1.8.2014

First off, it took 9 hours to clone my old Seagate 1TB Barracuda SATA HDD across to this new 2TB SSHD, largely due to the 2 successive failed attempts using Seagate DiscWizard software - the first failure was after 4.5 hours and was almost done, the second failed after just 1 hour and 20 mins. Then I re-initialized the new SSHD as GPT and not MBR (Master Boot Record) even though the Seagate DiscWizard Manual said it was okay to use either format for drives up to 2.2TB in size and to use MBR for older OS like XP or Vista. However what the manual DOES NOT tell you is that you should always format all new drives as if they were just a standard data drive (thus initialize as GPT) irrespective of size,before you copy the clone across to them even though you intend the new drive to be an OS BOOT or SYSTEM DRIVE!*** Please note: when your PC sees this new SSHD for the 1st time, initialize as GPT and not MBR ***Okay teething problems aside. this new hybrid drive is working fine now - although I did need a "PC Restart to Repair C:\ Drive Errors" just 24 hours after I began using it as my local drive. The main advantage is the higher WRITE speed thanks to the bigger memory cache buffer i.e. the in-built 8 GB of flash memory that distinguishes this SSHD from a regular SATA III HDD. I am now getting a minimum of 180 MB/s sustained write speeds (sometimes more), but slighter slower READ speeds than my external 3TB HDDs via a USB 3.0 cable (about 15 MB/s slower). However, when compare to my older (as in 4 years old) 1TB SATA HDD that was my C:\ system drive before this week, the READ speeds are higher -> about 20% faster whilst the WRITE speeds are +100% higher (so in effect double what I was getting before).Shutdown times have fallen to just 16 secs, but Cold Boot from start times are no better than before, and that's with few startup programs enabled - still takes about 55-60 seconds from power on to see the desktop icons settle on my monitor and for the PC to become responsive to user input. Hence the 4-Stars and not 5. That plus slower read times than my external Seagate drives and the problems I had with cloning my old C:\ drive to this one.Pros(1) Writes about twice as fast as older SATA I/II HDDs and about +15% faster than new SATA III Barracudas(2) Offers reasonable value when compared to the normal 2TB SATA III HDD (costs about £25 more) but offers 8 GB flash memory too and is WAY CHEAPER than even a 240 GB SSD(3) Gives off less heat than the older HDDs (I tried both in an external USB 3.0 caddy and I could touch this one without getting my palms burnt) and uses less power too -> about 4.5 to 5 watts (older HDDs I have use 7 watts minimum)(4) CrystalDiskMark 3 performance benchmark tests show that it is only slower at reading SEQ (Sequential) files than new SATA III HDDs, but in all other tests e.g. Random 512K and 4K as well as 4K QD32 it blows away conventional Seagate HDDs in both READ + WRITE tests (so only marginally slower in the large file sequential test, but in the other 7 out of 8 tests - 4 READ + 4 WRITE it scores higher)Cons(1) Larger drives may be difficult to clone/take an inordinate amount of time -> failed to work initialized as 'MBR'(2) Around 1/3 as fast as SSD when it comes to READ speeds and roughly 1/2 as fast in WRITING to disc, so a marginal improvement over conventional hard drives, but not in the same league as SSD flash drives(3) Task Manager -> Performance -> Disc 0 (C:) shows that these drives often stay at 100% even after all Programs are closed and internet disconnected (probably the learning function, but it does slow down the PC a bit for a short while; min or two)Conclusion:Would I buy another one? Yes. I'm actually considering a 4TB SSHD to replace my other internal older 1TB Seagate Barracuda drive for 3 reasons: (1) No need to clone, just insert, bootup, enter Disk Management and initialize as GPT then format as NTFS -> so very easy to incorporate and good on power consumption & heat thrown off, (2) Price at £133 is only marginally more expensive than 4TB NAS approved Seagate and the same as an external regular 5900 RPM USB 3.0 Expansion drive -> so there is reasonable value, and (3) I have a use video library (> 10 Terabytes) and I'm constantly copying & moving files around e.g. every .MKV I download is immediately converted to .MP4 using Movavi SuperSpeed so fast WRITE speed is important to my particular needs (converting a 2 GB movie to .mp4 in 8-9 seconds is great!!). Everyone who uses a PC and copies big files knows that thanks to memory cache the initial speed is very good then often it falls a little and settles at a constant rate, with that extra internal flash RAM on-board these SSHD write fast continuously without any drop-off and I've really noticed this even when copying files back from USB 3.0 external drives, that I'm getting +30 to +35 MB/s gains in sustained rates. Seagate are a good brand and these SSHD do work well, although I may need to use for a few weeks more to see if the adaptive process yields any benefits once it learns which apps I use a lot (so far no discernible difference with Excel/Access/Photoshop/Premiere Pro etc.

