Hybrid ssd

500gb (w/ 4GB SSD Memory) Seagate XT 7200RPM NCQ Hybrid (Serial-ATA II 300 - 32MB Cache) is a hybrid ssd I'm considering buying for a laptop I am about to buy. But does it make a big difference? What does it actually do?

 

Look up a review, ive not seen any that lie.

 

Thanks, I've looked up a few that are contradictory so I'll look into more of a professional review other than a customer

 

Really? How so? Its a hybrid, the clue is in the name. Small amount of solid state supporting a larger mech storage. The rest should be obvious from there.

 

I find no useful application for a hybrid SSD. In my view, its great in concept but does little in real world use.

 

I've bought 4 500GB MomentusXT SSD hybrid drives. It's a tiny bit faster than a 7200 rpm mechanical drive, but nowhere near an SSD.

 

Contrary to what Krane says, the Momentus XTs are excellent drives. Most reviews shows that it consistently outperforms Velociraptor drives in most tasks, except without the heat/noise/power-usage. I've been using one in my desktop rig as my secondary drive (with an SSD as the primary) to hold games and other programs I can't fit onto my smaller SSD (as well as my media files). Works great, and application launch and loading is still improved over a standard HDD.

Frankly, I wouldn't take a laptop nowadays that had anything less than a Momentus XT in it. The improvement to boot times and application launch makes for a much better experience. 'Course, it's not as good as an SSD (although for system boot and application launches, it's actually comparable to an SSD in performance), but the $/GB is much better and you get much more space.

It does take a bit for it to cache the right data to make much of a difference, but at no point does it ever perform worse than a good 7200RPM HDD, and at certain things it performs much better. Honestly, there's no reason not to get it, unless you can find a 120GB SSD for a comparable price and are okay with the limited storage.

 

See, conflicting views. Trying to figure out if I will want it or not, if the extra money is worth it. So does the os just get installed on the ssd part or what does it do? Is it any way worse performance wise compared to just a standard 7200 hdd?

 

I also have the momentus xt, 500Gb 4gb ssd. It is not much faster than the stock 7200 rpm hdd my laptop came with. I have read that the new Momentus XT which has an 8gb ssd is much faster. But the 4gb momentus XT is not worth the money, save your money, buy a full SSD.

From my exp, it is in no way worse than a std hdd. The SSD is used by the Momentus XT as it see's fit, it has some algorithm that stores files to make things work faster. Boot up times are not fast enough to be a worthwhile upgrade.

 

Yeah for another 60 I can get the 8gb ssd and 750gb hdd. I'll probally just not buy it, look into ssd in he future. If I get an hdd now and get a ssd in the future , how hard would it be to transfer files?( laptop has 2 hard drive slots )

And what should I put on the ssd? Os?

 

Are there any other brands other than momentus that have the hybrids?

 

All the reviews that say the Momentus XT drives are amazing benchmark the drive under best case conditions. They game the SSD cache system to achieve the best results. Under real world usage it would never be like this. Also if you are just getting data off the drive that is not stored on the SSD at all, it is slower than the competition's 7200rpm drives.

 

Ok, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get it, dates it a year or 2 for a large ssd to get cheaper

 

Before my current Samsung SSD I had a 500GB Momentus XT in my sata 2 laptop.
I went from a 5400rpm HDD to the Momentus XT that was a big leap in performance.
Then I went from the Momentus XT to a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD and I was a little disappointed that there was not an as big an increase in performance.
So I really liked the Momentus XT and that drive is now proudly serving the laptop of my son.