Those seagates have never really been reliable at all... Either go full ssd or go home.
If an ssd is not an option then take the Toshiba. Their drives are pretty good
We have used nothing else but SSHDs having dropped HD usage 7 - 8 years ago ... no failures as yet. Over the same period, installed just as many SSDs ... 3 failures, 1 being a warranty replacement that also failed.
As for reliability .... RMA rates for desktop drives (no data available on laptop drives) ... but the Seagate SSHDs prove to be a hair more reliable than WD Blacks.... Im happy with anything under 1.5%
- 0,45% WD Black WD2003FZEX
- 0,43% Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001
As for performance ... Boot Times in same box bootable via BIOS selection:
Samsung Pro SSD = 15.6 seconds
Seagate 7200 rpm SSHD = 16.5 seconds
Seagate 7200 rpm HD = 21.2 seconds
We put a SSD + SSHD in most builds, not unusual to have 2 of each. For budget builds, adding the SSD used to mean dropping down 1 GFX card niche so wasn't anywhere near worth it. If it was one or the other, the SSHD was the proverbial no brainer as moving from an X60 to a X70 was far more of an impact than an SSD. Downside was ... when user had the budget to later add the SSD, they'd be like ... "Eh ... what's the big deal". Gives great benchmarks but anytime we've gone into any user's box and switched from booting off the SSD to booting off the SSHD, no one has yet noticed.
You can use benchmarks to show how much faster the SSD is but if ya built the box to run apps and games, instead of running benchmarks 24/7 ... the user remains the bottleneck. It doesn't matter if the box boots 0.9 seconds faster if i spend the next 10 minutes after sitting at my desk in the morning listening to phone messages and returning them. When gaming I don't care if the game loads faster when it takes 44 seconds for the game to sync with the MMO server or just as long to unplug the charging cable from headset, open discord and load the websites I'll have open with game data.
With prices dropping quickly, I think we'll soon get to the point where it matters less and SSDs do become a no brainer ... but not there yet. I'll never argue against getting an SSD, I'm a nerd so if "it's there, I must have one".... but buying a HD for bulk storage is simply very hard to justify.
All that being said, OPs dilemma is SSHD or HD ... SSD is not on the table as those are both free. In that case, the questions is how is the lappie used ? As OP said, he does'n't routinely open, save or use multi GB files or play games with 40 GB footprints ... so the obvious answer is the SSHD.
Performance wise, the Seagate 5400 rpm drives are a relatively new development; the older 7200 rpm drives had much lower areal density so the performance difference between Seagates original 7200 rpm laptop SSHDs is very close to the newer 5400 rpm laptop drives with greater aereal densities. So the question as to what's faster involves looking at rpm and data read per rpm.
Our 2 lappies ... one has a Samsung Pro SSD + 2.5" 7200 rpm hard drive and the other has 7200 rpm older 2.5" SSHD ...when someone is going out in the field / out of town, they one with SSHD is always 1st one taken. As to the reason Seagate moved to the 5400 rpm in the 2.5" laptop drives should be obvious ... 7200 rpm eats more power .. that's kinda "a thing" for lappies . In addition, if one has a concern about storage subsystem speed, they would be well advised to steer clear of laptops . Due to the small platter diameter, areal density is substantially reduced ... at the outer edge by a factor 2... far more relevant that rotational speed which has a factor of 1.33
So in the end, its probably 6 of one and half dozen if the other ... as OP hase both ... the only path not on the table is "buy a new SSD". Since OP had both, he could install one of each and test boot times on both to see how it turns out ... or install one of each (after all cost is the same) assuming it will hold 2. Then user can boot off one and use the other for extra storage.
I would ask different question: Who the f... in the world did come with an idea to design 5400RPM SSHDD in the first place?! 5400rpm and sshdd both contradict each others' purposes.
If the only thing you care about is speed then go with sshdd, otherwise go with anything but seagate. Forgetting backblaze's stats from personal experience i had more failed seagate hdds than from any other manufacturer.
We don't have to rely on BB's non-relevant server info where they very features that make a consumer drive "failure resistant" make it fail prematurely in a server environment ... we also don't have to rely on single user experiences. I don't see the 8 years of 0 failures which we have observed here as statistically reliable but real industry data is readily available for the period that the subject devices were released.
https://www.hardware.fr/articles/954-6/disques-durs.html
- Seagate 0,72% (0,69%)
- Toshiba 0,80% (1,15%)
- Western 1,04% (1,03%)
- HGST 1,13% (0,60%)
There's 9 such reports on the site and Seagate finishes with the lowest RMA rate in at least 7 of them, never finishing worst than 2nd.
