Have not used Linux with these drives, but I do have a few Windows systems (laptops) with them. Essentially, the SSD side is an enlarged cache and does not appear as a separate device to the OS - which makes them transparent.
Basically, the idea is to enlarge the cache on the media side of the drive's interface to improve performance. The effect is supposed to allow a lower RPM speed drive to perform at a level comparable to a higher RPM drive. Haven't done side by side comparison, but I think the actual performance boost is smaller than advertised from my experience. --- A --- Original Message --- From: "Yasha Karant" <ykar...@csusb.edu> Sent: January 27, 2015 11:22 AM To: SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS@FNAL.GOV Subject: Hybrid disk drives There are hybrid disk drives that have a "small" SSD flash memory along with the regular spinning media, typically to serve as a cache for lower latency. Does anyone have long term experience with these units? Most flash memory is not designed for the long term repeated read/write/erase cycles of a primary disk drive -- how are these holding up? Is the flash configuration totally transparent to the Linux file systems and formatting operations? Yasha Karant
