Is it worth it to spend over twice as much for half as much space? SSD vs. Hybrid XT

Update: I listed my SSD for sale at the marketplace...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...al-m225-ssd-refurb-320gb-2-5-7200rpm-hdd.html

How does the Hybrid XT compare to a true blue SSD in everyday use?

I recently got both, and I'm deciding on which one to keep

Here's what I use my laptop for...

Starcraft 2
Civilization 5
Left 4 Dead 2
Torrenting
Watching Videos/Movies
Browsing

Your feedback is much appreciated.

 

Have you read this review? It answers most of your questions.

Is it worth it to you? I can't answer that. I'd probably get the Momentus XT if I was in your shoes.

Keep in mind the SSD will still be faster at anything that's bottle necked by the storage sub system.

 

I'm surprised that you have only gotten 1 posted reply on this topic, but 7 votes on this thread.

Whether you go with an SSD vs Seagate Momentus XT depends on how you prioritize the factors of speed, storage capacity, and value. An SSD will be faster than a Seagate Momentus XT - noticeably so. If your priority is speed and performance, then go with the SSD.

However, if you are willing to give up pure performance for increased storage capacity and better value, then the Seagate Momentus XT would be a better choice for you.

P.S. Regardless of what you decide to keep, $270 for a Crucial M225 256GB SSD is a fantastic price. It's an Indilinx-based SSD, so it is definitely no slouch when it comes to performance. Where can you buy it that inexpensively?

 

There was a deal on Crucial.com. It were refurbished drives with only 30 days warranty. It sounded kind of shady to me. They were sold very quickly though.

 

I hate to say it but if you have to ask that question then the answer is probably no. That doesn't mean the SSD is overrated, just that you don't really have an immediate use for it. If that is the case, then I'd put off the purchase until you do.

 

Well if the SSD works well it would be a shame to send it back because you got it so cheap. I'd probably try to sell it and make some profit.

 

If I had only one hard drive slot, I'd get the hybrid for the best balance of space and performance. Since I have two slots, I have SSD+HDD. If you have a eSATA port, you might consider putting media files on the 320 you have in an external enclosure and running Windows off the SSD.

 

If I had $270 of extra money, I'd get the SSD, my data needs aren't to great, and 256GB is a lot of storage space.

 

Aye. I've found that I don't need more than the 256GB. It's plenty of room for all my games, apps, and a few movies so I don't have to break out the eSATAp external while on the plane. It just depends on how much you need to archive on your laptop. Using the laptop for games, I find the SSD is very, very nice.

 

I think this is a wise answer and I agree. If you need a SSD or want a SSD you would already know. If somebody talks you into it chances are it was not something you really needed/wanted.

I dont think anybody needs a ssd its just a conviniance that many people go for based on there wants and needs.

My personal standpoint is that you can always wait the extra few seconds for something to load on a HDD, but if your out of space on a SSD there is no waiting that can fix it, you just plain cant do it. So if storage space is any kind of issue a HDD is still the top choice. SSD is definitely only for those who use low amounts of storage space and manage it well.

Those with dual HDD laptops or are willing to trade out the optical drive for a hdd slot stand in a better position and only have to really make the choice of price vs gains.

 

If you want speed and storage go for a small fast SSD and an external hard drive. The momentus XT really isn't that good. It is not a whole lot faster than other 7200rpm drives and still a lot slower than dekstop drives.

 

Wish there was a third option - neither.

Even if you need an SSD, that's a large capacity drive with a pretty high price tag to go with it.
The Hybrid XT is marginally better than platter HDDs, so the performance improvement is kind of eh considering you're paying double what a comparable 7200rpm 500gb 2.5" hdd costs.

 

I wouldn't call it marginal. With the XT in my notebook it felt like an SSD was in there. Way faster than any HDD, even the Scorpio Black 500GB.

Woofer, Trottel did you guys own a XT?

 

I agree with Phil. If we are talking about real-world performance, not synthetic benchmarks, the dual XT's in my M6400 (in RAID0/RAID1 matrix configuration) feel exactly as fast as an SSD, and sometimes faster. Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on your usage pattern. On the other hand, 1TB of SSD drive space are getting on the expensive side of things...

 

TL;DR: Yes, there's a benefit, but not enough to justify plopping cash for something I rarely feel.

Tried one, but ultimately returned it because it didn't benefit my particular habits.

I never sit around during a cold boot (I standby unless I'm rebooting for an update), I'm an alt-tabbing fiend, and I store little to no media on my internal drives, so my habits tend to make the benefits seem marginal even if they're not.

The boots were certainly faster when I timed it and applications did load quicker, but I either a) walked away or watched TV during the boot, b) was alt-tabbing to something else while application [XYZ] loaded, or c) bottlenecked by another factor. If I look in my system tray, I'm running Chrome, Skype, Word, MSSE, aaand that's it. Anything else is a status icon. I don't use many applications, so snappier loads happen once every reboot. I mostly live within the browser and games that come up in a few seconds anyway. My biggest bottleneck there is in the terrible cable internet in the evening (damn you cablevision!). My data is all stored off the internal drive for backup and security reasons, so I never saw a benefit there, and the bulk of my computer usage is either in a game or a ridiculously over-tabbed browser, so I don't really hit the hard drive.

 

i'd get the SSD... in fact 256GB is more than enough for me.. put rest of stuff on external which is 300GB plus..

 

if i had two bays, id get that ssd.
however my usage pattern is quite different from yours since i make use of a lot of adobe programs and other video editors and i do have a bunch of games and media too. id make my 2nd drive my data drive.
however if i had only on drive bay, id get the momentus xt. again for my type of usage, 256gb isnt big enough for me and i hate using external hdd's because of all the messy wiring attached to it.

