I used to keep my nose to the latest news about each and every new type of part coming out for improving a computer's performance. As I have drifted into my 5th decade of working with electronics I am not as likely to fuss over each thing as it becomes news. I do however wake up enough every now and then to see and look into some newer ideas. I was looking into replacing my primary laptop's hard drive this week and see more of the newer design "HYBRID HARD DRIVES" are available. These give the benefit of a Solid State drive on a limited amount of heavily used files while keeping the price near that of a conventional rotational hard drive. Several places have prices on these near the usual price of a conventional SATA hard disk (see below) and my research shows that while these Hybrids have not been in the market long enough to get much feel for long term longevity - they are not turning up in any out of the ordinary failure rates either.
Here is a good article with some fair, real life benchmarks between a up to date standard drive, a full SSD drive and a Hybrid - this from a writer for the business magazine "Forbes".
-- Below are links to two popular models for sale at a popular online store - if you are interested in prices and specifications. I showed one 500gb laptop drive and one 1TB desktop model -both at good prices - and they go up to 4TB on the desktop model. I may do one of these to try out soon - Please let me know if you have any history or advice on these. Thanks!
