sort of justification were you looking for? Maybe a 1TB class SSD is too expensive for the OP. Perhaps a 500GB class one, at roughly half the price, would be better. (As Navy recommended.)

    On my desktops, one has a 400GB NVME drive, and the lesser has a 256GB PCI-E X2 drive. My laptop has a 500GB SATA SSD as its sole drive. The laptop boots the fastest of the three.
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  9. Posts : 14,046
    Windows 11 Pro X64 22H2 22621.1848
       #9

    I have a 500Gb Samsung EVO 860 SSD for my boot drive. I picked it up on sale for $79 from Amazon, free shipping, 2 day delivery.

    There is one on sale there now for $72: Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E500B/AM)

      My Computers


  10. Posts : 928
    Win 10
       #10

    I also agree on an SSD. I have a 250 gig WD blue SSD and a 1 TB WD black for my spinner. Of course, I have the data files on the 1TB spinner.

    I personally will never own a PC without an SSD.

    90% of my clients all end up with SSD's as replacement drives when the spinners die. I always get praise about how much faster the computers are.
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