What exactly is the advantage of this? Sticking an HDD and an SSD in the same chassis makes a certain amount of sense for a 2.5" laptop drive, because in a lot of devices you only have room for a single 2.5" drive. But in a desktop drive? Desktops rarely only have one 3.5" HDD slot. Even my Shuttle XPC has two 3.5" slots, three if you put one in the optical bay... and like many SFF machines, it has an mSATA port on top of that.
Hybrid drives make sense. But this isn't a hybrid drive, it's just two drives in one.
Unless you have a laptop with only one drive bay (Plenty have two!) then I would be more inclined jumping towards Sandisks Readcache SSD's. They're cheap and work well, I have them in my grand parents machines.
Yeah, why not make a hybrid with 128GB? It seems that the largest failing of hybrids is the small SSD cache. You're already paying for the hardware, so why not make it great?
If they get the hybrid software ready by launch time I could see some value to it. Joe User doesn't want to have to worry about saving some files on his fast disk drive, and others on his slow one; but 2 separate drives is kinda pointless.
Assuming they get hybridization working though; I think 3.5" makes more sense than 2.5 though. 2.5" bays have largely vanished from mid-range laptops. At the bottom of the market, the extra $50-75 for an SSD and an HDD is prohibitively expensive. At the top, the OEMs selling big gaming laptops wouldn't be interested; because they've gone full retard and wouldn't be interested in any flash that can't be combined into a 4-way raid-0 for maximum bogo-benchmark scores and warranty claims when the raid barfs.
This is just as dumb as the Black2. I'm a huge WD fan but the Seagate SSHD's are a significantly better implementation than this dual-drive crap. What kind of "gamer" is going to be able to utilize a 120GB SSD. That's like 2 modern games. BF4 and COD-AW are both 50GB and for AW that doesn't even account for the future expansions.
The spec card in the photo clear says: "World's Fastest 4TB Hybrid Drive" further "Engineering sample SATAe Hybrid Drive"
The article states: "the prototype shows off as two separate volumes, although Western Digital is also working on a caching software to make the solution more user friendly"
What gave you the idea they'd release this as two drives?
Since they're calling it a hybrid drive I would expect to see ONE drive in the device manager. If it's seen as two drives then they should at least suggest in the naming scheme for the prototype that the "hybrid" part is still only on paper. It could be a bit misleading to name a prototype a certain way but not clearly state that the main feature mentioned is missing.
People complaining about this being shit as a desktop drive may be correct in that assertion, but the form factor itself is very interesting. In a server scenario, it is quite common to desire bulk storage alongside fast storage, and having both in a single 3.5" unit this becomes very interesting.
An example where this is very useful would be a large database server, where certain tables/indices may be hot (and suitable for SSD), whereas archival/bulk cold data could be stored on a separate magnetic-backed partition.
One option would be 1x 128gb SSD and 1x 4TB, but that means failure of either drive takes down the server. With a unit of this design, instead the failure sharded. With 2x(128gb+4tb) drives, with the SSD and magnetic parts put into separate RAID configurations, a 1U server suddenly saves a LOT of physical space to achieve a high level of reliability.
But on saying all that, often space sensitive server configurations also means 2.5" form factor.
On a server form-factor you won't use 3.5" hard drives except for archiving, and thus using 2 SSD as RAID-1 for caching.
For live storage, you would use a RAID-5 or RAID-6 array (more preferably now a RAID-10) with 2.5" in SFF size-form, and maybe adding a RAID-1 of Server SSD for your DB, all with SAS interface through a RAID card that have a battery.
I don't see cases to use SATA 3.5" hard-drives on servers, except if you do your own trick (and in this case you don't need integrated SSD, you will prefer another cache level using other SSD), and I know it fro mexperience ,I have done it for a file sharing website. (was Technical director and associate)
I see 3.5" all the time in the server space. These drives would make an interesting choice for ceph OSD, put the journal on SSD and the data on HDD. Saves a bit of space.
Finally a high-end hybrid drive! If this implements caching transparent to the OS, like Seagates solutions, it could be of tremendous value for entry-level servers. As far as I know Enterprises charge a lot for SSD caching, whereas client solutions are limited to caching single disks. But with these one could simply put 4 of them in a Raid 5 (or what ever you want) and get an automatic large SSD cache. Although Server 2012 R2 already introduced some SSD-awareness to storage spaces.. but I don't know how good this is.
For my current desktop I'll continue to use Intel SRT with my 60 GB Agility 3, though. Later I could see myself upgrading to a real PCIe M.2 SSD with 256 GB and use 60 GB as HDD cache and 180 GB as OS partition.
Does anyone else think they are 2-3 years behind the times? I wanted this 2-3 years ago, in laptop form factor, with actually intelligent software to manage what stays on the SSD (i.e. entire OS + most programs + recent documents). But they STILL don't have a laptop hybrid drive that offers truly SSD-like performance.
And they have now missed the boat. I don't need a product like this anymore when I can get a 500GB SSD for around $200 without even waiting for a sale.
By the time their mobile solution comes out, large SSDs will be even cheaper and this will be a solution strictly for the low-end of the market. A huge opportunity missed by Western Digital to bridge the gap between price, performance, and storage capacity.
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18 Comments
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Guspaz - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
What exactly is the advantage of this? Sticking an HDD and an SSD in the same chassis makes a certain amount of sense for a 2.5" laptop drive, because in a lot of devices you only have room for a single 2.5" drive. But in a desktop drive? Desktops rarely only have one 3.5" HDD slot. Even my Shuttle XPC has two 3.5" slots, three if you put one in the optical bay... and like many SFF machines, it has an mSATA port on top of that.Hybrid drives make sense. But this isn't a hybrid drive, it's just two drives in one.
