Hybrid Hard Drives - Are They Worth It?

[tags]seagate, western digitial, hard drive, harddrive, hybrid, flash, memory[/tags]

We are starting to see a few different Hybrid Hard Drives on the market today.   So what is a Hybrid Hard Drive?   Simply stated it is a traditional hard drive that has up to 1 GB flash drive connected to it.   Information is written and stored on the flash drive to help reduce spinning of the platter.

Benefits

• Decreased power consumption
• Decreased heat generation
• Decreased noise levels
• Improved reliablity
• Improved performance

Drawbacks

• Increased seek time for non cached data
• Increased cost
• Increased frequency of spin-up
• Lower recoverability
• Lower lifetime

Conclusion:

At this time, I do not think these drives are worth it.   For some application, it will speed up your computing.   For others it will slow down.   I am also not a fan of lowering recoverablity of the drive.   I have had to recover too many drives in the past to chance this (plug for always having backups).   I will wait until the Solid State Drives have decent compacity and price points.