Seagate 1TB SSHD [Honest review +Benchmarks]

bhvm

Journeyman
Dear all,
I am pleased to bring you, The Honest, Most detailed and Practical review of Seagate 1TB LAPTOP SSHD.
*i59.photobucket.com/albums/g317/bhvm/HDD%20Cooler/20140425_204455.jpg

*i59.photobucket.com/albums/g317/bhvm/HDD%20Cooler/20140425_204517.jpg

The Prologue-
One fine morning, I wake up to discover that my Primary Desktop computer was dead. All said and done, I had made my mind that this time, my primary computer will be a Laptop, and that did happen. Excitement aside, Moving to laptop also had a few let-downs, and the major one was HDD performance. My desktop PC had some very nice Black edition Drives in RAID 0. As a result, I was able to get SUBSTAINED File copy speeds of 250MB/s and Burst speeds of over 400MB/s. Moving to Laptop's Non-RAID , slow Storage made me feel very claustrophobic.

The buy-
I had an eye on Seagate's new Hybrid Disks since long. I have spent better part of my Sundays reading reviews and browsing the forums about this revolutionary product. However the earlier models were just 500GB (Seagate Momentus XT) and price was hard to digest. After a few months, Snapdeal offered me to buy the 1TB SSHD model for just a shade over 8k. I booked it immediately and the product was delivered within 3 days. Mind you, seagate did not send the retail package with retail BOX and manual, But an OEM product in Antistatic Bag , Brown cardboard and some bubble wrap. Perhaps the reason it was so cheap.

Install- (windows 7 Ultimate 64)
I was of thought that i'd restore my System image and be Happy within 20 Minutes. Wrong. After burning the Midnight oil and many failed installs, I figured out that Seagate SSHD is not friendly to Clone or Image installs. Take my word for it. You WILL need a fresh install for it to work, and Internet if full of such episodes.

Performance-
So here's what you people were waiting for. I Started copying my well over 800GB of DATA. I started in the Morning at 7.30 and the copy had suceeded by night 9pm. Quite longer than I had expected but system was rock stable. The copy was from SONY 1TB USB 3 HDD which gave speeds of around 45~65 MB/s. The Maximum Temperature I had seen was 46.c after a full days of Excersize. Perhaps the performance will open up after the Drive LEARNS usage patterns and caches them. And soon enough, its true after a couple of Restarts, the system boots to desktop in 22 sec. Regular programs like Opera Browser, Messenger, Open office, Desktop widgets, system monitor pop up in a blink. I am finally getting the pleasure of High end RAID array on a laptop. However, the substained speeds and long file transfers still remain a dream.

Benchmarks-
I have attatched ATTO disk mark screenshots for you. At first I was astonished to see bursts of 450MB/s. As result I ran the benchmark 3~5 times, but the results were consistent. I guess that the SSHD uses pretty high quality NAND cache with Read speeds over 400MB/s. A pat to Seagate on this one.

*i59.photobucket.com/albums/g317/bhvm/HDD%20Cooler/ATTO.jpg
*i59.photobucket.com/albums/g317/bhvm/HDD%20Cooler/atto2.jpg
Summary-
What I liked- System Boots in 22.sec
Regular Programs Pop out in no time
Cool operation compared to previous Gen Momentus XT 7200 RPM
Less power consumption and decent battery life.
Very snappy system FEEL

What I didn't like- Non cached Transfers fall back to usual 70~90 MB/s of traditional laptop HDD
Spindle speeds of only 5400 RPM opposed to Previous Gen 7200 RPM.
Quite Expensive in India compared to USA and Europe.
OEM product available compared to Retail BOX as advertised by Seagate.

Should you buy one? HELL YEAH!

Links-
*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/reviews/1...vision-e1-1-4ghz-amd-7310-2gb-ddr3-500gb.html
 

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Last edited:
OP
B

bhvm

Journeyman
As an Long term Update,
the SSHD is working well and zero issues all these Months. I am getting about 112 MB/s From Platters and 450 MB/s from the SSD cache. Very nice product.
 
OP
B

bhvm

Journeyman
Super long term update.
The drive has been moved to my HP Milk primary laptop on an HDD caddy. The caddy offers full performance of the internal sata port. The Said SSHD drive is now in RAID 0 with laptop internal drive. Sustatined 220MB/s. Zero bad sectors or reliability issues till date. Very satisfied. Looking forward to 4TB or 8TB SSHD but these dont seem to be sold in India.
 

whitestar_999

Super Moderator
Staff member
I would ask you to post a screenshot of crystaldiskinfo for your SSHD showing all values but like all other similar SMART values software,it does not support most RAID controllers.
 
OP
B

bhvm

Journeyman
Super Long term Update-
After about 3 years,the SSHD and Entire RAID set is working well sans any qualms. Really impressed with the reliability & Sustained performance of the same.

I would ask you to post a screenshot of crystaldiskinfo for your SSHD showing all values but like all other similar SMART values software,it does not support most RAID controllers.
Its not on any RAID controller. I am yet to see any mid range laptop having Proper RAID controller.
Mine is just on Windows Dynamic disks (Software RAID). Seems to be much more reliable and easy to setup compared to Mobo raid controllers. I have such RAIDs on 3 of my laptops now. Works well.
 

whitestar_999

Super Moderator
Staff member
Super Long term Update-
After about 3 years,the SSHD and Entire RAID set is working well sans any qualms. Really impressed with the reliability & Sustained performance of the same.


Its not on any RAID controller. I am yet to see any mid range laptop having Proper RAID controller.
Mine is just on Windows Dynamic disks (Software RAID). Seems to be much more reliable and easy to setup compared to Mobo raid controllers. I have such RAIDs on 3 of my laptops now. Works well.
Then can you run crystaldiskinfo & post the values here for future reference(blank the serial no. of hdd before posting image) if possible.
 
OP
B

bhvm

Journeyman
The laptop was dormant for some time as I had moved to desktop PC. It will soon see a Full Upgrade (Ram and SSD) and brought into duty again.
 
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