SSHD?

normhart

Trainz Entry Level
I've just ordered a Seagate 2TB FireCuda Gaming SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Hard Drive since I can't pony up the $400-500 for a SSD. It is a 2TB disk drive coupled with 8GB NAND flash. The SSD portion is 8GB. With a TANE DB in excess of 450 GB I was, again, running out of room and this seemed like a good compromise.

Specs seem pretty good but I'm wondering if anyone in the community has any experience with these.
 
I've been using a 500GB and a 1TB SSHD on two separate rigs both running T:ANE for getting on for two years now quite successfully. The NAND acts effectively as a massive cache and takes a few usages to learn what you use the most hence they work better with dedicated programs like Trainz than a general purpose machine running Office, social media and games where you are constantly swapping usage. While SSHD are unlikely to ever out perform a SSD, and a fast M2 is currently likely the preferred storage, they are a good compromise particularly when in respect of Trainz the monies saved would be better spent on improving graphics. Peter
 
This hard drive would only be used for trainz so that should work well. Any advantage to using the hd for only the db or only the exe or is having both OK? I'm thinking of moving all the various data bases to this while keeping the program files on the standard 7200rpm hd they are on now. Thoughts?
 
On both my machines I did a drive image from the original 3.5" HD to the new SSHD's then swapped the drives over keeping the old drives as complete backups of Windows and Trainz. Not as often as perhaps I should I now do a drive image from the SSHD back to the 3.5" hence a couple of months ago I was able to revert to T:ANE SP1 when SP2 was driving me mad. As Windows can only access one drive at any one time there is little to be gained performance wise from spreading Trainz over two separate drives. There is however merit in partitioning a drive (or using a second drive) to separating Trainz from Windows because should Windows go down and needs to be re-installed the majority of Trainz is safe on another partition (or drive). Peter
 
On both my machines I did a drive image from the original 3.5" HD to the new SSHD's then swapped the drives over keeping the old drives as complete backups of Windows and Trainz. Not as often as perhaps I should I now do a drive image from the SSHD back to the 3.5" hence a couple of months ago I was able to revert to T:ANE SP1 when SP2 was driving me mad. As Windows can only access one drive at any one time there is little to be gained performance wise from spreading Trainz over two separate drives. There is however merit in partitioning a drive (or using a second drive) to separating Trainz from Windows because should Windows go down and needs to be re-installed the majority of Trainz is safe on another partition (or drive). Peter

On conventional physical drives there is a head that moves from track to track. In the database world to get the bent performance multiple drives are used to minimise the track to track movement. SSD drives do not have the track to track head movement and that's where they have the advantage. Data which is in the track under the head is always faster to read or write than having to move the head and the more tracks you need to cross the longer it takes so having two drives gives you twice the amount of data that can be accessed without moving the heads.

The caching drives which mix SSD and conventional drives work nicely until you need to pick up something beyond the cache. Typically this is rare once it has settled down and worked out which files you access the most frequently.

Cheerio John
 
OK, sounds like I need to move my primary TANE to the new SSHD and leave everything else where it is.

C: SSD Windows 99GB - 27GB free
D: HD Trainz 2.7TB - 857GB free
E: SSHD new drive 2TB primary TANE ~ 500GB
F: External backup

Thanks for the input.
 
OK, sounds like I need to move my primary TANE to the new SSHD and leave everything else where it is.

....

It's been a few weeks so I wondered if you have any more thoughts on this.

I think I need to replace my ageing WD Black 2TB drive and have been considering a similar drive or one of the Firecudas. I have multiple TANE installations but several of the "special" versions, plus all my CC dev stuff, is on the 2TB drive
 
Normally the drive moves files that are accessed most automatically to the SSD part. There is no separate partitions or anything that you can really do to force certain things to stay on one part or the other.
 
I've just ordered a Seagate 2TB FireCuda Gaming SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Hard Drive since I can't pony up the $400-500 for a SSD. It is a 2TB disk drive coupled with 8GB NAND flash. The SSD portion is 8GB. With a TANE DB in excess of 450 GB I was, again, running out of room and this seemed like a good compromise.

Specs seem pretty good but I'm wondering if anyone in the community has any experience with these.

No experience, but after looking at the spec's, I want one!!! LOL

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