New Seagate Momentus XT 750GB w/ 8GB NAND (and more)

Same temperature as any 7200RPM drive in your particular laptop model give or take 1-2C

 

I bought the 750GB yesterday off of the Amazon sale, came out to about $170 after Chase Freedom reward points. I'm hoping its reliability is better than reviews on the non-hybrid momentus.

 

Well im picking up a new 750GB XT tommorow after work for a family member and installing it on their brand new 15" MacbookPro. I will have a full day with it so i will be curious how fast it is and quiet it runs. If im impressed with it tommorow i will pick one up for myself, if not then SSD.

Check this out, is this for real? XT is that fast eh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXMRdvHbVxY

 

Thanks!

 

Installed and it's working really well, fast action, just got around to it. However, quick question for you guys, I ended up having to re-install Windows 7 from the upgrade disc that my cousin used the first time around.

All I have to do is re-enter the product key and it should work right? I don't have to buy Windows again do I?

 

use old product key

 

I'd suggest some sort of UPS for your desktop. A notebook of course, has its own battery, a sort of built in equivalent to a uninterpretable power supply.

 

After installing the Seagate Momentus XT 750gb w/8GB Flash, my cousin told me that his music tends to skip every 30 - 60 seconds while playing in iTunes. Is this a problem with the hard-drive?

 

Sounds like the drive is going to, or trying to go to, sleep..............

 

So have any of you been happy going XT over SSD + HD caddy?

 

You may want to ask your cousin to describe the "skip." Are the music files on the disk itself or on a optical media? If it is a crackling or drop off occurs, it might be related to audio driver issues.

 

Tell him to defrag.

 

The skipping is random...it's like the music stops for half a second and then continues.

He tells me that the audio is fine when he uses his microphone, no skipping whatsoever.

Perhaps, good call.

 

I just installed it into my Dell E6520. I had a 320gb XT before. I cloned the image from the 320GB onto the new 8gb XT 750GB and all is fine. Works good although I can't tell too much difference between the two yet.

 

The skipping of the music does not sound like the HD to me. I have seen this caused by two different things 1) try to turn off audio enhancements in the sound properties window 2) I have seen crappy wifi drivers cause this issue. You could check the cpu time for each process to see if something is amiss.

 

My specs are in my signature block. I did a clean install of windows 7 and I think the drive works as advertised. I am not one for numbers, just actual use. I can say it boots to the desk top in 23 seconds and that includes facial recognition for log in. I never timed boot up prior to the upgrade, it was just slow and I would estimate it took about twice as long. The games and files I use regularly load faster then they did before. I have read a few articles that suggest seagate will release new firm ware that will write as well. Has anyone heard anymore about this?

 

Just that the new [FW] will be released late summer. Otherwise there hasn't been too much news I've run across.

 

Quick question, sorry no time to read it up, need to buy a drive right now:


Which is faster as a secondary video editing HDD (main is SSD):

Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 750GB or Western Digital Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT 750GB

EDIT: Bought the 750gb XT...hope it pays back!

 

Bad choice I think, sorry. NAND memory won't help you with video editing being seondary HDD. So in the best case you lost money. But also WD may be faster spinning drive. At least old Momentus XT drives were slower thatn other fast 7200 comparing platters.

 

JAMES, where were you when I needed you?

I figured maybe the cache may have a positive impact when going back and forth the same timeline all day long...also got it for 170USD that's 30 bucks up from the black.

 

Sorry, was sleeping.

BUT DON'T WORRY! I have good news too.

I know that even using SSD instead of HDD will give you miserable (1%) performance boost in video editing. So all is not so bad. As I said you just paid little bit more than you needed because you don't need Momentus XT. But you can sell it anytime to someone outside of US (except me ). People outside of US will likely buy your HDD for maybe even higher price.

HINT: I got to say that my knowledge about advantage of SSD on video editing is as old as 1-st gen I-core CPUs. At that time even extreme mobile CPUs were the bottleneck. But now we have faster processors.... still doubt that Sandy bridge changed anything but who knows about Ivy.

 

Almost looks like Ivy performance is clock for clock the same as Sandy:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/650966-clevo-p151em-670m-3920xm-tested.html

 

@Prema,

That makes sense. Ivy is a shrink - that means clock for clock you'll get similar performance, but because it's smaller it can run cooler and therefor you get a higher clock speed.

 

$150 after promo code EMCYTZT1338 at Newegg.

Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5 Inch SATA 6.0Gb/s Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive $149.99 - Slickdeals.net

 

I just got my Momentus XT 750GB ($149) from Amazon.