11.11.2014

I was enthusiastically telling my daughter about the new drive I’d installed and how it would solve all my photographic space problems for at least 12 months. Then she asked me an interesting question, “How do you review a hard drive?” It gave me pause for thought. Suddenly “I turned it on and it worked” seemed a little light on words and helpful information.Then I remembered one time when I was having trouble with an old drive and I was getting a little concerned that it was going to fail and take all my data with it. So, after a little googling I found that there were free downloads available that would test various aspects of hard drive function like its wind up speed and temperature, which,apparently, are good indicators of imminent failure. So I thought, right, I’ll run some diagnostics on this drive and that way I’ll have something to report. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s good.But before I get on to that, there are a few things I’d like to draw attention to.This drive is supplied as OEM. This means that there are no connecting cables, fixing screws, or instructions. If you are adding this to your desktop, rather than replacing a drive, you need: a spare HDD bay (or a kit to convert a spare optical device drive bay for HDD use), SATA cable, an unused SATA power connecter (or an adapter to fit a spare MOLEX connector, and an unused SATA connection on the motherboard.On boot-up, after installation, the drive might as well not have been there. It needs formatting and, if you wish, partitioning. I downloaded DiscWizardSetup from Seagate’s website to make this job easier. Not a very easy piece of software to use, or understand, but it was easier than doing it the other way.That finished, computer restarted, and I had four new virtual drives adding up to 2TB. Brilliant.I was totally happy with this, with the ease of installation, and the size of my new drive.Then the trouble started.While I was checking ‘properties’ in Windows I noticed an optimise option. I could optimise files/folders/virtual drives for images, videos, and other file types. I’d never noticed this before so I chose optimise for images. Pressed go and it went away forever. I eventually cancelled the operation, re-opened Windows Explorer and the whole drive (not just that partition) had disappeared. I had to do a re-start to get it back.So this is where I downloaded some drive checking software. Sticking with Seagate I downloaded their free DiscCheckup. I ran the short test against all of my drives. This new 2TB drive of theirs failed every test, while my existing drives all passed. This was deeply troubling - especially since it also caused the drive to disappear again – necessitating another re-boot. I ran the extended test and that hung up the computer and I had to do a forced manual shutdown. (I’m running Windows 7 by the way). So then I downloaded the DOS version of this same program - for which you have to burn to a CD and then boot from it. I ran the extended test again. It ran for an hour and then just stopped. Re-boot computer. I ran it again, it got as far as 92% completed (at least 2 hours) and then hung up.Better try some third party stuff. Found a highly recommended HDD checker and ran that. My new drive passed the short test which seemed to include what it failed on with the Seagate testing software. So then I ran the extended test. After three hours it was given a clean bill of health.So now I’m left with a drive I just don’t totally trust. My suspicion is that the Seagate software is just rubbish, but that in itself reduces my confidence in the drive. Seagate should know how to test their own drives better than any third-party. So did my third-party software miss errors that Seagate’s DiscCheckup picked up on? Your guess is as good as mine. But if Seagate’s software is better, then the drive is junk.Because of all this, the drive has had little use. But it hasn’t disappeared any more. Everything I have put on it is still there, and it works perfectly whenever I do access it. Access time does seem a little quicker than my other drives, but this SSD bit in the description is totally transparent to me. I don’t seem able to access anything, it’s just there and I have no idea what it does or whether it does it well since there seems to be no way to interrogate it. This is not a solid state drive, just a conventional one with spinning platters and moving head. I think the description is a tad misleading on that point.I really have no idea how many stars to give this. Seagate deserve 1 because of the quality of the software. But the drive itself has not misbehaved. Running Seagate’s software to test it is what seems to have caused all of my wasted time. So I think I’ll settle for 4. If the drive fails any time soon, I’ll come back and change it.

