Have you thought about going back to HDD for primary storage on your desktop?

[cbn]

Have you thought about going back to HDD for primary storage on your desktop?

Or if not for yourself.....a family member's desktop machine?

Example: Maybe instead of having a 256GB 2.5" SSD plus random size HDD for secondary storage......a single much larger capacity HDD (maybe even SSHD) with higher density platters and more cache to replace the SSD and the smaller capacity HDD? EDIT: Another option as I mentioned here would be two smaller HDDs in RAID 0.

 

[sdifox]

Why? Plenty of space on desktop to have both.

 

[UsandThem]

I have thought about going back to a HDD about as much as I have thought about going back to a Super Socket 7 motherboard with a K6-2 CPU.

Ain't going to happen.

In fact, I'm going to be going the exact opposite way to a PCIe drive soon.

 

[mxnerd]

Once you drive, you don't want to ride a bike.

 

[XavierMace]

Not even for a second.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I wouldn't have an HDD in my system unless I had an SSD with it.

I'd have to be pretty hard up to put my OS on that HDD.

I'd put my OS on a second SSD.

The rest of it, I explained elsewhere.

Also, except for my server, whatever HDDs I put in any workstations are likely to be 2.5" spinners.

I just finished putting a cheap SYBA Marvell 92xx 4-port SATA-III card in an available x1 slot of my system. It completes all the possible connections to my ICYDOCK ODD+2HDD[2.5"] hot-swap bay. And I can use those spinners and SSDs as well in trays for those two bays.

Lotta trouble. The ICYDOCK has two SATA ports for each 2.5" device, apparently for SATA-Express or similar. You have to use the ones labeled "HD1." I'd connected to HD2, and couldn't understand why the system didn't see the drive.

Anyway -- I'm wandering. There's always a place for a spinner in my systems that follows this trend. Backup usage makes it simple. If such a spinner is running constantly like other storage devices, it has to be paired with an SSD as a cache.

Maybe this is getting retro, I can't say. I just want to make it all fit for my convenience. Heh-- Magician gave me score of about 8,000 MB/s sequential reads for a 2.5" Seagate Barracuda 5,400 RPM disk today.

Now . . . how did I do that? It looks like it's all gonna work for me!

 

[jhansman]

Heavens no. There isn't a spinner that could keep up with my 850 EVO; the only one in my system is a 7200 rpm WD Blue that I use for archival purposes.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

My spinner would keep up with your 850 EVO, but it has 50 GB of a 960 EVO M.2 behind it. And -- it would only keep up with your EVO if I'd run programs or accessed data from it at least once -- to do it again.

 

[DaveSimmons]

No.

I don't build PCs for anyone but myself, and I can afford SSDs for both OS and storage.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Heck no. Even old SSDs like the OCZ Agility 3 in my HTPC are "gone to plaid" compared to ANY spinner for OS / program duty.

 

[jhansman]

I can't imaging why I would want to go back to technology that will eventually fail mechanically (yes, I know that SSDs don't live forever), adds heat and noise to my system, and just reeks of the 20th century. Might as well load it up with DOS 3.3 and Wordperfect......

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I can't imaging why I would want to go back to technology that will eventually fail mechanically (yes, I know that SSDs don't live forever), adds heat and noise to my system, and just reeks of the 20th century. Might as well load it up with DOS 3.3 and Wordperfect......

Better than the translation getting scrambled and the SSD instantly going poof.
Granted, it used to happen a lot more in the earlier days of SSDs, but it's why I never trust SSDs with an only copy of data and mine are always backed / mirrored to spinners.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Better than the translation getting scrambled and the SSD instantly going poof.
Granted, it used to happen a lot more in the earlier days of SSDs, but it's why I never trust SSDs with an only copy of data and mine are always backed / mirrored to spinners.

Hard drives sometimes suffer the "click of death."

It's not sane to trust one of anything with data that you care about. Or multiple of anything kept in a single location.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Hard drives sometimes suffer the "click of death."
It's not sane to trust one of anything with data that you care about. Or multiple of anything kept in a single location.