Clean Win7 x64 SP1 install with 4k cluster

I installed it on an older laptop (Toshiba L455D). For me, the system feels more laggy now. ONLY BECAUSE, some application that isn't cached feels much longer to boot. while others are extremely fast.

Also, loading up folders in Win7 seems to take longer as it populates the icon. specially photo folders

Benchmark #s are exactly as said in webzines, so I think the drive is working normally. However, in my laptop, the temp is idling around 42-49C.

Boot time feels about the same. I still have the old Toshiba 250GB 5400RPM SATA 3Gb drive. I might do a load up comparison test later just swapping out the 2 drives.

I am not going to complain as I got the drive $149 vs $200+ at regular price. And I needed more space on the laptop anyway. IMHO, I haven't seen the benefit of the drive yet.

I'll post more info on the boot up test when I get home later tonight

 

Ok, after some tests. The boot up is a about 30-42sec faster with MXT drive. However! I was using eboostr with hi-speed SD card to load up my favorite programs that is why it feels faster on my old drive. Once I disable eboostr I just realized how slow everything was

So apparently the MXT 750GB does live up on what it is supposed to do. I just wish I can tell the MXT what software I want it to be in the NAND.

There are talks about write caching firmware later this year. I hope it will make things even better.

 

Interesting. I might have to look it up

 

So for those that have purchased this drive...anybody having issues with it?

I've tried to find what the latest firmware is, as I have SM12 and can't find any info if its the most recent or if there is a newer one available.

 

My notebook with seagate momentus XT 750gb just arrived. In my computer, it shows the HDD as two HDDs, as so:



...is this normal, and what does it mean exactly?

 

It has simply been partitioned (split).

The idea is that you use the E: partition as a data/backup/archive drive.

Hope this helps.

 

Ah right. Thank you

I have an external drive, is there a way to 'unpartion' it, as it were?

 

Free Partition Magic alternative & free Partition Manager Software for Windows PC, Workstation and Server - EaseUS. , has done a fine job here for years.
Never failed, but I always do a full backup as 1st step on any partition job on a drive with any content.

 

I would not 'play' around with 3rd party partition manager software - especially as it seems you have Windows 7 x64 SP1 anyways, which has that functionality built in.


Right click on Computer and select Manage,
Click on Disk Management under the Storage section (on the far left),
Select the E: partition, right click and choose Delete Volume,
You should now have an 'Unallocated' space after your C: partition...
Select the C: partition and select Extend volume,
Accept the default it shows (should be all available capacity...) and you now have a single C: partition on your drive (you may have a small 100MB System reserved partition which Win7x64 requires - don't do anything to that tiny partition.

Hope this helps.

 

I'd say "which has some functionality built in". For the simplest jobs the windows built-in tool works fine, yes. But for any serious task involving creating \ resizing \ deleting \ merging partitions on drives with much content + existing partitions? No. There are specialized tools for that kind of work (aesus is one of them), and of course they do the easy jobs brilliantly as well.

 

6730b, sure, I agree... but he just asked about "is there a way to 'unpartion' ".

 

& agree with you that this may be a suitable job for the built-in tool. Just gave a suggestion as to where to look if and when w7 partitioning refused to "obey".

Related to the original topic, will the future XT be something like 1TB w/64GB SSD... that could be a hit :O)

 

So they promised a write caching enabling firmware in 2012, 2012 is all but over and I can't get them to even talk about it. What happened? The 750 still uses the firmware it shipped with, there hasn't been any word of an update like that for a while. Anandtech said their test firmware made quite a difference with it.

AnandTech - Seagate's 2nd Gen Momentus XT: More NAND, Larger Capacity

 

All the posts about write cache firmware update was from April this year, then no body talked about it since. I think seagate wants to release the NEXT generation that will have write cache. If they did a fw update to the 750gb, then no one will buy the next generation. It's a business decision..

 

I hope they don't get away with that, it would be like a video card maker saying a future driver will increase the performance of a certain card dramatically, and then never mentioning it again hoping people would forget.

Can anyone else try politely contacting Seagate about it? I contacted their customer support but I just got a useless answer about where to find the last firmware, which is the current one my drive has already.

 

The writable fw was only mentioned by "review sites" and not offically by seagate. That's why I think the next generation 1tb 16gb slc cache would have it. Just waiting for it to be released next year I hope.

 

It's possible, but if I'm not mistaken didn't the first gen XTs all get the same firmware the 750 did?

 

No, the first gen XT's did get updated firmware - but it is different than the second gen XT's.

