Anyone Have a Momentus XT in their M11x?

Currently I have the 250gb HDD my M11x came with and Im starting to get low on space (under 100gb left atm).

Im just wondering if anyone have the Momentus XT in their machine right now. I heard of it being louder than the normal HDDs so I just want some opinions of people who have it in the same laptop as me.

1) Is is louder/ Does it vibrate more than the original HDD in the m11x?

2) Does is suck more/less/or the same amount of power as the original HDD?

Its on sale for $100 for the 500gb version so that seems like a decent deal.

Thanks!

 

I currently have mine and the power is roughly the same.The boot time dropped from 1min to about 35seconds. I have not noticed any clicking or noise after the recent firmware update.

 

Same here, boot is quick and my regular programs are allot quicker to load. I have not noticed any noise

 

Just installed one yesterday, quite a bit quicker than the WD 320 black 7200rpm it replaced and so far just a quiet. Ordered from Amazon $99.99, no tax and free shipping can't beat that deal.

 

1) Nope
2) About the same

3) $100 for a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB is a great deal. If an SSD is totally out of the picture for you, I'd jump on that SMXT deal.

 

Battery bar says that I get another 20-30 minutes, but admittedly I also leaned out my processes and start-up programs when I installed it so that could have been part of it.

No extra noise or vibration.

Much faster. IMHO, if you bought this laptop and you're upgrading the hard drive you should start at the momentus xt.

 

I'll be picking up one of these as soon as the hinges are fixed with the new design and it gets back from service. I expect to see improvements even though the current HDD is a 7200rpm 250GB that came with this Best Buy R1 model.

 

I just got my M11x R1 in yesterday, along with the 500gb SMXT from Amazon - W7 boot time difference between stock 160gb 7200 drive vs the SMXT is pretty substantial - from 50 sec to 25 sec.

 

Hi,

1) I didn't notice any noise or vibration after i installed the momentus XT

2) I saw no change in power consumption

Boot time dropped in half from around 60sec with original momentus 500gig hard drive i had in my R2 to 30 sec with the 500gig momentus XT.

 

1) no change in noise or vibration
2) no noticible change in power consumption
3) It sounds like a good deal. Fast SSD-like boot speeds and common widows tasks + 500 GB storage for $100 = happy M11x owner.

I have had my momentus XT in my i5 for several months without an issue.

 

Hi All,

Well after reading all these posts, I ordered the Momentus XT and should get it in tomorrow, so I'll be able to comment on it then.

A question: does cloning the old drive to a new one pose any problems for the Windows 7 Activation?

I'm planning on using the software on the seagate page to clone the drive. Is this advisable?

Thanks!

Alienowl

 

If you have a Seagate drive now should work fine.

 

Thanks wsnors, you are correct; as far as I have found, you need to have a Seagate drive already installed for the software to work.

Alienowl

 

Yeah I just bought a M11x R1 and it has a Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive in it. Runs great!!!

 

I have a question. Let's say I swap out the stock 320gb drive with a momentus hybrid the day I receive my M11x, before even booting it up for the first time. Is that a bad idea, or a good one? Because I'm not sure how to go about things if I start downloading crap to the 320gb and get an ssd later on down the road. I guess just back the stuff up onto an external and then switch drives? Sorry I'm just getting into computers, I'm more of an import car tuner and playstation kind of guy ;/

 

It is an excellent idea. However, make sure you have all the drivers and such loaded on a thumbdrive or whatever, because you will need it, especially for WiFi.

The preloads of Win7 that Dell puts on these things is crap. I put my Momentus XT in my R1 after having it since last June, and the speed increase in EVERYTHING is amazing (boot time is especially nice, though). My sleep mode actually works now too, and it never did even when new.

Don't waste your time with the Dell preload. Even if you don't replace the drive at all, I would blast and reinstall from scratch using the included DVD.

 

1) Swapping out stock HDD for Momentus XT on day-one is a fine idea. I did that with my M11x... swapped out the stock HDD for an SSD before I even booted it up. If you use a drive imaging tool like Acronis TrueImage, then you can just image your stock HDD --> SMXT, and boot off of the SMXT with all of the OS + applications pre-loaded.

2) If you switch to an SSD later down the road, best thing for you to do is to back up everything you want to keep to a USB external hard drive, and do a clean-format / clean-install of Windows 7 to your new SSD. This is for several reasons:

* Windows 7 some some self-configuration to optimize itself for SSD's during the install process. You do not get these automated self-optimizations if you were to simply image HDD / SMXT --> SSD. You would have to manually make those changes.

* It is relatively easy to image smaller drive --> larger drive. Going from larger drive --> smaller drive can be tricky and cause problems. It's possible to do, but can be a pain in the butt.

* Your computer always runs fastest after a clean, fresh re-install of the OS. And upgrading your storage disk is the perfect excuse to do this.

* It's kind of fun to watch your shiny new fast toy absolutely tear through the Windows 7 install process.

 

No, it does not.

Windows 7 Activation does indeed use the serial # of your storage drive (as well as several other serial #'s / identifier #'s from other parts of your computer) as part of the "fingerprint" used for the activation process.

However, the Windows Activation process requires a certain threshold of change before it needs to trigger re-activation. Swapping one storage drive for another does not trigger this threshold. You would need to do something more major (like swap motherboard *AND* storage drive) in order to trigger the threshold, and force a re-activation.