SSD + HDD Hybrid setups: thoughts?

Hey everyone,
I've got this old Dell dv6 6170em lz474ea laptop hanging on to. It currently has a 750GB SATA HDD inside. Since there isn't a second slot for another drive, I’m thinking about swapping out the current one for an SSD. I'd mostly just be using it to boot up macOS and run a few files, so I figure 120GB should be plenty. I did some digging and saw those hybrid SSHD drives online.

1. Can I actually find those things at a local Best Buy or somewhere similar?

2. What's the consensus on them—are they actually worth the headache?

3. Right now, I've got Windows 7 installed on the old drive that came with the machine. If I pull the trigger on a new drive, is it possible to migrate everything over?

Hybrid drives are getting pretty pricey these days: http://www.crucial.com/ssd-storage/ssd-upgrade

If you aren't looking to store an entire library of high-res movies, honestly—in my humble opinion—you’re much better off just grabbing an SSD.

You can always clone your old drive onto the new one—just make sure you actually have enough capacity on the new drive to fit everything.

Benjamin King2 said:Hybrid drives are getting pretty pricey these days: http://www.crucial.com/ssd-storage/ssd-upgrade

If you aren't looking to store an entire library of high-res movies, honestly—in my humble opinion—you’re much better off just grabbing an SSD.

You can always clone your old drive onto the new one—just make sure you actually have enough capacity on the new drive to fit everything.

I mean, it doesn't seem *that* expensive when you consider that decent capacity SSDs go for a few hundred bucks. I need at least as much space as I used to have, so 750GB. I don't even want to think about what a high-capacity SSD would run me. I'm just confused—looking at that link you shared, how does the capacity work between the SSD part and the SATA part? Is it split into two partitions, or does that hybrid setup not even work like that?

Well, look, you already mentioned earlier that 120 GB would be plenty for you. 🙂 A hybrid drive actually comes with 4 GB of built-in flash memory—but just so we're clear, you can't actually see that memory or mess around with it; it’s totally off-limits. The system uses it to cache the programs and files you use most often, which is why everything feels snappier. As for the actual storage, the hard drive capacity sits at 750 GB.

Benjamin King2 said:Well, look, you already mentioned earlier that 120 GB would be plenty for you. 🙂 A hybrid drive actually comes with 4 GB of built-in flash memory—but just so we're clear, you can't actually see that memory or mess around with it; it’s totally off-limits. The system uses it to cache the programs and files you use most often, which is why everything feels snappier. As for the actual storage, the hard drive capacity sits at 750 GB.

I was thinking 120GB as a dedicated partition just for macOS and a few basic apps. I’ve got plenty of other junk to store elsewhere, and I don't really need an SSD for that, so this hybrid setup seemed like a solid middle ground 🙂 but the more I read about it, the more I feel like I misunderstood how it works. For instance, I boot up my OS and the speed is basically the same as before. Sure, it might cache stuff to the flash to make the next boot faster, but once I open a couple of other programs, they eat up that flash space and everything slows right back down to where it was.

Man, just buy an SSD. You can turn that old hard drive into an external one to store your photos, music, and movies. A decent enclosure only costs a few bucks, so it's a no-brainer. 🙂
Alternatively, you could install the SSD and then grab a cheap adapter for about 100-$50 bucks. You can pop a standard HDD into the adapter, slot it right where the DVD drive used to be, and suddenly you've got both an SSD and a 750GB hard drive inside your laptop.