Considering purchase of Western Digitial WD10JPLX hybrid. Need advice on Slack64 install.
 

Has anyone tried installing Slackware64 14.2 on a hybrid hard disk? I couldn't find anything on this in the Slackware docs...

I am considering purchasing a Western Digital WD10JPLX hybrid hard disk for my laptop, and I need some advice on installing Slackware64. Is this a doable project?

You mean one with the little bit of sdd for booting up from. They’re no different then a regular hdd , other then that part it caches the boot up files after a few times of booting an OS. Other then that it’s ( nop ) normal operating procedure.

This drive requires a separate driver to combine the platter drive and the NAND flash to a hydbrid which is presented to the OS as a single drive.
As far as I know, Western Digital only releases Windows drivers for their SSHD. Therefore I think you should steer clear of this piece of junk.

The one I have doesn’t need special drivers to use it’s capabilities. I ’ll have to look at it to get which model it is, but that’ll be a good hour before I can. It’s a seagate I think. 750 GB.

Indeed Seagate SSHD are managed by their firmware. Western Digital requires a software driver. Therefore, WD SSHD drives cannot be used as a hybrid drive in a Linux computer. You'll just see the two separate storage devices.

Thanks for the distinction between the two. That’s definitely enough to change my mind about getting a WD HDD. That seagate worked perfectly fine when I was using it for a main HDD to boot from

The Western Digital WD10JPLX is not a SSHD, but a nice Black Edition 7200RPM drive on a 2.5 inches form factor:

https://www.wdc.com/products/interna...ck-mobile.html

Long story short, it perform impressively; compared with the usual 5400RPM drives for laptop, it has vastly superior performance, BUT it is not a hybrid drive.

Its performances are similar with the 3.5 inches desktop drives, from my own experience, as I have several of them.

PS. I can see why some greedy peddlers will try to sell it as SSHD, betting on its superior performances... :p

PS2. A WD hybrid hard drive shows in Linux as a two separate drives, as Eric said, and you should use something like BCACHE if you want to combine them, BUT I am 100% certainly that this drive shows literally as one single device of 1TB, then it is a standard drive.

PS3. At least as my own drives behaves, they tends to work hot, but this can be expected from a Black drive. Also be warned that it eat more power than a 5400RPM drive, so your battery will drain faster.

PS4. The WD has a hybrid drive of 1TB, BUT it is WD10J31X https://www.wdc.com/products/interna...blue-sshd.html

Now that I am at a place I can look things up not being on my phone. Some others things to conciser.
which is faster?
is there a secondary HDD drive port (dvd/cd removable player not being used) for (expansion) growth? Where if one is (only) putting OS'es on the fastest drive and using the other hdd for storage type of setup.

with my seagate hybrind, I use to use. It just worked, no special setup needed, just install the OS onto the HDD like a normal HDD and it did the rest, using its on board nano cache to load up the OS faster. limitations were having more than one OS using the nano tech. Because the HDD was smart but not smart enough to know there was more than one OS on it. so it would cache the start up files of which ever OS was used the most, by experience of which one was being booted in sequence.

Sat if one booted Linux more than once it'd cache it so it will boot baster, as soon as you changed OSes then that was lost and you'd have to start over again. but too much of a boot performance loss for me, personally. That is just the behavior of the drive.

You are kidding, right?

Of course that a SSD like you mentioned is much faster than a 7200RM drive, even if it is of high performance. They are different animals, thought.

Also, you should consider the space which they offer, a SSD of 256GB is 4 time smaller than a 1TB hard drive.

And yeah, there are adapters to mount a secondary drive in the optical drive port. Search the eBay.

BTW, any hybrid drive will behave this way, because they does not know about your multi-boot, but what data was accessed often.

The WD's WD10J31X appears as a 1TB 5400RPM drive and a secondary 8GB flash drive, with the note that these drives are independant.

I have a laptop where I installed Linux in the 8GB flash drive and I use the bigger one for storage.

Slackware in a 8GB hard drive? Oh, well... :D

guess that little brain teaser did work on you. :D yes, and yes, and I was just putting that out there. Food for thought. as I went with a 750 Hybrid in lue of a 1TB, then switched to a 256SDD for my main, and now use the hybrid for off broad storage and just recently put in a 2TB utra thing hdd. Which I think is not as good as the 1TB I was using.

Because I noticed it was feeling like it was hanging up when I would compile code while the same drive was being accessed for something else. It just seemed to be catching and spit and spud'der, spit and spud'der. So instead if investaging it completely I just seperated my sorce code from it, and use it for the everything else data stuff. I just moved my programs I work on from time to time to a new sdd partition I created.

With Windows, two Linux OS'es, slack / and /home, and the other backdoor just in case OS I put back on here again one one root installed system, then one more partition for just my programs/source code/an area to compile source (whatever code) all sliced out on the 256GB SDD. I have no problems with it, I just use that secondary slot, pulled the DVD out and slapped in that other HDD.

AS there is more then one way to do this as you know. I was just putting out some other things to think about before investing in a hdd. Like I did with that 750 hybrid and just ended up pulling it then using it for a spare storage external hdd.

for what hes (maybe) paying for the 7200 RPM HDD he might be able to save the little bit of money to get him a cart for the secondary hdd for the DVD slot if he has one on his laptop, (some still do not have them). then he'll be set for a secondary hdd if need be.

10 to 15, 20GB most for a Linux OS. One linux OS for an entire 256GB sdd is not too bad either. this all pivots on the user storge needs more than how must space do I need for a Linux Install.

though I remember back when I was having a 500MB yes MB not GB HDD windows and Slackware installed on to it. Even spiting Windows user Directory away from the OS in where windows installed it onto a secondary hdd, like one can do with Linux.

But that's showing my age. ;)

Extremely important info. Thank you.

Is your Seagate something like one of these?