thoughts on hybrid SSD drives?

[ShuckyD]

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus XT ST93205620AS 320GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive

I'm trying to find a workable solution for my T61 laptop (see sig) since I barely ever have time to sit down at my desktop unless I have to "process a job." Of course I havent kept up on all the latest SSD news and a year or so back I actually thought about an SSD for my laptop, but the price was high and after searching the web some people pointed out that the T61 doesnt have a SATAII controller capable of delivering the performance a SSD can provide... dont quote me exactly on that, but something along those lines..

My main uses for my laptop now are internet, email, and I do very little image editing, etc. on it because it's 160GB HDD even though it's 7200RPM sucks for the programs like Photoshop and Lightroom that I need. Now that I have CS5 and LR3 I want to install them on my lappy for "on the go" accessibility w/o having to boot up my desktop and be stuck in my office to do all the work (the desktop is a dream to work on, but it's a powerhouse with a bunch of RAID arrays and firewire external storage)


What do you think of the hybrid SSD drives and do you think they would provide a worthwhile performance boost for the types of applications I use (HDD intense)...?

[thephilosophizer]

Well, I suppose the drive would help for windows boot time, and for application launching, but I don't think it's going to make much of a difference, if any, in terms of application performance.
Based on your specs, and what you're looking for, I'd say that you'd need a new laptop to see any meaningful difference in performance.
There are some nice newer 13" asus lappys that include discrete graphics and an i5, and come in under $1,000.
Personally I use a macbook pro (13") for all my work stuff, it's super mobile, and also pretty quick, plus the sleep function on the mac works way better than it does on windows, closing and opening the lid is like a light switch, and the battery drain isn't retardedly high when sleeping, and battery life generally is pretty awesome (I've been at work all day, I haven't plugged in at all, and I still have an hour of battery left). But macs aren't for everyone, and I acknowledge that.
From what I've seen, asus brings the best performance for the $ in the mobile space.

[ShuckyD]

Thanks for the reply. Yes Mac's arent for everyone, not for this one at least, but heck if I owned and ran a design firm then sure I'd have a bunch of them. I'm not looking to part with my Thinkpad because I really do like it and it's got the best stuff I could load in it at the time including the NVidia dedicated graphics card. I was googling since I posted this link and found an article on Engadget about these new drives, however it didnt tell if performance was better moving aroud the app (Lightroom in this case). That tends to be my biggest problem, switching modules, photos, edits, etc. tend to take forever!!!

I'm wondering if I could speed it up by putting a SD card or something in there and using that as my thumbnail cache... I need to PCMCIA slot open since I have a CF card converter in there and I shoot Canon DSLR's which use CF cards an I need to import the RAWs from them....

[ShuckyD]

I'd be curious if the HDD's sold now are much better than the one in my 2+ year old T61. I know Thinkpad's dont always come with the latest and greatest (take for example my SD card slot doesnt read SDHC cards) and I pulled the HDD from my laptop this morning it reads: HITACHI P/N: 0A532259 (but for the life of me I cant find our how much cache that drive has)
So I wonder if a new 7200RPM drive with 32MB of cache and possibly one with 4GB (I wish they had more) of SSD hybrid memory would be worth the upgrade. Heck I wonder if a $60 HDD without the SSD hybrid technolgy would be a marked improvement.


Thoughts?