My MacBook Pro came with a 500GB 5400 rpm drive stock. I was looking at upgrading to a faster drive. I looked at traditional 7200 rpm drives as well as SSD drives, which are still quite expensive for $/GB.
So not wanting to drop like $450 for a relatively decent size SSD drive, NewEgg recently had a 500GB “Hybrid” drive on sale for $99 so I took the leap. It is a Seagate drive which is a 500GB 7200 rpm drive but it also has a 4GB SSD/Flash component. It then has the ability to “learn” what you use the most, which it moves that data to the SSD area. In theory, this should give you an awesome performance enhancement while still keeping the $/GB price down.
Initially just working with the new drive “seems” faster. Knowing I wanted to compare the results, I noted the time it took to do different things that are normally drive intensive. So here’s my test results for both drives:
| Cold Boot to Login | Login to Usable | Win 7 VM Power up to usable | |
| Old 5400rpm Stock Drive | 1m 19s | 1m 14s | 2m 15s |
| New Hybrid Drive | 1m 13s | 1m 5s (1st time)
43s (2nd time) |
1m 50s (1st time)
49s (2nd time) 42s (3rd time) |
Note – The data on the old drive and the new drive is exactly the same. I cloned the old drive onto the new drive. And overall, it’s getting snappier, it seems, as I continue using it. The above numbers also show that it’s “learning” as well. So for me, it’s been awesome and I’d definitely recommend taking a look at this drive if you’re in the same situation.
Here’s the links to the drive that I got. I did get mine for $99 so perhaps they’ll go back on sale sometime soon.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=ST95005620AS&cid=13025157019588466692#p
Hope it’s helpful!
Lewan IT Solutions Technical Blog 