Seagate Momentus 7200.4 thread

I have a MSc. degree in Economics, and therefore refuse to read any more books on the subject in my life. Enough is enough.

But seriously: which parts don't you understand/do you disagree with?

 

because youre economic theories can only be applied in an efficient market.

prices dont always follow exchange rates perfectly. consumers dont always have perfect information about a product.

 

I'm curious, does a hard drive affect 3dmark06 results? I wouldn't think that it does, or has a minimal effect at best, but I could be wrong.

 

No it is not 100% efficient, but at least 99% (when it comes to prices/exchange rates). Since electronics prices are adjusted almost weekly, the new price is automatically adjusted for the exchange rate by the importer. So unless you are importing from Zimbabwe, you should be OK.

When it comes to not having perfect information: true, but in this case (somebody looking all over the world for the cheapest drive) it does not apply. We can safely assume that there is no worldwide price cartel run by electronics sellers.

 

Ok the 64 thousand dollar question - I got a crappy 5400 drive that heats up to 62' on ideal and alarms go off everyday -

now I can buy this bloody drive which I been dying to get my hands on since Sept (**** you Seagate) for a cool 200 bucks at NCIX, but the price is a little high for me

or I can go with a 7200.3 320 for 85 bucks?

which would you pick if you were in my shoes... and remember I'm not Donald Trump. Is there a HUGE performance difference between the two drives and remember the 7200.3 comes with 5 year vs 3 years warrenty on the 72.4

 

I think all seagates as of now are sold with 3 year warranties.
For the price difference, definitely go with the 7200.3. Sure the 7200.4 is going to be a bit faster, but its not worth more than 2x the price for say 15% more harddrive speed.
The best thing to do, is to get a friend in the USA to buy it and ship it to you, that way you get the drive for the $140 newegg wants, and than you saved a bit and get the extra performance.
NCIX does price matching, so you may want to try pricematching and see if you can get it cheaper. If not, stick with the 7200.3

K-TRON

 

Sums up exactly why I went with a 7200.3.

 

Cool the 7200.3 it is then ... thanks guys - should have jumped ship a while back but held on to that hope that this would be the sliced bread of hdd vs Solid state.

Dam

Thanks K-Tron (oh I'm buying the 7200.3 off someone (new sealed) and it was purchased before the jan4 policy so I get the 2+ years and save about 110 in shipping and taxes towards getting a T9300 (if you guys know of a place let me know for cheap)

 

In conclusion, price of 7200.4 will not drop anytime soon.

The End

 

I think the 7200.4 is worth it for $140.

my friend got the 7200.3 for 90 shipped. Thats 50 bucks cheaper.

But dont you think extra 180gb is worth $50? Plus you get faster drive.

 

Do you guys think this might be the last "real" HDD you will ever buy?

I am thinking to keep this one for a year or two, and then switch to SSD. By then they will be 1TB and <200 dollars for sure.

 

That's a good point...

Initially I could not decide in between a SSD or a traditional HDD. However after reading SSD topics, I thought that SSD technology is not mature yet (for example stuttering issues, price etc.) and I bought my (hopefully) last traditional laptop HDD.

My plan is to use this drive for 2 years and by that time SSDs will be a lot better and cheaper...


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I was wondering that as well...but I wouldn't think so because it's just based on CPU and GPU readings isn't it?

It would be great if SSD drives came in half-size so you could fit 2 in one bay!

I found a place where the 7200.4 is in stock on a UK website again so I just ordered that, think that's the easy option!

 

this will be my last laptop HDD most likely.

and I still haven't put it in the laptop though :|

 

I agree, this will most likely be my last HDD, unless they make 10000RPM drives or something. I'd really like an SSD but I can't justify the price for what I'm getting. If they at least had a lot of space, I wouldn't mind paying a premium for the performance but paying $400 for 80GB is absolutely ridiculous.

 

I think that SSD technology is not mature enough yet.

"Paying $400 for 80GB which suffers from stuttering" is worse than ridiculous...