31.10.2014

Hard drives (HDD'S) have really matured over the years and recently we have seen the rise of the Solid State Drive (SSD). Whilst HDD'S offer huge storage capacities but are relatively slow, SSD'S offer blisteringly fast speeds but have until now been expensive and small in capacity. Lately we have seen SSD'S drop in price making larger capacity SSD'S much more affordable and attractive, no longer being the preserve of the bleeding edge enthusiast with money to burn. However, the size issue still lingers on.To that end most people have opted for an SSD as an o/s boot drive (with some select applications on top) with a standard mechanical drive for volume storage.I use this setup and it works well for me.However what Seagate have done with this drive is taken the best bits of an SSD and fused them with the storage capacity of a 7200rpm HDD to create a Hybrid drive and to be honest it works very well.The SSHD drive we are reviewing here combines 8 gb MLC NAND SSD storage (unlike the SLC found in it's laptop range) with 4tb of mechanical storage. And in case you fancy getting an SSD, Seagate do a new range of these which are very competitive in terms of both performance and price.This all works through Seagate's Adaptive Memory technology that uses code baked into the disc to work out which files you use most often and 'cache' them to the ssd portion of the disc thus bringing performance enhancements. And because it doesn't require any special drivers of software, it's all on disc, the hdd is widely compatible.The drive itself looks like any other desktop HDD in so much as the top features a silver metal cover with a sticker and all the relevant information including serial number. The rest is a black unibody design with the pcb visible underneath.The SSHD is a 3.5" drive that comes in two flavors. OEM which is just the bare drive and Retail where the drive is boxed and includes a physical copy of their disc wizard software along with the necessary cables.Installation is a breeze in so much as you locate a free drive bay in your pc, screw it in, attach the necessary sata and power cables and you're away. There is an important note to mention here, the system will only see this as one drive, rather than a small ssd and a large hdd. This is because the HDD allocates the most frequently used files to the SSD portion (in simple terms) to keep you working as fast as possible. This adaptive memory will take a little while to work out what you are using most frequently based on your usage patterns and so you should see performance increase as it discovers your patterns and usage settles down past the initial installation.You may also be looking to replace a system drive with this so another way could be to hook it up, either internally or via a caddy, run a free clone program such as the excellent Macrium Reflect and then swap the drives out. You can also use Seagate's disc wizard programme supplied free on their website.Running HD Tune I achieved a very respectable transfer rate of 103.2 MB/sec Minimum and 164.9 MB/sec maximum. Although this achieved an average of 147 MB/sec transfer, this should increase the more it is used as it understands your habits and adapts accordingly.In terms of performance whilst the benches show it is a strong performer, it certainly has a lot more to give. The adaptive technology that essentially cache's the most frequently used files, does as mentioned take a little while to learn your useage habits. To that end synthetic benches don't really reflect the true potential of this drive so one must not base any decisions purely on these or any other benches.The Seagate Desktop SSHD Hybrid drive is one of the first mainstream desktop drives to offer this functionality and to me this is definitely the way forward. Previously only laptop drives have gone down the hybrid route and I hope this is the start of things to come for all desktop drives. This drive in particular features 8 gb's of SSD storage and over time I hope this increases enough or further option become available with different size SSD storage.The adaptive technology I found to work very well and although we are no where near true ssd speeds it was a very welcome boost over standard mechanical speeds that will improve over time as it learns your behaviour.Although SSHD'S were an ideal route for laptop users to try and maximise both performance and storage, desktop users simply aren't constrained in this way. That said it offers a very easy and straightforward upgrade path for people who want a faster storage drive or just want to keep it simple with one drive.So the drive itself gets a solid Gold from me as it performs very well and would be a fantastic addition to any system, either as the main drive or to get more speed out of a secondary drive.