 

Thank you guys.

Looks like I'll try to sell the Crucial on ebay. I might even make a small profit off of it.

PM me if you're interested in purchasing it.

 

Did you get one of the refurb ones for $256?

Since I wont be able to afford a SSD at regular price in this lifetime I may be interested


Edit: Yes I see you did the extra $20 was for the squaretrade warranty, though I wonder if that warranty can be transferred.

 

Yeah, I got in on the crucial deal but it came to $280 after tax.

I would love to keep it, but am having a tough time justifying spending $300 after warranty on a hdd for a $680 laptop.

Especially if the $100 Hybrid XT packs a similar performance punch.

I haven't bought the squaretrade warranty yet. I was planning to once I decide to keep it since it doesn't kick in until the OEM warranty expires in 30 days anyways.

I see the drive going for quite a bit more on ebay so I'm not sure yet.

 

Yeah I bet a lot of people bought them just with intentions of reselling on ebay, happens all the time on good deals and screws people who really wanted to purchase the product for themselves.

 

Obviously you two do not own or have used an XT.

I'm considering using them in my desktops - yeah - in some things they are faster than my Raptors.

Really.

 

Er, did you read my followup to Phil's Q? I have, but my usage habits don't benefit enough to justify upgrading for a limited performance bump. On a new laptop or if my current drive fails? Sure. But not just because the money is around.

 

woofer00,

I read it now!

Just wanted to state how much faster the XT is even over 10,000 RPM drives (for certain things).

I see that for your use it was a minimal 'upgrade', but isn't even 'surfing' hitting the HD a lot - especially with mulitple tabs open/running?

Unless you direct your temp browser cache files to a RAM disk, the HD does make a difference as far as I know (even for surfing).

 

It does, but because my connection swings so wildly (16mbit midday/dead of night down to as low as 0.5mbit in the evening when I get home from work) I end up waiting for the page to load more than I wait for the page to write read and render. By the time the connection picks up (around now) I'm quite appeased. I tend to either stick to text heavy sites like forum and others or stream Hulu/netflix in my downtime anyway. My actual usage is quite boring.

 

So the consensus is, the Hybrid XT, while not as fast as SSDs, is still blazing fast, and performs close to SSDs for every day uses like browsing and launching common programs

I guess the decision is obvious, I'll either keep the Hybrid XT, or the 128gb Vertex 2 if newegg decides to honor their rebate and I get it for $189 as a result, and sell the Crucial either way.

 

Well, I wouldn't call it "blazing fast". It's faster than a standard 7200rpm hard drive, and is targeted at people who still want performance, but are willing to sacrifice some performance for storage capacity and cost. An SSD is the fastest drive technology out, and is targeted at people who want performance above all else. If you want "blazing fast", then get an SSD. If you want "fast enough", then a hybrid hard drive would suit you fine.

 

I am late to the party, but I can offer first hand experience since I own a first gen GSkill Falcon 128 SSD, a 2nd Gen Kingston V Series 128GB and a 500GB XT and have used all of them extensively.

The Momentus XT offers by far the best compromise in my opinion, since I firmly believe that the SSD's biggest benefit is bootup time - this is where SSD kills platter drives but here the XT gets very close to a real SSD. Once Windows 7 has finished loading it's readyboot cache, the SSD's advantage is marginalized and the 500GB storage base on the XT really have the SSD beat.

I am at the point where my 2 SSDs are becoming obsolete - if I get a new laptop I would get a new hybrid drive for it instead of SSD - I am about to put them onto my desktops as the boot drives instead of using them on the laptops - Even though the desktop Raptor boot drive feels almost as fast as the SSDs so the improvement is going to be quite small.

 

And is much faster than standard 7200rpm drives at those things.

ps. I replaced the word browsing with booting.

You can make an ad in the Marketplace forum. There might be quite a few people interested and it will save you the ebay fees.

 

As an aside, there can be other reasons to forgo the SSD route. In my case, I am dumping the Crucial M300 I had in my Precision M4500, simply because the darn thing doesn't work properly: Bluescreens the system after wake-up from sleep, and also sometimes causes hidden bluescreens right after a cold boot ("System recovered from an unexpected shutdown" screen). It's nice and fast, but unusable in practice, on this machine. If I get any conventional hard drive, or a Seagate XT, at least it will work. SSDs really are still bleeding edge technology, and people seem to be spending inordinate amounts of time babying the things, worrying about TRIM, not daring to use them too much out of fear of wearing them out, etc., etc. My conclusion at this point, regarding SSDs is thus, thanks, but no thanks...

 

I too feel the same about my setups (including my desktop Raptors).

I will though SE and try the Inferno in my desktop and if anywhere near the performance it should be delivering, I will buy another XT for my U30Jc.

And, the Inferno is today's 'bleeding edge' too...

 

Let's see; one with 500G for $110 with a 5 year warranty, or a 256G refurb with a 90 day warranty for $280 + Square Trade?

Nope, I'll stick to what I have for my single bay usage. Or, the 256G-SSD at $130, new, with 5 year warranty...

Macbook users may want to check here as well; http://www.forum.crucial.com/t5/Sol...-doesn-t-work-on-Apple-Mac-Book-Pro/m-p/10037

 

Thank you for all the advice everyone. I settled on the Hybrid XT.

I'm selling the SSD at the marketplace for those of you who expressed interest in it...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...al-m225-ssd-refurb-320gb-2-5-7200rpm-hdd.html