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These posts just reminded me of some quick arithmetic I did the other day:

(using current NewEgg pricing in U$D)

Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM = $89.99 USD
Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM = $89.99 USD

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM = $139.99 USD

If we take the size ratio of the larger to the smaller HDD's capacity: 500/320 = 1.5625

And multiply the smaller HDD's price by the size ratio: $89.99 x 1.5625 = $140.06

Which is virtually the same as the current asking price for the larger drive (w/i a few cents).

So...

The pricing relationship of the current 320GB 7200RPM drives to the new 500GB 720RPM Momentus is virtually linear in terms of capacity per dollar!!!

I have no idea why I found this coincidence so fascinating...

 

good point, but i was referring to the fact that you can get a 7K320 320gb drive for $60, which is still much cheaper than the seagate.
Good math skills though I like the mix of 4 and 2 significant figures

K-TRON

 

Two significant digits 'cuz 'dollars & cents' implies 2 SDs followed by continously repeated zeros (or two SDs "even", if you prefer)!



Edit: Oh...the last arithmetic line, multiplying the price by the ratio...OK, fair enough.

 

Umm, are you really sure you also need a notebook that can support a free fall sensor besides the hard drive itself? I though it was enough for the hard drive to just have it and pop it in anything that can just run it.
if a notebook has it built in, you could have any drive so it will be exactly like the built-in free fall sensors that are in some hard drives.

Please correct me if i'm wrong! But if it's like you say, ffs is a true gimmicking thing. But i don't think it is?

 

Well the thing that senses an imbalance the accelerator or whatever is built into it laptop. If you look closely a harddrive with FFS has three extra pins presumably only working on laptops with FFS built in.

 

If your notebook has a free fall sensor in-built and you run the "Free fall sensor application" in windows, then your harddrive does not need a separate free fall sensor. My Fujitsu notebook has a free fall sensor, my Fujitsu HDD has no free fall sensor and when I activate the software in Windows then I'm able to edit the settings which define how big the impact must be until the software parks the HDD heads.

If you have a notebook without a free fall sensor, or you don't want to run the free fall sensor software on your notebook (maybe you use Linux) but you still want a shock protection, then you can buy a HDD with such a free fall sensor in-built, which does the rest automatically. It should also park the heads, when you've put your HDD in an external enclosure and let it fall.

So you only need one free fall sensor, in your notebook, but then you have to run a special software, or in the HDD, but then you can't change settings.

I've bought the ASG version, because I don't want to run the windows software, because it does not work that great, and thus keep the free fall sensor in my notebook "deactivated" but I still want a shock protection, and so I got a HDD which does this thing on its own.

 

which UK website u ordered?

 

I do not know if you have really looked that up, seems like you're just doing some guessings
Those extra pins, i haven't seen on the FFS-versions. So i do not know what you're talking about. The only "extra" pins i've seen is for the jumper-setting to be for 1.5Gb/s (SATA-I) or 3.0Gb/s (SATA-II) on almost all harddrives, some harddrives doesn't has these pins as you set that attribute via software.

So please, can you show me what you really mean? You're getting this thing confusing

Exactly what i meant and what i've learned. So yes, that makes alot of sense, as it is like i thought
Thanks! +rep

 

While we're on the subject of FF sensors:

I really don't want to use this feature, and my notebook does not have it built-in innately (that I'm aware).

If I buy a drive with the built-in sensor due to early product availability issues, will I be able to disable the FF sensor feature?

Anyone?

 

there's a problem with performance on mine

this is running in ACHI mode

I did two partitions of 232GB each (or half and half), and cloned my OS to the first partition with Acronis.

 

here's another one

I'm thinking there's some sort of limiting the speed to about 80MB/s ... I'll try in compatibility mode

 

well .. it's my T61 that limits to 80MB/s The HDD by itself works fine as if I continue the line from the middle to the left as it's supposed to be, it will most likely hit those 100MB/s at the beginning. However, that's not happening on my computer. Oh well.

it's still much faster than my old HDD though

 

Here's mine

 

That sucks if Lenova limits the sata transfer rater for some reason! My laptop cost me $499 1.5 years ago and its running at SATAII good enough speed..

heres mine though.