5.11.2014

I recently upgraded a laptop to the equivalent SSHD drive and was very impressed, so when given the opportunity to do the same with a desktop hard drive I jumped at the opportunity. The desktop in question is a quite old machine featuring an AMD Athlon 64x2 4200 2.2GHz processor (2 cores) and a Seagate ST932042 7200rpm 3AS SATA-300 drive. This is in fact a laptop drive which I installed into a desktop, but its spec is equivalent to standard desktop fare, notably the 7200rpm rarely seen on laptops now.There were two things I was looking to achieve here: improve boot time and get more capacity (previous drive was 320Gb).Upgrading was simple - I connected the new drive via the secondary SATA cable in the machine and used Seagate's DiscWizard software to migrate.This is a great bit of free software which can be used to backup drives so long as the source or destination is Seagate. It lets you keep the same geometry (ie. partition size), resize in proportion, or in theory lets you set it manually. I went for the manual option which worked well (I previously complained that DiscWizard seemed determined to proportion disk sizes but this does not seem to be the case. I dual boot into Windows and Linux - the migration lost the ability to boot in Linux but I resolved that using an Ubuntu Live CD and reinstalling the boot loader. If anyone else does this, also check the parition configuration in /etc/fstab as the default setup may be using UUID to identify the hard drive. This will have changed with the new hardware.Many articles I have read suggest performance is best if you reinstall operating system and applications. I have no doubt this is true but given the way I use this machine, it is unlikely I will do that for now.Once done, I swapped the primary and secondary SATA cables and switched on. Windows worked straight away, although I did have problems with Linux as above.To explain the SSHD concept... it is a standard hard disk drive featuring an 8GB cache (solid state) which automatically caches the bits of the disk you use more. Because this optimisation is done at the hardware level it works with any operating system and has no additional overhead. Seagate has determined that 8GB is sufficient cache size here (as that is what gets used over and over again), although I can't help but feel 16GB for slightly more cost would be worthwhile.The truth though is in the testing, and I have done some basic testing of a series of operations to see how the machine performed before the upgrade, and a few days after the upgrade. The reason for this is that I found the system continued to improve its performance initially, seemingly as it worked out what to cache and what not to. OS upgrades are evidently not great for caching as the new files may be in a different location. The results below are all in seconds, detailing before and afterLoad Windows 7: 100 -> 52Shutdown Windows 7: 24 -> 14Sleep: 36 -> 26Recover: 12 -> 6These tests are only indicative as I did not do them over and over again (I did reboot before each test though) - some observations:- I saw boot and shutdown time pretty much half. This was better than I expected given the previous drive was 7,200 rpm.- The sleep mode was definitely quicker, but it was the recovery that the SSD function really kicked inThese tests are far from conclusive in that I should really reinstall the machine, but given I now have three times the hard drive capacity, 30-50% performance improvement for most tasks, and all in a product that's way less than £100, this has to be a winner... highly recommended.

6.11.2014

This is basically a Seagate Barracuda on steroids. What we have here is the same 8GB of NAND flash found in today's SSDs, married together with the full 7200RPM spindle speed of a Desktop hard drive. A hybrid or Solid State Hard Drive (SSHD). To look at the drive you wouldn't think there was anything out of the ordinary with it. But under the green PCB on the underside is a small controller chip and the NAND flash.For the same price of a 250GB SSD (or thereabouts) you're getting 8 times the disk space. Obviously only a fraction of this Seagate is flash memory and you cannot select which programs or files run off the drive. Your computer doesn't recognise the extra memory as a second hard drive.

14.12.2013

I decided to replace my boot drive a while back, but after a system corruption I decided the time was now. On my old drive which was a 6gbs transfer rate drive the system seemed to be getting slow and programs took a while to load. Now I have quite a powerful PC i7 processor, 8gb of ram so it should run fast but I found after a while and loading a number of programs over several days it did not.So enter the Seagate ST2000DX001. First off I “cloned” my old Boot drive after I had restored a good image before the corruption. So I know I was comparing like for like, the only difference was allowing an extra 100gb of space on the C Boot to the previous 2gb old disk,

20.11.2014

Standard Seagate Barracuda hard drives have always been my choice for price, performance and reliability.This one is a different design. There was always a small cache of fast RAM to enable read/write buffering but this one has 8GB of NAND flashThe design effectively arranges the 2TByte as an archive for an 8Gbyte Solid State Drive (SSD). There's Seagate's Adaptive Memory putting the stuff you use most on the SSD and the other stuff in the background accessible at old school hard drive speeds. It's all inbuilt so there is no need for special drivers or other software.I think this is worth emphasis because you wouldn't find advantage in using this drive on a high load web server because the scheduler wouldn't achieve much.

20.1.2016

This was my first SSHD drive and I loved it. Works very good. Let say from opening the pack to up and running my system from it took half an hour thanks to my hot swape hard drive bay.I bought the desktop version after reading a lot of reviews and I have decided to put this in my system to stay under the budget and get the speed of an SSD with the capacity of 7200rpm hard drive.The drive come well packed in an antistatic pack which was in a box very carefully packaged with appropriate support. Just to clarify this is the desktop version. I used the Seagate Disc Wizard to clone my 80GB 7200 rpm primary drive, which took 20 minutes to transfer 42gb of data which was really good.

