5400rpm SSHD vs 7200rpm HDD

[Bluescreendeath]

Hello, I am upgrading a family member's old laptop and I have a few 5400rpm SSHDs and 7200rpm HDDs lying around. Which would be better for ordinary day to day use? This person doesn't play games and doesn't transfer a lot of large files often. Just internet usage and occasional movies.

The options I have are:
1) used Seagate SSHD with 5400 rpm speed (ST500LM000)

and

2) new HGST HDD 7200 rpms (HTS725050A7) or new Toshiba HDD 7200 rpm (MQ01ACF050)

According to userbenchmark, the HDD is effectively faster as sequential read/write is weighted much more heavily. https://hdd.userbenchmark.com/Compa...00GB-vs-Toshiba-MQ01ACF050-500GB/m9154vsm7527

But youtube reviews/tests seem to prefer the SSHD. According to Seagate, their SSHD is better (no surprise?): https://www.seagate.com/tech-insigh...e-storage-is-not-about-rpm-anymore-master-ti/

 

[FreedomEclipse]

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

 

[eidairaman1]

SSHDs are like a oversize cache cost solution. Bulk of operations will still be reliant on how fast the platter rotates and head actuates.

Since they aint gaming, go with the cheapest option which is the Toshiba Drive, which still has a faster rotation than the Seagate.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

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

Are you saying seagates in general are unreliable or just their SSHDs are reliable? When you say unreliable, do you mean high failure rates?

I already have these SSHDs and HDDs.

SSHDs are like a oversize cache cost solution. Bulk of operations will still be reliant on how fast the platter rotates and head actuates.

Since they aint gaming, go with the cheapest option (which is the Toshiba Drive)

Cost is not a factor because I already have both lying around.

Which is better in real world applications for a person who just browses Google Chrome and uses a few programs like media player and microsoft office? We're not dealing with a lot of large files here so these commonly used programs should be on the SSD cache right?

 

[eidairaman1]

Are you saying seagates in general are unreliable or just their SSHDs are reliable? When you say unreliable, do you mean high failure rates?

I already have these SSHDs and HDDs.



Cost is not a factor because I already have both lying around.

Drop the 5400 in and call it a day.

The only way a 7200 drive gets better is when a 7200 sshd is in place.

Drawback of a 7200 drive over a 5400 is power.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Of those choices, I would go with 7200 RPM. Moderately fast and reliable.

The SSHD has 8 GB of moderately fast data access followed by 500 GB of painfully slow. If you hammer an SSHD with a lot of operations, that painfully slow will rear its ugly head.

 

[eidairaman1]

Of those choices, I would go with 7200 RPM. Moderately fast and reliable.

The SSHD has 8 GB of moderately fast data access followed by 500 GB of painfully slow. If you hammer an SSHD with a lot of operations, that painfully slow will rear its ugly head.

Not that bad for a general purpose laptop, only bad for a Gaming unit

 

[Melvis]

Question is what OS are you going to be running? Windows 10? if so you need the fastest drive possible as its a dog of an OS when its run on a 5400 or even any type of Mechanical Hard Drive, but between the two id go 7200 for sure. If its Windows 7 you can get away with running it on ether 5400 or 7200 but again the 7200 would be still the better choice regardless. If you can afford it (and im sure you could if you live in USA) and your running Windows 10 on it then go get a $35 SSD and your golden.

Personally I wouldnt go for any of those Drives, Seagate, Toshiba and HGST have all bad reps, I see them come through my shop dead all the time, go WD if you want a good Mechanical HDD (WD BLACK) , or a known name branded SSD.

 

[eidairaman1]

Question is what OS are you going to be running? Windows 10? if so you need the fastest drive possible as its a dog of an OS when its run on a 5400 or even any type of Mechanical Hard Drive, but between the two id go 7200 for sure. If its Windows 7 you can get away with running it on ether 5400 or 7200 but again the 7200 would be still the better choice regardless. If you can afford it (and im sure you could if you live in USA) and your running Windows 10 on it then go get a $35 SSD and your golden.

Personally I wouldnt go for any of those Drives, Seagate, Toshiba and HGST have all bad reps, I see them come through my shop dead all the time, go WD if you want a good Mechanical HDD (WD BLACK) , or a known name branded SSD.

Here is a comprehensive list.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failire-rates/

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Question is what OS are you going to be running? Windows 10? if so you need the fastest drive possible as its a dog of an OS when its run on a 5400 or even any type of Mechanical Hard Drive, but between the two id go 7200 for sure. If its Windows 7 you can get away with running it on ether 5400 or 7200 but again the 7200 would be still the better choice regardless. If you can afford it (and im sure you could if you live in USA) and your running Windows 10 on it then go get a $35 SSD and your golden.

Personally I wouldnt go for any of those Drives, Seagate, Toshiba and HGST have all bad reps, I see them come through my shop dead all the time, go WD if you want a good Mechanical HDD (WD BLACK) , or a known name branded SSD.

