need buying advice about hard drives (Windows)

[sturg]

I hope this it the right place to ask this...
I am buying a new Windows All-in-One computer and can't decide on the hard drive. Apparently they (Dell) are selling hybrid drives that have both an SSD and a HDD combined in one computer. Does anyone know if these are preferable to just getting a single SSD?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Do NOT get hybrid drives. Either go with a HDD or SSD. SSDs will be faster and more expensive than HDDs.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I hope this it the right place to ask this...
I am buying a new Windows All-in-One computer and can't decide on the hard drive. Apparently they (Dell) are selling hybrid drives that have both an SSD and a HDD combined in one computer. Does anyone know if these are preferable to just getting a single SSD?

A quick look at the Dell site indicates to me that they aren't selling "hybrid" (i.e. Fusion) drives (at least in the listings that I saw; if you are considering a particular model you might want to give the link).

Instead, some of their AIO's have TWO internal hard drives. An SSD as the boot drive, and a RDHD for storage. The reason that they offer this setup is to give you most of the performance of an SSD, while sparing you the price of a large SSD, along with the benefit of a large amount of storage at a reasonable price (which is what a RDHD offers), though at a lower performance.

You have your OS and your favorite applications on the SSD for the SSD's speed, and you put everything else on the RDHD.

 

[sturg]

Ahh.... I see. So, in your opinion are there any benefits/advantages to getting one of these comps with two drives over one with a single, large SSD?

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Ahh.... I see. So, in your opinion are there any benefits/advantages to getting one of these comps with two drives over one with a single, large SSD?

A single large SSD will be faster for those things that you might have stored on the RDHD if you had gotten two drives.

However, a single large SSD will cost more than the combination of a tiny SSD and a large RDHD (at least OEM from Dell.)

One other non-obvious advantage of a large SSD over a tiny SSD paired with a large RDHD is that SSD's slow down precipitously when they get to about the half full point, and are essentially EOL when they get to about 70% full. Getting one large SSD, especially one that you will never come close to completely filling up, will tremendously increase the lifespan of your storage and possibly keep your computer running faster, longer.