I use a 180GB SSD main drive and four 1.5 TB spinning platters on a fakeraid 0+1 setup (so 3TB total).

I had a previous SSD of about 128GB that lasted about a year before I started seeing errors. That drive was getting around 90% full. Part of the problem is that once it gets that full, it can't go hunting around for good sectors to replace the bad ones. You want to aim for no more than maybe 75% full. For me, that makes 180GB the minimum I would buy.

I've had the current one for about 2.5 years without any issues.

Making sure your swap space sits on a spinning platter also helps.

My machine at work has had an SSD for about 2 years with no issues and much improved speed (I'm mainly running AutoCAD on it, and Perl, of course :-) ). I also have two laptops at home with SSDs. One is old, has had only an SSD in it for about 3 years, and runs Linux. The other is less than a year old with an SSD and an HDD, and I dual-boot Linux and Windows on that. So far, performance and reliability has not been an issue on any of it. The only frustrating part for me was getting Windows set up across the two hard drives so that all my data would be on the HDD; it's not a straightforward and trivial process (especially if you want backups and encryption to work properly). Linux, of course, was a piece of cake in that respect.

Here's a link to a discussion on answers.microsoft.com that discusses some of the issues involved in moving the user's data directory to another hard drive. Note, especially, some of the comments below the main answer.

No experience here but an SSHD, like a restaurant set menu, a package holiday or an integrated camera, is parts bundled to offer the consumer value for money. Easily satisfied consumers like bundles. Picky consumers dislike the compromises and prefer to combine their own choices. You are assembling you own computer so the separate component option seems to better match your style.

Usage patterns are individual, flash endurance numbers are hard to verify. Several of my SSDs outlived their host laptops. Their work was mainly compiling and unit testing, the heaviest load was sometimes running virtual machines. My Raspberry Pis use their original SD cards from several years ago without errors whilst other people have seen short card lifetimes, so my demands may be too light to be relevant.

Your worry might be what happens when the flash wears out. Hopefully the decent ones degrade gracefully, gradually giving less performance benefit and sending warnings to monitoring software. Personally I am cautious and would recommend the separate SSD and HDD option.

Personally I am cautious and would recommend the separate SSD and HDD option.

I concur. (On the quote, and your entire reply.)

The only attractions of the SSHD are: the fit-and-forget, simple install; and the tried & tested, intelligence of the firmware that applies NVRAM caching to any & all workloads that might benefit from it. I was attracted by the idea of not having to continually think about what should reside on the SSD.

However, I've since read this (particularly this & this), and several others, and have reached the conclusion that I would never be satisfied with the results of the hybrid solution, and will be going for the separates.

Thanks.

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Partial agreement: almost any drive works best with not more than 50-70% utilization, but what I've dug up (e.g.: second hand info) suggests that minimizing rewrites (to an SSD) adds to longevity.

i.e., an SSD is best used as a tool to house executables you wish to load quickly, but not a great place to keep a swap nor as a data drive. See the reference to flash longevity in Re: OT: SSHDs Any experience?.



Spirit of the Monastery

For 3 years, I have been running Debian Testing on my main PC at home, with a 32GB SSD as the boot drive and a 1T HD for swap and data. The SSD is about 50% full. Boot up is about 10 sec to login screen, then another 4 or 5 sec to usable desktop. Have not had any problems with the SSD (or other parts of the system).

And also, Perl runs very quickly xD