In practice; I find the first gen XT's (with latest firmware) faster than the latest XT's available. Of course, if you need more than 500GB - then the choice is made for you (your only choice is the second gen XT with double the nand).

 

Hey everyone, the third generation XT is here at 1TB. I wonder if it has write caching, and I wonder if the 750 will finally get that promised firmware update with it.

Seagate ships its first desktop hybrid drive, third-gen laptop models

 

If you can get one of these drives I suggest that you do it.
It is much faster and you do notice not just feel the difference.
It runs cool as well.
I have no complaints on this. It will be great when they start adding more GBs to them.

I like the fact that if the ram dies your data is safe and the drive will still keep working.
SSD's seems scary that if they die then whamo all your data is gone.

NOt all of us can run 2 drives.

I now keep all of my files and apps of importance in my dropbox and my 50gb of Box so free cloud storage.

I need to get my but in gear to setup my usb drive to my router running tomato and make that a nice backup and media server setup.
Installing the torrent app is not so easy to understand for me.

 

I heard that tis 3-rd gen laptop drives will be 5400rpm. I better buy 2-nd gen then.

 

I agree. 5400RPM for their 3rd gen Hybrid drives don't make sense. It is opposite to their policy of desktop drives, where they no longer make 5400/5900RPM desktop drive but just 7200RPM drives. This was because they thought 5400RPM drives waste time and don't save that much power and they are exactly right.
Why not make the same policy for laptop drives? Power consumption isn't an issue. I know hybrid drives are a bit different but they still benefit from fast mechanicals since it's only 8GB of flash and doesn't cache writes.

Has anybody seen any news of new firmware for the 2nd Gen Momentus XT 7200RPM drives that would enable write caching?

 

You cant do write caching. Please read up on what CACHING is.

A Cache is place where you store something for PREFERRED ACCESS - EASIER / FREQUENT ACCESS - because for some reason you need it over and over again.

And the CACHED DATA does not change.

Cache relies on the fundamental that whatever it caches would be needed OFTEN and will NOT CHANGE OFTEN.

e.g. Spatial Caching, Temporal Caching etc. from good ole Intel x86 (Read up)

Caching for.. e.g. Boot Sequence, Application Exes etc. makes sense.

You cannot CACHE data that has NOT YET BEEN CREATED i.e. Whatever you are planning to create/ write.

Yes, it could do one thing - Pipeline / Temporary Store Queue or BUFFER of Faster Write Memory - But that would not be CACHING/ CACHE per se.

It would be a BUFFFER that simply holds stuff temporarily that comes in and moves it forward. It makes no attempt to CACHE Data.

 

Write Caching

To put it simply the data is "TEMPORARILY HELD" to then write to the storage media and then flushed. So it is cached by your own definition...............

 

Good luck to you on learning about x86 architecture from PCGuide.com.

Everything is TEMPORARILY HELD everywhere, except when committed to DISK.

E.g. Its held temporarily inside the CPU, CPU Cache, Memory (RAM) etc, Internal Buffers. The difference between a CACHE and a BUFFER is explained. You can use whatever terms you want.

For the layman, the CACHING term also began to be used for what are not technically CACHES.

Technically, that's a good old WRITE BUFFER - Then again when technical terms reach marketing and markets any words/ terms can be used.

Caching means storing Data X because it will be USED .. OFTEN and MULTIPLE TIMES without it CHANGING - Boot Code, Frequently used Exes Code etc. READ

A document you write is CHANGING and the data CHANGES - So it is not cached - Although because the HDD may be TOO SLOW to PERSIST the data on Disk, it can use a WRITE BUFFER (tons of components inside a modern PC use BUFFERS). A write BUFFER in SSD NAND hardware may have benefits.

But the WRITE BUFFER will not have anywhere close to EQUIVALENT benefits as compared to a CACHE needed for READING.

For a READING CACHE, there is a SELECTIVE algorithm/ intelligence that chooses WHAT and HOW MUCH to CACHE from a BIG PILE of STUFF. It does not have to GUARANTEE saving everything into CACHE by DESIGN, it CHOOSES.

There is a thing called CACHE HIT and MISS Ratios where it DROPS stuff from Cache and chooses to keep some. A buffer that's writing is not allowed to DROP something from its queue. That is by design.

A WRITE BUFFER does not CHOOSE, it has to ENSURE EVERYTHING is COMMITTED and SAVED - It may have Queue management algorithm - How and what to commit to Disk when. But has to guarantee EVERYTHING.

 

That's not necessarily true. If the host PC can fit the entire write into the buffer, then it can show a massive benefit, just the same as when an entire read can be made from the cache.