20.11.2015

I am not a fan of Seagate hard drives. Of all the hard drives I have owned (Toshiba, IBM, WD, Seagate) in PC's and in external drives the ones that have failed have all been seagate drives!!! 1 and 2TB which is not good and I have lost data in the past becuse of this. I learnt my lesson and now copy any data of importance to x3 destinations (NAS, PC and external drives) so that if I ever loose one I have the data somewhere else.Now that said on investgating these Hybrid drives the Seagate ones 'seem' to have a good reputation at the moment. So my wifes 27" iMac HD failed (yes a Seagate 1TB drive)

15.1.2014

I bought this to replace the nearly-full and rather tired 320GB drive in my 2008 iMac, and with the help of an excellent youtube vid on how to replace the drive, it was surprisingly simple (iMac's are particularly fiddly to work on!). Installed it, uploaded it with the latest update from my time machine drive and was good to go in 2 hours or so!It has given me a huge increase in storage (as expected) but I haven't seen any particular increase in boot time (which is still about 43 seconds) - I'm not sure whether the OS will eventually move on to the cached part of the drive or not, but 43 seconds isn't too bad anyway - but I have noticed the applicaitons I run most, which are Photoshop,

20.7.2014

I was looking to update my HDD as I had developed problems and wanted something quicker...I was originally going to go SSD and keep my old Hard drive as storage...a Samsung Spinpoint 5200 ...but needed more storage and Speed...and having read about Hybrid HDD's I decided to go with this...I decided to do a complete install of Windows..I removed all Hdd's and installed this one...It was recognised right away and after a fresh install it worked really quickly...Before I used to start up in about 2/3 minutes and even then it would be another minute before the damn computer would allow me to do anything with speed....NOW...I start up in 50 seconds (Windows 7)

16.8.2015

Most of the performance of a SSD, with the storage capacity of a conventional hard disk - what's not to like? Bear in mind though that you are only getting the bare drive, with no mounting hardware, documentation or set-up/copying software. The absence of screws/brackets etc won't be a problem if you are simply replacing an existing drive, but if you want to add it alongside the old drive you might need a few bits and bobs. Easy-to-use drive copying software is available to download from the Seagate website, allowing you to simply clone the old drive with all its partitions (including hidden/system/restore partitions),

1.12.2013

Decent drive, and the premium you pay for the hybrid is *sometimes* worth it, but don't buy this expecting SSD speeds or anything close to it. It'll speed up a few things you use on a regular basis, but it's hard to feel this performance upgrade outside of running a benchmark program. It really makes much more sense in 2.5" guise for laptop use, for desktops the value and functionality curve flattens out a lot.It could really use a lot more of the solid state storage to shine (see WD's new Black2 hybrid for an example of how it should be done).That said, it's quiet for a 7200 RPM drive, runs cool, and makes a good upgrade choice for a desktop, especially one that's been running something like a WD Green or (perish the thought)

23.4.2016

I bought this hybrid drive to replace a failed Seagate Barracuda hard drive.My options were to buy a standard 1tb hard drive for about £40, buy this 1tb hybrid drive for about £60 or go for a 1tb solid state drive for about £240 taking in to account that the SSD would need an extra mounting bracket as part of this price.This makes the SSD 6 times more expensive than a HDD and 4 times more expensive than a hybrid drive and even though the SSD is the fastest, I felt that the hybrid drive was for me the best value for money considering that my computer is coming up to being 8 years old this year and I would not see the full benefit of an SSD (by the time that I will be able to upgrade the rest

28.10.2014

Until the price of SSDs comes down these hybrid drives are your best bet. I have two PCs at home, one with a 128GB SSD and my main one, with this drive, and I can hardly tell the difference in speed. I have Windows 8.1 installed on both and the boots times are pretty much identical, although the PC with the SSD is running a much slower CPU, which may be balancing things. The extra storage space means I have Steam and all of my Steam games installed on the hybrid and my games have never loaded faster. Valve themselves stuck one of these in their prototype Steam Machines.A friend of mine was about to buy an SSD for twice the price of this, and only a fraction of the storage, and I recommended he get this instead.

Seagate Desktop SSHD SATA III 2TB (ST2000DX001) - Reviews

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