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    ST95005620AS Momentus XT SD25 Available

    Discussion in 'ASUS Gaming Notebook Forum' started by Jody, Apr 18, 2011.

  1. Jody

    Jody Notebook Deity

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    Momentus XT Firmware Update

    I'm not sure if it's been mentioned but SD25 Firmware has been released by Seagate. This would apply to you if you have the Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive(s) in your laptop.

    I looked for a change log and couldn't find one. :( I installed the update on my G73JH via the Windows Installer. It worked perfectly. Please note that my machine did not come with this drive. I purchased one about a year later so mine is a retail version although I'm not aware of any difference between the OEM and retail drives.
     
  2. myx

    myx Notebook Deity

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    Updated to sd25 aswell, sometime last week, but I cannot see any difference between sd25 and sd24.
    Make sure to turn the hdds to IDE in bios before updating, otherwise it will not work.
     
  3. balane

    balane Notebook Consultant

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    Thanks. I don't have an XT in my G73 but I do have one in my nVidia ION netbook. Can't tell any differences either but still nice to have the latest.

    Not sure why but I left my drives on AHCI and it flashed the new firmware just fine. Didn't see the warning to switch it in time but all went just fine for me... on the netbook.
     
  4. frosty5689

    frosty5689 Notebook Evangelist

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    AHCI mode will flash fine. Only RAID fails to work when flashing firmware (even if that drive is not part of a RAID array)
     
  5. Rückenmark

    Rückenmark Notebook Consultant

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    thx 4 news
     
  6. pacostrano

    pacostrano Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks for the post I will try to install it tonight.

    It's being 2 months that I have this drive installed and didn't have any issue for now.
     
  7. Chastity

    Chastity Company Representative

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    @Jody: just flashed the SW lappy to SD25. Pretty straight-forward using the Windows Installer.
     
  8. Jody

    Jody Notebook Deity

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    I wish I knew what it fixes. I wasn't having any problems with the drive so I haven't noticed an improvement per se. The drive makes a machine boot pretty quickly but then everything from there on out seems to run at the same speed to me. If you launch a program a couple of times it will launch quickly until you reboot. I could see it being much handier on a machine that stays running for long periods of time. I shut mine down and take it to work every day so it never really builds up a useful cache other than bootup files.
     
  9. Chastity

    Chastity Company Representative

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    I know one thing it fixes... it will update OEM Seagate drives without needing to do a force update, unlike SD24's installer. :D
     
  10. myx

    myx Notebook Deity

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    True lol.
    Anyway, for me it didnt install the firmware in AHCI mode, that's why I mentioned about switching to IDE earlier.
     
  11. Chastity

    Chastity Company Representative

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    That's odd, since it did both drives in AHCI mode for me.
     
  12. balane

    balane Notebook Consultant

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    I would go as far to say that if Seagate required a user to switch to IDE mode in order to install their firmware upgrade that they would be neglect since there is little doubt a cutting edge technology drive such as this one is most likely nearly always installed into an AHCI enabled system.

    That was a long sentence.
     
  13. Turbogear

    Turbogear Notebook Deity

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    @Jody

    Thanks for the news.
    I will try it on Momentus XT installed in my N71JQ.
     
  14. bluefalcon13

    bluefalcon13 Notebook Evangelist

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    There have been reports of sluggish performance of the XT drives in OS X due to a firmware issue, I wonder if this firmware update addresses that. It would be nice if manufacturers would be a bit more honest about what they fixed... I personally don't want to know the specifics, just the problems fixed in a general sense....
     
  15. Jody

    Jody Notebook Deity

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    They have a really nice set of support forums and there are Seagate technical people participating. I think they received a lot of input from users for the update. They never released a change log that I can find, though. Asus kind of does us the same way. It's rare that we find out what's actually in a BIOS update. No one ever 'fessed up to what was in that vBIOS update at all. It was just stated that it fixes the problem, which it does, but nobody knows exactly how.

    I guess that's all considered company or trade secrets. I update anyway. I figure if they went to all the trouble to write it and release it, it must fix something.
     
  16. bluefalcon13

    bluefalcon13 Notebook Evangelist

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    IIRC someone mentioned clock timing issues between the gddr5 and the GPU. I'm sure it was more technical than a simple explanation can cover though. I don't pretend to know the true nuts and bolts of a GPU.
     
  17. King of Rapture

    King of Rapture Notebook Consultant

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    I am thinking buying G73SW-DGE, which come with two of these hard drives. How would one go updating the BIOS of both hard drives?

    I have now N61Jq-A1 with this hard drive installed, and update of the BIOS went without any problems.
     
  18. bluefalcon13

    bluefalcon13 Notebook Evangelist

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    The program polled both drives and saw only one of mine was an XT. I'm guessing it would update both if it could...
     
  19. Chastity

    Chastity Company Representative

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    It checks each drive in succession and updates as necessary.
     
  20. King of Rapture

    King of Rapture Notebook Consultant

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    Many thanks,

    Kind regards!
     
  21. moeloo

    moeloo Notebook Enthusiast

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    I have flashed under windows and with AHCI mode no problems here.
    Pitty there is no chanchelog
     
  22. Daverish

    Daverish Notebook Consultant

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    Updated my XT from sd23 to 25 easily compared to the first time I updated fw. Left it in ahci mode and xt was the first drive on the system despite not boot drive.

    Detected other drives and ignored them when not matching models. momentus.4, momentus xt, vertex2.

    Some users on the seagate forums reporting chirp/beep noises from their xt after the sd25 update. Doesn't sound like its apm/noise mgmt levels - anyone else experience this? I haven't yet
     
  23. wolf_walker

    wolf_walker Notebook Enthusiast

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    I had chirp/beep from day one on SD23, just did 25, maybe they will go away, and my steadily increasing read error rate that seatools says is perfectly fine will improve.
     
  24. cayocayo

    cayocayo Notebook Consultant

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    after upgrade to SD25 i never hear any sound. magic
     
  25. ickibar123

    ickibar123 Notebook Consultant

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