(OT) Questions About SSDs for a Laptop

[David Schwartz]

Consider a hybrid drive, made by Seagate.

They have a cache (4, 8, or 16GB) that acts like an SSD, and they say you get 90% of the performance of SSDs. I’ve used them in the past on Mac Mini’s and they really make a HUGE difference in performane over a regular drive.

Apple’s hybrid drives are similar, but you need their disk manager to properly work with them. Otherwise, they look like two separate drives — a small SSD and a larger spinning drive. The Seagate drives only look like one device.

I’ve got a MacBook Pro with a large SSD on it. It kicks ass! I find that I get extremely impatient now any time I’m working with a machine that doesn’t have a hybrid or SSD drive in it. The difference in performance is striking.

You still want to backup your drives periodically — it has nothing to do with the reliability of SSDs. You’re far more likely to have your machine stolen than to have the drive fail. In which case, a backup onboard is useless.

USB 3.0 is extremely fast, backing up 60 GB in minutes. So get one of them and backup regularly.

-David 



On Sep 2, 2014, at 10:23 AM, Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:

> I am looking at a new Linux laptop, and I have the option of a mSata SSD drive or a conventional drive. I am considering a 1 TB Samsung 840 EVO mSata SSD for the OS and all my partitions. 
> 
> 1. Are there any reasons not to use a SSD for the full disk, as opposed to just for the OS? Other than saving money, as a small SSD would cost a lot less!
> 
> 2. I have seen recommendations on the net to backup the drive to a spinning drive. The laptop has a couple of bays, so I could put a back up drive in one of the bays. Does this make sense, or have SSDs matured enough that they will last like a spinning drive?
> 
> 3. Anything else I should be aware of when moving to the world of SSDs?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark
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