Seagate Laptop SSHD 1 TB Solid State Hybrid Drive

Seagate has been the foremost proponent of the SSHD - the solid state hybrid drive. It's basically the integration of a regular hard disk drive with a solid state cache. This allows them to significantly improve the performance of their hard disk drives with just a small bump in the price tag.

Seagate considers the SSHD to be superior to the Flash Cache Module (FCM) because of potential data integrity issues during power or device failures, and superior to the Dual-Drive concept because of cost reasons. That's why they are not just offering this technology in their laptop HDDs, they are also offering it in their desktop HDDs.

Today, we are going to take a look at their top SSHD model for the laptop market - the 1 TB Seagate Laptop SSHD (ST1000UM000). Check out its key features :

• Boots and performs like an SSD

• Capacities up to 1 TB

• All-in-one design for simplicity and ease of installation

• Installs and works just like a traditional hard drive in any laptop, PC, Mac or
  game console, and with any OS and application

• SATA 6Gb/s with NCQ for interface speed

• Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) versions available to maximize data protection and
  minimize the risk of confidential information breaches

• Backed by a 3-year limited warranty

Of course, the main concern that users generally have is whether the 8 GB solid state cache is sufficient for the job. That's where Seagate's Adaptive Memory Technology comes in. Seagate claims it's more than enough because "most computer workloads rely on a relatively small amount of the total data stored to achieve performance". Well, we will put it to the test when we compare it to a regular hard disk drive. Let's see how much faster the SSHD is over the HDD.

For more details, read our Comprehensive Review!

To discuss about this review, head over to the forum thread!

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Review

• Comprehensive Review

Model

• ST1000UM000

Integrated Solid State Cache

• 8 GB cMLC (Commercial Multi-Level Cell) NAND Flash

Advanced Format (AF)

• Yes, Emulation Mode

Formatted Capacity

• 1,000,204 MB

Guaranteed Sectors

• 1,953,525,168

Bytes Per Sector

• 512 bytes (Emulated)
• 4096 bytes (Physical)

Recording Density

• 1894 Kb/inch

Track Density

• 375 Ktracks/inch (average)

Areal Density

• 705 Gb/inch² (average)

Platters

• 2 Platters

Read/Write Heads

• 4 Read/Write Heads

Spindle Speed

• 5,400 RPM

Cache Buffer

• 64 MB SDRAM

Average Seek

• 12.0 ms

Track-to-Track Seek

• 2.0 ms

Average Latency

• 5.6 ms

Drive Ready Time

• < 1.0 seconds (average)

Internal Data Transfer Rate

• 100 MB/s (sustained, maximum)

Maximum I/O Transfer Rate

• 600 MB/s

Interface

• Serial ATA 6 Gb/s

Supported SATA Data Transfer Modes

• 6.0 Gbits/s
• 3.0 Gbits/s
• 1.5 Gbits/s

SATA Hotplug Capability

• Yes

Maximum Height

• 9.5 mm
• 0.374 inches

Maximum Width

• 69.85 mm
• 2.75 inches

Maximum Length

• 100.35 mm
• 3.951 inches

Maximum Weight

• 115 g
• 0.254 lb