Comment by barkingcat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by barkingcat | Hacker News Reader

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Pure SSD's have come down in price so much that it's irresponsible to spec out a computer for professional use without one.

The SSD impacts every single aspect of computer performance - from startup times, to application start times, to swap space speed, to reducing times when the computer is locked up loading from disk.

And these days, a 1 TB SSD can be had for around $300 USD - at which point, there is no obvious need for shuffling for space. Of course, if you are needing the 3 TB drives for video editing, that's fine. The surface studio specs say 1TB or 2TB - so even at such a high price, I find it really disappointing that it's not offering the 1 TB SSD (which is probably the first aftermarket change I would make if I bought one). For many 3D graphics pros, you would run the OS on a 512G SSD, and load the assets onto a larger 3TB hybrid drive or even better, a 10TB RAID array, for example, but you can't discount how much performance that SSD drive brings just for loading the OS and the software (Maya, or Adobe suite, etc)

Face it - any new machine today without an ssd is one where the manufacture is trying to claw back some profit.

Just for a note, those 1TB cheap SSDs are not very good or very compact SSDs. The new ones we associate with such stellar performance are still more expensive.

This device has some pretty intense performance requirements for the form factor. Could we wait a bit for some hands-on with reviewers before saying MS botched it?

If you look at the form factor, the hybrid drive is most likely a 2.5 inch drive. As far as I know there are no hybrid drives in the compact ssd size (either m.2 or msata format - the spinning platter wouldn't even fit). Just by listing that it uses a hybrid drive, they are already revealing what the form factor is - which is larger than a m.2 slot, and therefore competes head to head with the last gen 2.5 inch SSD with the SATA connector - which at 1TB is around 300 bucks these days.

And yes the SSD's are not as fast as the latest m.2 drives, but are still miles ahead of any spinning drive. I'm not really sure what you are trying to say ... like a Ferrari is faster than a Tesla in Ludicrous mode, so ... go for an electric hybrid like a Toyota Prius? I know that the car analogy doesn't always work, but can you think about your reasoning? That a true M.2 SSD (which can be thousands of dollars) is faster than a last gen 1TB SSD in the 2.5 inch form factor, so therefore MS should use a spinning hybrid drive???

You can wait for a teardown, or you can use logic and common sense.

The only other choice is for MS to use a non standard size spinning platter, maybe around the old Compact Flash drive size - but in that case, there is absolutely no point - they should have just gone straight to M.2, especially for something in that form factor.

To be honest, current generation hybrid drives pair up a really slow 5400 rpm drive with some flash. Now it can still get good performance, but in the end, you're dealing with a hard drive from a few generations ago. Seagate had 7200rpm hybrid drives last generation, but they recently changed to 5400 rpm drives, which makes the drive kinda slow, even with the flash addition.

Microsoft may certainly have gone custom with custom parts, but I don't think they have the volume, even in the wildest expectations, to go against the now popular ssd juggernaunt that is overtaking all of the slim laptop (Apple, Lenovo, Dell, Razer, etc), small form factor embedded pc, and high performance pc space - for good reason. It just makes sense, the parts are really widely available, and people are expecting that type of performance.

Are they using 2.5gb drives? I know they make very small spinning drives now for custom gear.

Think about it - 1 or 2 TB hybrid drive ? Do you think very small spinning drives come in that size? and would they pay for custom gear vs just going with an SSD (which can also be custom sized too don't forget)?

Microsoft has a lot of money, but I'm not sure that's where they should spend their money. An SSD in m.2 size is expensive, but less expensive than getting all custom gear.

This is about thinking things through ....

The logical thing is to have a 512G M.2 nvme paired up with a 2TB regular spinning drive (at 2.5") and calling it a day.

That's I would go with for a deluxe, small form factor, graphics pro oriented machine. That's the sweet spot. And it's really easy to build with off the shelf parts like the Intel NUC as a base.

... But that's precisely what a hybrid drive can be, except with more work to make it so the user doesn't have to juggle things by hand...

I am no longer a professional (as in, primary income) photographer, but I was and trying to keep all my work on the "right" drive was about as fun as weddings.

Btw sorry I said 2.5gb but that was mobile correcting 2.5in.

And what I'm trying to say is that SSD's are so cheap now that for the lower spec (1TB) of the surface studio, you no longer need to juggle space in order to far exceed the performance of a hybrid drive, even with a last gen SSD. SSD of any modern kind >> hybrid drive in performance.

I'm not arguing for abstract systems, but for that specific build that Microsoft has put together - in that form factor, a hybrid drive takes up too much space and they are not offering 3TB+ versions where the hybrid drive would excel.

I'm criticizing that specific assembly of parts.

I don't get how you're privy to what components MS has available. I think you assume ANYTHING in that machine is a stock PC part off the shelf.

It's not. It's really not. There is no damn room.

It's the same with the MBA, it's the same with the Surface 4 and Surface. Hell, it's the same with every all-in-one now.

I'm trying to take you seriously here but you keep repeating this line that makes it sound like you have some deep and clever insight into a machine the press has barely touched, let alone teardown specialists. You're mad because it's not a full SSD on principle but you have no idea what the hot set size of the hybrid is. You've got a bone to pick with performance but Surface devices have always been forced to use custom configurations of hardware (e.g., every Surface Book has an unusual configuration of their video card that gives substantially better performance).

I think you're arguing based on theoretical specs and without knowing the domain. Unless you're an ex-Surface engineer with special insight, I don't see why anyone here should trust you about this given how you insist this is all stock parts and it's trivially verifiable that that's not the case.

A not very good SSD is going to be better than an SSHD.

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