Seagate Seagate 1TB Desktop SSHD ST1000DX001

FIVE STARS!.. Outstanding cost effective quality product that does “exactly” what is claimed and really “is” an excellent compromise for those of us who can’t afford an expensive SSD.

With apologies to Seagate… This is an edited review from my previous 3 star one which expressed disappointment because I had higher expectations… A Seagate support rep left a comment to that one correctly stating that it would take a few reboots before higher speeds are achieved with this drive via the adaptive memory feature….. They were right and “I stand corrected”. Being a fair minded person I find it necessary to “make it right” and try to explain as best as possible my own personal experience so that other people will not make the same initial “assumptions” that I did.

Like many people I leave my desktop PC on all the time so that automatic functions like system backups, virus/malware scans, Windows updates, maintenance functions etc. all can occur as scheduled on a regular basis. I should also note here before I go any further that my computer doesn’t normally get rebooted very often unless a software installation or update requires it…… “It does now”.

Also like many people I equated this drive with a full dedicated SSD and expected an almost instantaneous increase in speed and performance. But… “it doesn’t work that way”. Apparently some of us forget (as I did) or fail to notice the “H” in SSHD.

I’m using this on an HP TouchSmart 300-1125 with 64bit Windows 7. After using this drive for not quite 2 months now I am seeing an almost daily increase in speed and performance… Time will tell how fast it will actually get before it finally peaks out. I estimate that my speed increase to date is about 50-60% faster than before as I write this. Not as fast as a dedicated SSD (yet), but “much” faster than my original drive. Or any other regular “non” SSD or SSHD drive currently available for that matter.

First noticecable speed increase was with my “feature loaded” email program since I use it several times a day… I needed to do a software update on a different program that required a reboot and after that I noticed that my email seemed to start up just a bit faster than usual. With each reboot it seemed to get a little faster and faster… It used to take almost 2-3 full minutes to load all the way. Now it loads up in less than 5 seconds. Performance results with all the other programs that I normally use on a daily basis has produced pretty much the same results. Bootup and reboot times are now also less than half as long as they used to be. Needless to say, I now reboot my machine at least once a day “every day” and will continue to do so until I feel that performance has finally peaked.

The adaptive memory feature of this drive is the key to it’s success and also (in my case) the cause of some confusion about how it actually works. It takes a few reboots before the drive starts to remember which functions that you do most often on your computer and then it stores that data on the “high speed” side of the drive using the NAND flash memory. Simply stated this drive “learns” which functions that are performed most often and then each time you reboot your PC it updates itself and your most often used programs start to run faster. here’s a page that explains it: http://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/adaptive-memory-in-sshd-master-ti/

SSHD is simple mishmash of both drives
You play competitive stuff over&over this will give you ~almost SSD levels of loading time
Boot time is little faster
Basically it will be a SSD like drive for the stuff you usually do but a somewhat alright HDD for stuff you dont.

Disco duro fantastico, el nivel de sonido es inperceptible. Su velocidad es un 30% mas rapido que un hdd normal. Se nota mucho mas la velocidad en archivos que abres repetidamente.