1) Wouldn't running the OS be faster on the SSHD cache?

2) W7

3) Backblaze statistics show Toshiba and HGST both had comparable or lower rates of failure than Western Digital drives...and HGST has been owned by WD for a while anyways.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

I would say generally mechanical hdd in laptop fail pretty quickly with heavy use. I have an acer laptop with Toshiba HDD yet that drive fail. HDD are not really tolerant to heat and shock of carrying day to day at least from my experience. Laptop drive bay design and shock reducing features do play a part., despite that from my experience looking at laptop with even good hdd protection features like a Fujitsu, they do start showing smart errors. If they are just used for home use, they would be fine I guess. I would not say HDD is that slow, they are pretty tolerable for normal use though you do feel the speed difference.

I would generally recommend ssd nowadays even the very cheap ones with lower capacity they are superior for laptop use. The HDD use for storage instead be it putting in into an external drive case or using a cd drive caddy in a laptop if you have one. Taking out the cd drive and using an adapter to install a hdd into the cd drive slot.

 

[agent_x007]

OS after few tries will get faster - sure (if files it uses frequently are located in SS part of that SSHD).
Problems will start when cache gets full after few days.
After that time, doing any file transfers or operations outside of it will be slower than on 7200RPM drive.
Also, If your mom/sister likes to watch movies few times in a row (or go back to fav. ones few times a week), they will be transfered to fast cache at some point - which will be awesome for their performance, don't you think ?

 

[Melvis]

1) Wouldn't running the OS be faster on the SSHD cache?

2) W7

3) Backblaze statistics show Toshiba and HGST both had comparable or lower rates of failure than Western Digital drives...and HGST has been owned by WD for a while anyways.

SSHD would be faster yes, but again no where near as fast as a SSD.

Windows 7? then you should be fine honestly, any 7200RPM drive will run it fine and at a descent speed, doesnt really require and SSD it be just a bonus really.

Yeah I dont go by those stats at all as its to inconsistent, need it to be equal amount of drives, more drives you have the lesser the failure rate is going to show, its not an accurate test. and this has been shown over and over again year by year. WD might "own" them but they are still a completely different company/factory, dont get confused by that

Here is a comprehensive list.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failire-rates/

Yeah I dont go by those stats at all as its to inconsistent, need it to be equal amount of drives, more drives you have the lesser the failure rate is going to show, its not an accurate test.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

SSHD would be faster yes, but again no where near as fast as a SSD.
Windows 7? then you should be fine honestly, any 7200RPM drive will run it fine and at a descent speed, doesnt really require and SSD it be just a bonus really.

Yes, a SSD is going to be faster than an SSHD or an HDD. But I have a spare SSHD and a spare HDD on hand to use for this old and cheap laptop. I don't have a spare SSD on hand for this unless someone wants to trade me an SSD for my SSHD.

Is Windows 10 that much slower than Windows 7 when running on a harddrive?

Yeah I dont go by those stats at all as its to inconsistent, need it to be equal amount of drives, more drives you have the lesser the failure rate is going to show, its not an accurate test. and this has been shown over and over again year by year. WD might "own" them but they are still a completely different company/factory, dont get confused by that
Yeah I dont go by those stats at all as its to inconsistent, need it to be equal amount of drives, more drives you have the lesser the failure rate is going to show, its not an accurate test.

Backblaze has other test years too with more WD vs HGST and Toshiba harddrives. In the 2015 test for example, 1046x WDC WD30EFRX 3TB drives had a 7.27% failure rate while 1000x HGST HDS723030 3TB drives had a 1.80% failure rate. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/

In Q4 2016, the WDC 3TB had a 3.28% failure rate out of 1105x drives, while the HGST HDS72... 3TB had a failure rate of 3.63% out of 978x drives. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-benchmark-stats-2016/

According to the charts, more drives does not necessarily equal less failure rate. After you get past a certain number, the extremely lucky and extremely unlucky drives will no longer skewer the average very much, and some very high drive count models have high failure rates while others do not.

Seagate had the most drive (45.5k) in 2016 yet the 2nd highest failure rate at 2.65%. Toshiba had the least number of drives at 237 yet a middle-failure rate of 1.27%. HGST had the 2nd most drives yet the lowest failure rate at .60%, and WDC had a higher failure rate as well.

In the 2013-2016 chart here, https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/All-thru-Q4-2016-Failure-Rates.jpg

It seems that WDC's 3TB Red series (with 1102 drives) had a high failure rate at 5.72%. HGST's 3TB drive (1027 drives), had a failure rate less than half that of 1.92%.

What Backblaze statistics seems to tell us that model of the harddrive matters more than brands. Some brands such as Seagate have both really good models with low failure (1.43% failure out of 1889 drives) and really bad models with high failures (26.7% failure out of 4247 drives).
The best model of the series seems to be HGST's HDS5C4040BLE640 with 9.3k drives that only have a 0.48% failure rate.

