Solid State hybrid drives (SSHDs) offer the performance of a solid state drive (SSD) with the capacity of a traditional mechanical hard drive. Appearance wise, they're bigger than an SSD, and more powerful than a hard disk drive. The solid state portion of the drive stores the files you use the most, offering increased speed.

Solid state hybrid drives are much faster than mechanical drives. Prices are coming down, so now might be a good time to look into purchasing one. So with these revolutionary new drives being cheaper and faster, why are traditional hard drives still being used? The main factor is cost. Even though the cost has come down dramatically in recent years, the cost per gigabyte of storage space compared to hard disk drives is still a lot higher. They also lack the durability of solid state drives, as they contain moving platters which, under physical shock, are prone to damage. They also create noise, whereas fully solid state storage doesn't. 

Solid state hybrid drives work by comining a small capacity of flash storage - around 32GB normally - with a larger capacity hard disk drive, like 500GB. The so-called 'hot data' that needs to be accessed frequently is cached on the SSD component, and can be retrieved quickly, and the rest of the files are stored on the hard disk drive. Despire their disadvantages, like cost per gigabyte, lack of durability and noise, solid state hybrid drives are still a great compromise between solid state drives and traditional hard disk drives, offering the best of both worlds.