Scott_T - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
we can only hope they're planning on packaging it with some caching software at least??StevoLincolnite - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
Unless you have a laptop with only one drive bay (Plenty have two!) then I would be more inclined jumping towards Sandisks Readcache SSD's.They're cheap and work well, I have them in my grand parents machines.
vnangia - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
The iMac? :)nathanddrews - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
Yeah, why not make a hybrid with 128GB? It seems that the largest failing of hybrids is the small SSD cache. You're already paying for the hardware, so why not make it great?StormyParis - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
My server is full, and currently runnign off an SSD I scotch-taped to the side of the chassis.DanNeely - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
If they get the hybrid software ready by launch time I could see some value to it. Joe User doesn't want to have to worry about saving some files on his fast disk drive, and others on his slow one; but 2 separate drives is kinda pointless.Assuming they get hybridization working though; I think 3.5" makes more sense than 2.5 though. 2.5" bays have largely vanished from mid-range laptops. At the bottom of the market, the extra $50-75 for an SSD and an HDD is prohibitively expensive. At the top, the OEMs selling big gaming laptops wouldn't be interested; because they've gone full retard and wouldn't be interested in any flash that can't be combined into a 4-way raid-0 for maximum bogo-benchmark scores and warranty claims when the raid barfs.
Samus - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
This is just as dumb as the Black2. I'm a huge WD fan but the Seagate SSHD's are a significantly better implementation than this dual-drive crap. What kind of "gamer" is going to be able to utilize a 120GB SSD. That's like 2 modern games. BF4 and COD-AW are both 50GB and for AW that doesn't even account for the future expansions.jb510 - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
The spec card in the photo clear says:"World's Fastest 4TB Hybrid Drive"
further
"Engineering sample SATAe Hybrid Drive"
The article states: "the prototype shows off as two separate volumes, although Western Digital is also working on a caching software to make the solution more user friendly"
What gave you the idea they'd release this as two drives?
close - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
Since they're calling it a hybrid drive I would expect to see ONE drive in the device manager. If it's seen as two drives then they should at least suggest in the naming scheme for the prototype that the "hybrid" part is still only on paper. It could be a bit misleading to name a prototype a certain way but not clearly state that the main feature mentioned is missing.d2mw - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
People complaining about this being shit as a desktop drive may be correct in that assertion, but the form factor itself is very interesting. In a server scenario, it is quite common to desire bulk storage alongside fast storage, and having both in a single 3.5" unit this becomes very interesting.An example where this is very useful would be a large database server, where certain tables/indices may be hot (and suitable for SSD), whereas archival/bulk cold data could be stored on a separate magnetic-backed partition.
One option would be 1x 128gb SSD and 1x 4TB, but that means failure of either drive takes down the server. With a unit of this design, instead the failure sharded. With 2x(128gb+4tb) drives, with the SSD and magnetic parts put into separate RAID configurations, a 1U server suddenly saves a LOT of physical space to achieve a high level of reliability.
But on saying all that, often space sensitive server configurations also means 2.5" form factor.
iAPX - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
On a server form-factor you won't use 3.5" hard drives except for archiving, and thus using 2 SSD as RAID-1 for caching.For live storage, you would use a RAID-5 or RAID-6 array (more preferably now a RAID-10) with 2.5" in SFF size-form, and maybe adding a RAID-1 of Server SSD for your DB, all with SAS interface through a RAID card that have a battery.
I don't see cases to use SATA 3.5" hard-drives on servers, except if you do your own trick (and in this case you don't need integrated SSD, you will prefer another cache level using other SSD), and I know it fro mexperience ,I have done it for a file sharing website. (was Technical director and associate)
nils_ - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I see 3.5" all the time in the server space. These drives would make an interesting choice for ceph OSD, put the journal on SSD and the data on HDD. Saves a bit of space.nils_ - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Although SATA Express is a deal breaker.MrSpadge - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
Finally a high-end hybrid drive! If this implements caching transparent to the OS, like Seagates solutions, it could be of tremendous value for entry-level servers. As far as I know Enterprises charge a lot for SSD caching, whereas client solutions are limited to caching single disks. But with these one could simply put 4 of them in a Raid 5 (or what ever you want) and get an automatic large SSD cache. Although Server 2012 R2 already introduced some SSD-awareness to storage spaces.. but I don't know how good this is.For my current desktop I'll continue to use Intel SRT with my 60 GB Agility 3, though. Later I could see myself upgrading to a real PCIe M.2 SSD with 256 GB and use 60 GB as HDD cache and 180 GB as OS partition.
Gigaplex - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
How do you put 4 of these in a pool? They're SATA Express, systems generally don't come with more than one or two of these ports.nils_ - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
Linux device mapper could do all those things independent of RAID controllers etc..TrackSmart - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
Does anyone else think they are 2-3 years behind the times? I wanted this 2-3 years ago, in laptop form factor, with actually intelligent software to manage what stays on the SSD (i.e. entire OS + most programs + recent documents). But they STILL don't have a laptop hybrid drive that offers truly SSD-like performance.And they have now missed the boat. I don't need a product like this anymore when I can get a 500GB SSD for around $200 without even waiting for a sale.
By the time their mobile solution comes out, large SSDs will be even cheaper and this will be a solution strictly for the low-end of the market. A huge opportunity missed by Western Digital to bridge the gap between price, performance, and storage capacity.