 

[Melvis]

Yes, a SSD is going to be faster than an SSHD or an HDD. But I have a spare SSHD and a spare HDD on hand to use for this old and cheap laptop. I don't have a spare SSD on hand for this unless someone wants to trade me an SSD for my SSHD.

Is Windows 10 that much slower than Windows 7 when running on a harddrive?

Yes it is a big difference, I have experienced this multiple times with many many Clients and my own computers, 10 is very slow on a Mechanical HDD compared to 7.

According to the charts, more drives does not necessarily equal less failure rate.

No not failure rate but the percentage is less and thats what they are showing, a percentage. More HDD's the less the percentage is.

I have been building and doing upgrades and working on peoples computers for almost 15yrs with a base of up to 100 000 people and I havent had to return 1 WD Black hard drive or WD Raptor yet because of normal failure. Ive seen WD Greens and Blues die, but no where near as many as HSGT, Seagate or Toshiba Drives. In the real world you get what you pay for, get a WD Black with 5 yr warranty and you wont regret it, there is a reason why they have 5yr warranty on them.

 

[spectatorx]

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.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

Normally I'd stay away from SSHDD and go full SSD but since you want to use what you already have, why not give it a try? Since as you stated, it's for a laptop that will typically see only internet usage and movies, most of what your family member does should be able to fit into the SSD cache portion of that drive. Also, since you have the mechanical drives in hand as well, use one of them to clone the SSHDD and you'll be fine if there's any mechanical failures. Hell, in that instance you could even swap between the drives to see what they prefer which in the end is the most important opinion of them all.

Edit: Just remember to use the SSHDD in a "normal" manner so it caches what is most accessed by your everyday behavior before truly evaluating its performance.

 

[bonehead123]

Go ssd or go home

If this is not an option, go with the 7200 hdd....especially for the uses you state and since the machine will most likely be plugged in most of the time, the difference in power draw won't matter....

 

[newtekie1]

I'd say go with the SSHD. Even at 5400RPM, for normal uses the SSHD will give a better experience than a 7200RPM drive. Plus, if they run the computer off battery the lower power draw of the 5400RPM drive will make the battery last longer.

I used one of these 2.5" 5400RPM SSHDs as a main drive in one of my desktop PCs for the longest time and it worked quite well. Basic tasks like browsing the web, youtube, and Office were much snappier than the 3.5" 7200RPM hard drive the SSHD replaced. Though, not where near an SSD. Dropping a $30 SSD in a machine as the system drive is one of the best things you can do to wake an older machine up.

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.

All the SSHDs were originally 5400RPM, even WD's. They were done as a compromise for laptop users to still give them the battery life of a 5400RPM drive, but boost the performance. It works quite well in practice actually.

 

[phill]

If your having to buy these drives new, skip both of them and as many have said above, get a full SSD. Messing about with HDs and SSHDs in a laptop isn't worth the hassle and with the cost of a 120Gb or 240Gb or even 480Gb SSD now being as cheap as they are, I'd never consider even thinking about it and just grab one. Doesn't really matter as such on the make of SSD as any will be much better than a standard SSD or SSHD.

Windows 10 on a HD is painful, had one in my laptop, got rid of it even though it was 8 times the size of the SSD I have put in its place (2Tb v 250Gb or something near to)

 

[Bluescreendeath]

So 1/3 of the people here are telling me to use the 5400rpm SSHDs, 1/3 here are telling me to use the 7200 rpm HDDs, and the other 1/3 are telling me to buy a SSD even though I already have the HDD/SSHD on hand.

 

[agent_x007]

In that case, do a coin toss between 5400RPM and 7200RPM.
Winner gets the job

 

[eidairaman1]

Yes it is a big difference, I have experienced this multiple times with many many Clients and my own computers, 10 is very slow on a Mechanical HDD compared to 7.





No not failure rate but the percentage is less and thats what they are showing, a percentage. More HDD's the less the percentage is.

I have been building and doing upgrades and working on peoples computers for almost 15yrs with a base of up to 100 000 people and I havent had to return 1 WD Black hard drive or WD Raptor yet because of normal failure. Ive seen WD Greens and Blues die, but no where near as many as HSGT, Seagate or Toshiba Drives. In the real world you get what you pay for, get a WD Black with 5 yr warranty and you wont regret it, there is a reason why they have 5yr warranty on them.

Cool story bro, been doing this 20

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.

Low cost solution.

@Bluescreendeath just drop the 5400RPM in and call it a day, it's a general purpose laptop, not specializing in anything, battery life will be more important than super performance.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

MQ01ACF050 only has a 16 MB cache which is ridiculously tiny. I wouldn't use that one at all.
HTS725050A7 has better sequential performance, lower power consumption, and likely better reliability (don't have to worry about MLC wear).
ST500LM000 has better random access performance.

 

[R0H1T]

If you aren't doing too many writes SSHD is the better solution, 7200 rpm drive if you need to write lots of data. Of course I'd suggest a cheap TLC drive, if storage space isn't an issue & price isn't a major concern.