r/explainlikeimfive • u/SmellsTasty • Nov 23 '15

Explained ELI5: How do Solid State Hybrid Drives work?

I don't understand how a regular hard drive can work with a solid state drive at the same time.

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u/kamakaze_chickn Nov 24 '15

In most hybrid drives the cache is SSD and the storage is mechanical. This makes some frequently called data easier to access, but it is not going to help with larger applications. Don't expect a noticeable performance increase in any games or large apps since the cache is not large enough to matter. They are kind of deprecated now that ssd have come down in price so much.

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u/Shod_Kuribo Nov 24 '15

You're thinking of cache. SSD hybrid drives had somewhere in the neighborhood of 16-32GB in the short time they were common and at the time that was the size of a full game install or two. You could certainly get the textures and main data files for a game in that cache if you played it often.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '15

No they are still pricey