Is your hard drive upgrade kit here compatible with the Mid 2009 MacBook Pro firmware update giving SATA 2, 3 Gbs, IO speeds? The product says it is compatible but, at which speed.
SSHD drives aren't much faster then a standard hard drive, because they're still reliant on platters. They'll help a little bit but won't do much and they won't help things that are large by nature because they only have 8-16GB pf SSD "cache" if you will. They only help small applications like your web browser at best. They don't do a thing to speed up something like Photoshop.
And to be honest my SSHD experience was lackluster. I set my expectations accordingly(platter drive and it was a Seagate) and it still was bad enough to annoy me(being a Seagate didn't help). I have the 500GB version of this drive. It helps small things but if you even go past that to things like Photoshop the SSD "cache" does nothing.
It also didn't help that Seagate screwed up the 7.01 laptop drives and the 7200.11 drives up at the same time. I haven't really liked Seagate for years and I am reluctant to use or recommend them. At this point I'm a WD person for platter drives since I can't stand Seagate.
The 1TB version of the drive has a 16GB cache. The 500GB is only 8GB of cache.
Personally, I'd just get a 256GB SSD if you have the funds to do so. An SSD is going to run much better then a SSHD. I know this since I had both. 512GB SSD's are still expensive.
Personally, I like the WD Black2 drives since they make more sense to me. it's still somewhat ridiculous(120GB SSD/1TB 5400rpm drive) but it gives you the best of both.
2 Comments:
Nick, you have based this answer on the 500GB drive. I have installed several dozen of the 1 TB SSHD drives and had excellent results and lots of happy customers. The small price difference between the 500 and 1 TB does not justify buying the 500.
by mayer
It came in my laptop stock. I didn't care because I was just gonna install a SSD anyway. I was just saying that not only is the SSHD a half SSD and it makes no sense if the money for a SSD exists but Seagate isn't the greatest. Then again, everyones's mileage with Seagate seems to vary.
by Nick
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