True, but the freezer trick usually gives you a shot at grabbing some data off (worked with a few DeathStars aka 60GXPs I had back in the day), whereas an SSD is insta-gibbed.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I can't imaging why I would want to go back to technology that will eventually fail mechanically (yes, I know that SSDs don't live forever), adds heat and noise to my system, and just reeks of the 20th century. Might as well load it up with DOS 3.3 and Wordperfect......

(a) Capacity. (b) you don't have to power them up from time to time to maintain the data -- as with your SSD devices. And -- I forgot -- (c) they're cheap. But like I also said (d) -- backup.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Wat?


No.

 

[ronbo613]

SSD for system drive and high capacity 7200rpm hard drives for bulk storage. Works great and still have money for food. Why change?

 

[cbn]

Also consider how the drives are arranged.

For example, with a budget of $140 for storage a person could buy a $70 240GB 2.5" 2.5" SSD or 120GB PCIe 3.0 x 4 SSD plus $70 2TB 3.5" 7200rpm drive with 64MB cache like this Seagate Barracuda.....vs. a $140 5TB 7200rpm drive with 128MB cache like this Toshiba X300.

Assuming 1.5 TB total storage is used in both scenarios the 5TB drive would be faster than the 240GB + 2TB drive in some metrics.

Furthermore, I am wondering if RAM is high enough how much less the SSD advantage would be?

 

[Elixer]

There is no better bang for the buck than the OS on a SSD, and most everything else on the HD.
There are just too many advantages to a SSD to go back to a spinner.

Heck, it already is painful when you have to work on a customer's machine that does have a HD, and you are busy waiting...and waiting...and waiting...and did I mention waiting--especially on laptops!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well . . . "not my machine." Not exactly.

You'd just wonder how long before they stop selling the HDDs. I think it will be a long, long time. Capacity is way ahead of available SSDs, or it stays ahead -- for now. 2TB Sammy 960 Pro -- $1,200 and change? 3TB HDD -- maybe $100.

I gave up my ISRT configuration with the OS on a VelociRaptor around 2013. And I've given up using Intel's ISRT feature, because it requires RAID storage mode and only allows caching one drive per SSD. But I haven't given up caching -- for either SATA SSD-to-NVMe, or HDD-to-NVMe.

When can I get a 2TB SSD for $200?

 

[MongGrel]

Have been using a SSD for OS and a HDD for storage myself on several rigs myself awhile now I guess, even on a few I've built for others.

Still use two older Sammy EVO 840's in dual on an add in SATA3 card in RAID 0 on the X58 MOBO and 4x WD 1 TB RE3's in RAID 10 on an old Areca 1210 controller in the main rig.

I'd never rip out a SSD for the OS these days, but adding a HDD for storage is pretty common.

 

[JimmiG]

If they came up with a 4+ TB SSHD with >250 GB of SSD cache and good caching algorithms, then maybe. However current SSHD's only have ~8 GB of SSD cache and terrible caching algorithms.

Never going back to purely HDD, though. SSD's were the last missing piece to make my PC feel as responsive as my Amiga + HDD did in 1995.

 

[CakeMonster]

SSD for system drive and high capacity 7200rpm hard drives for bulk storage. Works great and still have money for food. Why change?

This is what I don't get. I always go with 5400/5900rpm to avoid heat and that old grinding noise. I don't see the point of 7200rpm for regular consumers with SSD anymore.

 

[PliotronX]

Nooooooo. For extra storage, usb hard drives and cloud storage are cheap. SSDs are a must.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

This is what I don't get. I always go with 5400/5900rpm to avoid heat and that old grinding noise. I don't see the point of 7200rpm for regular consumers with SSD anymore.

Interesting, and that's the thing . . . I used to look at VelociRaptors, WD Black drives -- all of them -- comparing throughput specs. If you could get 10,000 RPM without the heat, you would do that.

This time around, the only spinners that go in my system are high-end 2.5" consumer drives -- sometimes touted as "laptop," otherwise called "2.5" internal." 5,400 RPM. The caching scheme I use has left me feeling that it "doesn't matter."

But I'm not going to write DVRs to an SSD, nor even cache an HDD where they accumulate.

On the other end, I might break down and buy a 1TB NVMe M.2 drive -- a "Pro" model -- next year, maybe later. If I do, though, 800 GB will house my OS, and up to 200 GB will cache an SATA SSD and maybe one spinner.