 

Of what i have understod, the FFS is built in to the drive and cannot be shut off, AFAIK.

However, what bad can it do to you if having it on?! I can't see any downsides really

 

No, the free fall sensor is a MEMS accelerometer that is built into the drive electronics, and that does not communicate in any way to anything outside of the drive. All it does is park the heads when it senses certain accelerations of the drive above threshold.

 

Your notebook does not need anything built in to use the sensor, see my other post.

Why in the world would you want to disable it? Other than giving you some additional protection, that sensor does not affect the operation of the drive in any way, unless you imagine doing disk-intensive work on your laptop while flying an aerobatic airplane, exercising on a trampoline or other unusual stuff

 

Thx for your reply.

Why? I haven't yet had an HDD acceleration/de-acceleration crash that I've known, so I'm hesitant to let some programmed firmware determine when I'm having an "accident".

I suppose it's somewhat akin to my not wanting the new Mercedes Benz (or is it Saab?) auto-sensing feature telling me I'm following too closely, or even ABS brakes, for that matter.

O.K., I do like my daughter having ABS on her car, tho.

Since I don't own an anti-G HDD yet, I will try to keep a more open mind. But I would like to be able to disable the feature if I don't like it.

 

Has anyone here bought a 7200.4 500GB HD and use it with an external enclosure? If so, how does it perform via USB 2.0? Does it run perfectly? Or I should get the 5400.6 500GB instead?

 

I think that there's no point in purchasing a 7200 disk to use it only through USB 2.0. When I plug in my Seagate 7200.4 via USB2.0 external case HD Tune shows constant performance of about 30MB/s. I figure a 5400 disk will perform the same (probably a 4200 one as well).

Buying a 7200 version would make sense only if you are going to connect it via ESATA or put it inside the computer.

 

There is no reason getting a fast 500GB hdd when running via USB2.0...
USB2.0 will bottleneck around 30MB/s, so any harddrive that can do that will be fine for an external enclosure.

 

I know exactly what you mean.

But this feature will not impact in anyway when you're doing anything, if you don't have an accident that is. When it parks the head, it will not shut down your computer or hang it AFAIK, so if an accident happens and it gets parked, you can just go on without any problem if the computer didn't get shut down by the hit or so.

AFAIK it will take aproximately a 2 feet drop to activate it, and i guess you won't be near that limit when using it.

It's more like an airbag if you compare it to cars and what features they have.

 

guys, can you check under the Info tab on HDTune what firmwere version your drive has ??

mine shows: 0001

 

Mine shows the same thing.

 

Thx for your input.

Yeah, its not that I *don't* like this feature (I've never tried it), as much as I'm not sure if I'll like it, and would like the ability to disable it if I don't.

But I will keep a more open mind...I've even come to appreciate UAC...now that's really something!

 

Firmware 0001 on mine.

 

Anybody any idea how often newegg.com generally gets new shipments? I signed up for the auto-notify function, but wonder if I am going to wait a week or 2 months.

 

Firmware: 0001

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check this out

I upgraded the HDTune version from 2.54 to 2.55 .. and I got same results as before.

However, I changed the benchmark to test at 128KB blocks instead of the default 64KB for the new version, and I got this ^ graph

so it's not my T61 .. yey

- This pops up my next question: What block size do you all use to test your HDDs ?? It's in the settings menu.

 

don't know... I used the default block size...


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Default for me as well.

 

My friend, like many, I had been anticipating this 7200.4 drive for a while, and by pure luck, I was able to obtain one because I happened to call up my NCIX guy at the right time and he sold me the last one of their first batch. He gave me the usual discount, 160 for the GeForce version, which is not much.

Let me tell you this, I regret buying this drive. Consider your options carefully, I have a way of getting what I want in most things and then end up regretting it because what I wanted wasn't the best for me.

