Welly Wu
December 8th, 2015, 06:13 AM
Not too long ago, I purchased a new Western Digital Blue 3.5" SATA-III 6 GB/s 4.0 TB 5,400 RPM with 8.00 GB MLC NAND FLASH solid state hybrid disk for my 2015 ZaReason Zeto desktop PC system. I can confirm that it just works with Ubuntu 14.04.3 64 bit LTS GNU/Linux like any other disk drive. SSHDs are a compromise among price, performance, and storage capacity. You don't get the fastest or largest of either the SSD portion or the HDD storage capacity, but you do get a significantly lower price compared to higher capacity and faster SSDs or HDDs in direct comparison. What I like about mine so much is that it operates very much like a SSD more so than a HDD. It takes a few hours for the smart Western Digital caching algorithms to learn how I use my desktop PC system and it adjusts accordingly. After a week of using it, it feels snappy and responsive most of the time.
SSHDs are a good choice for those looking to upgrade their desktop or notebook PC speed and storage capacity for a modest price in direct comparison to using SSDs exclusively. Most of them use the slower 5,400 RPM spindle speed especially for 2.5" SSHDs because of the lower electrical power consumption and the quieter performance in real world applications. Desktop SSHDs usually use the faster 7,200 RPM spindle speed up to 2.0 TB while the 3.0+ models use the slower 5,900 or 5,400 RPM spindle speeds.
I trust Western Digital more than Seagate as I have had quite a number of them fail in the past while WD has been nothing if not utterly reliable over many years of heavy usage. SSHDs are noticeably slower than SSDs, but they are also noticeably faster than HDDs too. WD's Blue SSHDs come in 2.5" 1.0 TB and 3.5" 4.0 TB models at this time. I do recommend them over the Seagate SSHDs for long term reliability, but they are more expensive too.
SSHDs solve a problem that will persist until sometime in 2017 when the prices of SSDs will continue to drop gradually and 1.0 TB SSDs should be priced at around $170.00 USD. Until then, SSHDs fulfil a gap that exists nicely and I do recommend that other PC users consider using them as a stop gap measure until SSD prices and capacities get to the point whereby HDDs and SSHDs are obsolete.
SSHDs are a good choice for those looking to upgrade their desktop or notebook PC speed and storage capacity for a modest price in direct comparison to using SSDs exclusively. Most of them use the slower 5,400 RPM spindle speed especially for 2.5" SSHDs because of the lower electrical power consumption and the quieter performance in real world applications. Desktop SSHDs usually use the faster 7,200 RPM spindle speed up to 2.0 TB while the 3.0+ models use the slower 5,900 or 5,400 RPM spindle speeds.
I trust Western Digital more than Seagate as I have had quite a number of them fail in the past while WD has been nothing if not utterly reliable over many years of heavy usage. SSHDs are noticeably slower than SSDs, but they are also noticeably faster than HDDs too. WD's Blue SSHDs come in 2.5" 1.0 TB and 3.5" 4.0 TB models at this time. I do recommend them over the Seagate SSHDs for long term reliability, but they are more expensive too.
SSHDs solve a problem that will persist until sometime in 2017 when the prices of SSDs will continue to drop gradually and 1.0 TB SSDs should be priced at around $170.00 USD. Until then, SSHDs fulfil a gap that exists nicely and I do recommend that other PC users consider using them as a stop gap measure until SSD prices and capacities get to the point whereby HDDs and SSHDs are obsolete.