How do you use SSD and hdd together?

Answer 1

The SSD's are faster as compared to traditional magnetic hard disk, but the SSD's happen to be flash memories.

The issue is that flash memory wears out and the more we write, the more it wears out, so that fact is something to consider, and it's useful for deciding what to put where, when you also have a traditional hard disk. Solid-state drives don't typically give you as much of a speed increase on writing as they do on reading. So I put my data files on the traditional magnetic hard disk

Answer 2

It depends on what you want to accomplish. If you want to boot faster than a traditional hard drive allows, then use the Solid State Drive (SSD) as your boot drive and the hard drive for data storage, backup, or some other purpose. On the other hand, for example, you want to have lightning fast data access for an intranet or personally hosted website, then fast boot time is not so important. In that case, make the traditional hard drive your boot drive and the SSD where you store the website or other data you want to have served up quickly.

In either case, be aware that unlike traditional hard drives, SSDs have a limited number of write cycles per sector. The way that they tend to get around this is by having a bit more capacity when new and just lock out sectors as the drive detects they wear out. (Similar to what a traditional hard drive does with its SMART technology and a bad sector is discovered.) However, it also uses a process called wear-leveling. This means that each time that data is written to the SSD, the data is moved to a different sector that has not been used as recently. The theory is that as time continues, this will wear the sectors of the drive more evenly and therefore lead to longer life. In practice, this is not generally the case. In fact, many SSDs have a much shorter lifespan than a traditional hard drive and it is for this reason that I do not professionally recommend SSDs to my clients.

No matter what you choose, though, be sure that any data that you wish to be protected is backed up on a traditional hard drive. (USB Flash Drives (aka thumb drives, stick drives, memory sticks, etc.) have the same problem as SSDs but tend to have a shorter life span since they suffer from more physical trauma than most SSDs, so they are definitely not a wise choice for backup targets or long-term storage.)

I hope all this helps. If you have any other questions, feel free to drop me a line.