Here are my thoughts after my experience of actually USING the drive in my Macbook Pro:

The good: it runs very cool, the operating temp, never got over 45C and cooler than the stock 250GB Hitachi running at 5400RPM.

Speed boost over the stock drive was impressive, transferring large files was way faster and applications always open, close, with a snap!

Here's the down side of both 7200.4 AND 7200.3 drives from Seagate: they both have a constant spin sound as loud as another laptop fan rotating at around 2000rpm. For most users, this shouldn't be much of an issue since laptops these days run hot and already have noises that can cover up the drive's spin noise.

But it does add to the overall noise level. And if you're used to Mac's SILENT drives (except for the low rumbling of seek noises from time to time), this will be a step backwards for you.

I use my MBP for everything, almost 24 hours a day. Even at night, I use it as a music device for playing in the background near my pillow to put me to sleep, and it doubles as an alarm clock to wake me up in the morning. In the middle of the night, the 7200.4's spin noise is loud enough to bother me quite a bit. But being a musician, I am more sensitive to noise than most. If you're a regular day time only laptop user, chances are you won't notice it much. For my use, the additional noise the 7200.4 drive makes compared to the silent stock drive, gave me a harder time sleeping.

Another thing you should consider is that the 7200.4 may eat into your battery life considerably. It cuts more than 40min of battery life from my MBP on average use. But this is to be expected since Apple's stock drives were hand picked and tweaked (stock Mac HDs have apple's own tweaked firmware) for a balance of performance, low noise and Mac's always get squeezed out every bit of battery life from each component. So there's no way to expect that kind of a balance of performance if you just stick an OEM drive in a Mac.

Real world difference?
Overall, the performance of the drive does not actually help me all that much because most of the time because a lot of the times while I'm using the laptop, the hard drive isn't being accessed (I do have 4GB of RAM). I suspect this is the case for most users as well. E.g. most users won't have to transfer gigs and gigs of large files on a daily usage basis to really capitalize on the 7200rpm performance boost.

In actuality, the real world impact to my work is that now have 40min less of working time due to the new drive and I can't sleep at night!!! Argh!

My advice is not to jump on the band wagon like I did. I would suggest that you really evaluate why you would consider this drive (to be honest, bragging rights was partially my decision and I regret that too). If you mostly need the capacity, consider getting the 500GB 5400 RPM drive like the Western Digital's new Scorpio Blue. It's got an awesome review on Tomshardware for both performance AND low power-consumption. And since it's still a two platter design just like the 7200.4, due to the higher platter density, you will still get a performance boost over the older 5400rpm drives. In fact, in some bench marks, it's as fast as Western Digital's own Scorpio Black @ 320GB, 7200rpm. This way, you almost get the best of both worlds: gain some performance increase, retain your battery life and keep the heat&noise down.

I think I'll pick up a scorpio blue from bestbuy and try it out for a week (great return policy, unlike NCIX). If I like it better, I'm sure I'll have no trouble selling the Seagate.

See tomshardware review for the 500GB scorpio blue.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/scorpio-notebook-hdd,2109.html

Have fun shopping!

 

I have a 160 WD Scorpio Black in my black MB and it is as silent as the stock Hitachi, even more silent in the seeks, so you should not blame all 7200 drives because of this 7200.4.

 

@goodluckfinding:

Interesting review, especially since I plan this drive for my MPB.

One thing that I wonder about is this 40 minute battery life thing you are talking about. It sounds too outrageous to be true. How could this be? I don't think a hard drive spins constantly (check "put hard disk to sleep when possible" in energy settings) and even if it did, 40 minutes (out of the regular 3,5 hours I guess) is INCREDIBLE.

Is there anyway you could substantiate this with some benchmarks?

I think you might have been testing the out of this drive, hence resulting in a quick depletion of your battery.

EDIT:
Looking at this sheet: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_momentus_7200_4.pdf
It says the typical "seek" Wattage is 1,55. Let's say it is 2 Watt. How is that enough to shave 40 minutes of the battery time?