Conclusions
Contents
It is hard to verify the real advantage of a hybrid hard disk drive. Synthetic tests do not take advantage of the SSD portion, since the drive controller only places data there after it “learns” its frequently accessed data. But even in those tests, the Seagate Desktop SSHD 2 TB unit did not disappoint, being faster than a similar conventional hard disk drive in several tests.
In the PCMark 8 test, which simulates “real world” utilization, the Seagate hybrid drive showed its weapons. It performed very well, which indicates that in the day-by-day usage of the computer, booting the operating system, and launching programs, this drive will be better than a conventional hard drive.
It is commonly said that the best configuration nowadays is to have an SSD unit as the boot drive, and a traditional hard disk as the secondary drive, since the price of large SSDs is still prohibitive. But the Seagate Desktop HDD is the best of two worlds: it combines a huge storage capacity with the speed boost of an SSD unit.