Well, I took the plunge & bought it. It arrived this morning.
It was identical to the one I showed in my 1st post here:
http://img04.taobaocdn.com/bao/uploaded/i4/T1C8ZNFTpXXXXXXXXX_!!0-item_pic.jpg
But mine is dated 13 Sep 2013.
Seemingly brand new. No dust or anything. Smart values 100% like new drive (0 read errors, etc).
So, how do I feel after buying it ? It’s a roller coaster feeling, I must say. Read why.
I cloned a Dell 1558’s OS partition to this new hybrid drive and gave it a boot.
Slow…just like a normal hdd. Hmm…maybe 3-4 reboot just like they say.
Same result…slow, no improvement. Hmm what happened ??? Is the SSD-cache component not working ? (A rushing thought passed my mind …it’s cheap & you took the bait"
I researched a little bit on the internet about WD Hybrid SSD. Not much info , only some articles in hardware sites mentioning new hybrid HDD from WD as an answer for “Seahorse” Momentus XT. The article has photo similar to the one showed by Taobao reseller (or my local store). It also mentioned about 8GB, 16GB, 24GB SSD cache depending on WD’s model. So, this thing must be real !
But why slow like normal hdd in my test ??
So, I read a litle more until I read one site mentionng the difference between Seahorse’s hardware approach vs WD’s software approach. Another site’s interview with WD manager caught my attention. He said WD’s hybrid SPECIAL DRIVER to make it work, and the drive is only available for OEM.
I said to myself “So, that’s why it’s so cheap”. No driver = normal hdd = no SSD caching. I got scammed !!!
I just bought a 5400-rpm 750GB HDD with 1-month warranty for $50. Not too much a bad deal, but not a great either.
I thought the driver must only be available to OEM, and they customize it for their system.
WD site does nott even have it listed in their product offerings, so how could I ever expect they would provide a driver ?.
At least that’s what I thought !!!
Searching WD support Download section, and I found WD Black SSHD available software. There I found WDBoost_3.34.433.74.exe. :smileyvery-happy:
I downloaded & installed . The driver setup recognizes my drive as WD7500L12X . GREAT.
First reboot after driver setup…no boot speed improvement.
Second reboot…seems faster (or is it just my feeling?)
Third reboot…hmmm it’s not my imagination. It is faster.
Fourth reboot…definitely much faster than a normal HDD, I said.
BOOTRACER results:
Corsair Force 3 SSD 120GB : 21 secs
WD7500L12X 750GB Hybrid drive ( without WDBoost ) : 47 secs
WD7500L12X 750GB Hybrid drive ( with WDBoost ) : 23 secs 
Note: the drive was tested with Dell 1558 (with a bunch of Dell’s softwares at startup) , HM55 chipset, SATA2 only. This chipset is known to prevent SSD from running at optimal speed.
At this point, I was ecstatic. This is only for $50 I spent. Even much cheaper than other resellers on Ebay / Aliexpress/Taopao who sells the same drive for $75-79.99. I think I could dance. 
For comparison, “Seahorse” Momentus XT 1TB (8GB SSD) is priced at $125 here.
Playing it a while, and I noticed I lost a large chuck of my 8GB memory.
Usually I have 5.9 GB memory available. Now…only 4GB. ??? 
The only change I made was installing WDBoost, so I uninstalled it, and…back to 5.9 - 6GB available memory.
What is going on ??? 
I researched on the net, and I found the answer in this own forum here:
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-Mobile-Drives/WDC-WD10S12X-55JTET0-Driver-leak/td-p/659429
It appears WDBoost driver will always “rob” 2GB of your memory when it’s installed.
I could not believe this…2 GB of system memory just to run this hybrid drive alone ?
Come on WD !!! Tell me this is a joke.
If it has to use 2GB of system memory for host caching, then what is the purpose of having 16GB SSD inside ?
I share my sentiment with Javapraca in that thread.
Now, I know why it is $75 cheaper than “the other”'s offering 
Oh yeah, my serial also shows :
crossed icon
WX41xxxxxxx6
WD7500L12X-55JTET0
no product name
No Limited Warranty
