I've been thinking it's about time I replaced the boot drive in my desktop PC, since it's getting on a bit.

I was looking at SSDs, but there also seem to be a few hybrid drives on the market. In theory, they sound like a great idea: the firmware handles what goes where, so that stuff that needs to be fast is put in flash memory, and everything else is held on the conventional drive. So far, so good, but I was surprised to find that mostly, the flash bit of the drive is a mere 8Gb, which seems a bit small.

My current boot drive is 500Gb, but I'm only using 120Gb of this. The bulk of my media and games is on a separate 1Tb drive, currently half full.

So, do I get a 250gb SSD, and migrate my boot drive to it, and get the full performance boost, or do I get a hybrid and get a bit of a performance boost once things have kicked in?

If I go the SSD route, is there any software which can help do what the hybrid's firmware would do - i.e. recognise that I'm reading a hell of a lot of data from h:\games\skyrim, and shunt that to the SSD? Any other SSD tips?

Put an old SD card into an old 5400 HDD - bingo two old things can be marketed as a shiny new gimmick.

(I've found no proof that's what they do, but no proof that it isn't either. Or indeed that perhaps 8GB is chosen as the cheapest option which is enough to make an OS boot faster but not enough to be useful for actually using the machine.)

Get a real SSD.

When I looked a year or so ago, hybrids were pointless. You've already got a big drive (NJ) for data that doesn't need to be fast, so why piss about with a second one?

This indeed does seem to be the prevailing thought - I think the hybrids are probably OK for laptops where physical space is a priority. Not an issue in my desktop PC, so SSD it is. I've got one on the way.

I chucked the dvd drive out of my laptop and replaced it with a second hard drive caddy. 256GB ssd for boot, 1tb mechanical for "data".

The ssd is amazing - power button to usable desktop is about 4 seconds (plus time to type password 4 times before getting it right), to usable applications (photoshop, solid edge, corel or whatever) takes another 3 to 5 seconds.

I would love a SSD for my laptop. The one in my desktop made a huge difference to the loading speed of apps and Windows. If only we could get rid of the old spinny disks and have big cheap SSDs.

I just bought another SSD for computers around the house.

My laptop already was converted from HDD to SSD and from Win 7 to Linux Mint last year and the difference is amazing - like having a new computer.

I ended up with a specialized program that requires win 7 and .net to run, and has been finicky, so I bought a second SSD to swap in/out to run it.  I think it was $150 for 750 GB, but there were 256GB ones for under $100 in a retail store.

All of the SSDs are faster than my laptop, so ultimate speed is a non issue.

If you count your time for even $5 / hour, an SSD is so worth it.

Buying an SSD for my laptop and then for my desktop were the best and most obvious upgrades I've ever made in 30 years of playing with computers.

That includes super-wizzy CPUs, shovel loads of RAM, HDDs with more cache than they know what to with and spin speeds that keep the laptop stable on a rolling sea. 

Well, I've got one on the way. Sod's law, Ebuyer's stock control system had a glitch and the one I wanted isn't in stock, so I've had to change my order, and so I'm still bloody waiting.

I know you've already bought something, but I had a good story.. Imagine going into your local chip shop, asking for chips, and the friendly maid behind the counter tells you they've just come in and they're being peeled and will be done in about five minutes, you can just take a seat and watch them sizzling away until they become small golden wonders. This is basically your current hard drive.

Now imagine you go into your local chip shop and ask for chips, and you're served some from the counter storage bucket thing, but they're not enough, but they already have some more in the fryer and a couple of minutes later you have your steaming portion of chips. This is your hybrid drive.

Now imagine you decide you want to get some chips, lean forwards to get off the sofa, and find that your chips are sitting on the table in front of you, although you have a slightly smaller portion than usual, but still enough unless you're extremely drunk, or Trig. This is an SSD.

Thanks Serg, I think that sums up everything pretty much perfectly.

My local chip shop now has an Android app. We're living in the future.

So you can order ahead of collection? Perfection if so. No one likes the squash of a busy chip shop, accidentally leaning on the molten hot "do not touch" surfaces.

"accidentally leaning on the molten hot "do not touch" surfaces"

After 6 pints?

Maybe, but even sober. Sometimes even a brush of the arm could end up with you sticking to them (definitely not an exaggeration)

Haha, I love this. It's very hard to explain just how much faster an SSD truly is.

Well, that was mostly pretty easy, except for the bit where for some reason Windows booted to a black screen with mouse pointer when I connected the SSD. Not sure what was going on, but rebooting again worked.

My PC is now a good bit nippier. Won't have time to dash out to the chippy while it boots any more.

With all that time you will save, maybe you'll have a chance to sort out the Awards.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I thought you were on the Best Chipshop in Scotland committee again this year?