What is a Hybrid Hard Drive
What does SSHD mean?
SSHD stands for “ solid state hybrid drive ” which in Spanish means “ solid state hybrid drive ”
Definition
Hybrids are magnetic drives with flash storage. Hybrid hard drives combine the capacity of an HDD with the speed of SSDs by placing traditional spinning platters and a small amount of high-speed flash memory known as NAND. Hybrid drives monitor the data that is read from the hard drive and store the most frequently accessed bits in NAND flash memory. The data stored in the NAND will change over time, but once the most frequently queried data is stored in flash memory, it is served from flash, resulting in SSD-like performance. NAND is a proven storage technology that has been widely used in digital camera memory cards, USB flash drives, and MP3 players.
Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD) are backwards compatible with traditional hard drive modules, offering the performance and speed of SSD and the capacity and reliability of HDD. SSHD uses “ Adaptive Memory ” technology which is a self-learning algorithmic software that allows a laptop’s hardware to work efficiently with the firmware and NAND. The software dynamically monitors data usage and determines what data should be copied to flash, plus enables SSD-like performance for accessing frequently used files. Reduces workload and increases reliability of SLC NAND flash.
Advantages and disadvantages
An advantage of hybrid drives is their price, they are cheaper than solid state drives as they contain less flash memory, they are also faster than traditional hard drives. Computer manufacturers include hybrid drives in their computers to offer the speed of an SSD at a lower price and with greater storage capacity.
The downside is that they are based on price and storage capacity. If magnetic drives cost the same as in-state drives, there would be no need to use hybrid drives. A solid state drive would be superior in every way. Hybrid hard drives are useful because solid state drives are even more expensive.
