Seagate Momentus 7200.4 thread

i also hav a default hitachi drive. after i hav upgraded a seagate drive myself, i found out tat its noise is much softer when seeking.

 

Hi there, you could be right about me overly testing it. 40min was an average of only the last 3 days, of use that I observed. I never claim that it was a consistent benchmark that I've done with a consistent set of hardware and software parameters. It was just my usual usage as I was really interested in giving this HD a daily usage report. I entirely agree with you that it does seem to be an outrages difference and frankly I was surprised at the number myself. In any case, I will continue to monitor the pattern and try to give an update in a few days when I do have more data. Since I'm using my MBP 24/7, I won't have another machine to benchmark it. But then, someone who does that for a living will have the numbers shortly.

I do apologize, I should've made that more clear. Oh, BTW, another unquantified observation, the HD never seems to spin down until the MBP goes to sleep...could explain the battery life drain...is this normal for the drive, I don't know at this point. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this.

cheers!

 

I agree, the seek noise is much softer and more pleasant!

 

Hi there. I especially mentioned the 7200.3 and 7200.4 having loud spin noises in my report because that's the scope my experience. I never painted all 7200rpm drives in a broad brush. Sorry if my report read that way, it was not meant to. This makes me wonder if the eventual release of 500GB scorpio black would be a more silent drive than the seagate.

cheers.

 

It is almost impossible for a 7200 rpm drive to cut 40min of battery life in comparison with a 5400 drive.

First of all, they have almost identical power consumption.
Then, the 7200 drive stays less time in seek mode(more power consumption) and more in idle mode(less power consumption) than a 5400 drive because it is faster .

 

Hello everyone,
I plan to buy this hard drive, but I remember seeing something on the net about an issue with the G-Force model, like this feature making it slower or something like that. I really tried to find the info again but with no luck. So can anyone tell me about this, and if it is worth buying this hard drive.
Thank you
toni

 

yeah, that was an article about the buggy implementation of the free fall sensor. It was parking the heads during normal operation without any reason and this was causing performance drops.

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Hrm...I was trying to stay open minded about FFSs, but now I find myself becoming wary once again.

 

Newegg (temporarily) discontinued this drive. Who knows where or when this would be available again?

 

When we're done beta testing it???

 

I'm not sure if this question has already been answered as I haven't read the entire thread due to its length so please pardon me if it has.

Will this work with my Latitude which has a SATA-150? According to wikipedia, SATA-300 should be backwards compatible with 150 but what I want to know is if I'll have the 3GB/sec interface or just 1.5GB. Aside from the extra storage, I'm also after the improvement in performance.

Thanks a lot.

 

The drive is SATA-2, your notebook (as you stated) is SATA-1. It will work fine. As you stated, SATA-2 is backwards compatable, and the drive should not be able to fully saturate your SATA-1 controller in real world use.

If you'd like, I'll be happy to show the math.

BTW, SATA-1 transfer rate is 1.5 Gb (bits)/S, not 1.5 GB (Bytes)/S.

 

You won't have any improvement by using SATA300 over SATA150 since the drive cannot take advantage of the increased bandwidth.

 

Hrm...maybe I should clarify my earlier post.

The new drive will not technically be able to go over SATA-1 speeds in your notebook, since that is what your notebook has, and will be the limiting factor. This is irrespective of the drive's SATA-2 rating.

But its a moot point: The drive is not capable of mechanically exceeding SATA-1 speeds in real world use.

Make sense?

 

off-topic:

Seems like Newegg has removed Seagate 7200.4 from its product list and marked it as "Deactivated Item". Not a good news who are waiting to purchase...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148374


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umm .. guys, what is your default test block size ?

 

The abbreviation for free fall sensor must have been the beginning of the R&D for it lol

 

Mine is 64KB. (HDTune Pro 3.50)


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Could the cause for that be SATA 1.5? Or maybe he's got a lemon, idk

 

Thanks for enlightening me. What I don't get though is if the drive is not mechanically capable of exceeding SATA-1 speeds, why make it a SATA-2? Was it just to make it look good on paper? Future proofing?

Would I notice any real world difference if I upgrade my 7200.1 to a 7200.4 (aside from the extra space of course)? I thought I read somewhere that PMR has other benefits aside from increasing a drive's capacity.

Thanks for answering my questions.

 

Ok thanks for the answer (do you have link?). But in practice, those among you who have the G-Force option have really experienced this issue? I won't be juggling with my laptop but extra security won't hurt. But if it costs performance (and a few extra cash), I'd rather run without free fall sensor.
Thanks
toni

 

I am sorry, I don't have the link.

I don't think it would be an issue with the latest drives. I think that article was about the very early versions of the drives with free fall sensor. I am pretty much confident that the latest versions are bug free...

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Nice, thank you, I trust you blindly (and when one is told what one wants to hear...). I understand that the problem is usually, like someone said before in the thread,for example when vibration on a train could activate it. Maybe just a sensitivity issue. Also I read about firmware : there are updates to flash or what?
thanks
toni

 

Wonder what the reason was. My two are en route to Michigan from newegg.

Zipzoomfly.com still has them on "auto-notify" last time I checked.

 

OH GOD lol newegg don't change

 

Good Question. Availability, marketing, and future proofing, I would quess. Even though the SATA-1 throughput is technically 150 MB/S, there is overhead incurred, so the real world throughput would be around 120MB/S, giver-or-take. And that's getting pretty close to the ~100+MB/S these new drives are seeing.

Most likely, though, as technology moves foreward, products tend to move in tandem. IOW, the industry tends to move as a whole, and manufacturing ramps up in a similar fashion. It's possible SATA-2 controllers are now cheaper than SATA-1, but that's just a guess. They (SATA-2 controllers) are most likely easier available in manufacturer OEM quantities.

Sry, I can't answer this last question, since I'm not familiar with the 7201. I currently run WD destop drives and this will be my first laptop (and Seagate) drive upgrade.

 

I have no idea why that guy asked about the firmware. There is nothing to update yet. Seems like everybody has the firmware "0001" too...


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This could take months for this drive to be available again.

Anybody know whether other manufacturers are coming out with a 500gb 7200rpm drive?

 

To me, an even more compelling question would be: Why was the Momentus discontinued?

 

I agree. Frankly, I'm a little worried that they'd discontinue it so quickly. Either they know that they won't be getting another shipment for a while or perhaps something is wrong with the first batch that went out and an updated version might be coming soon.

 

.au vendors are saying that they will have more by the 17th.

 

My thoughts, exactly.

And the prolonged and delayed product launch only lends itself to more speculation.

But, anecdotally, I've only seen NewEgg 'deactivate' an item when discontinued by the manufacturer, or when the Egg will no longer carry the item. Like I said, though, this is through casual observation.

I honestly can't envision a manufacturing change requiring a different product number or designation, at this point in time, seeing as the drive has pretty much been released to the public.

Anymore than a firmware update would seem somewhat drastic, this early in the life-cycle, IMHO.

Perhaps NewEgg had a SNAFU?

Weird.

 

Or maybe Seagate is pulling the drive from the shelves temporarily until the other manufacturers release theirs. This scenario is a lot less likely though.

 

Well, I've got it installed and it runs great. Got a 78.5 MB/s average. But this discontinuation is strange and kind of worrisome since I just installed the dang thing <.< I'm just going to be hopeful and think there won't be another batch for a while and I got lucky ordering it early, heh..

 

Thank you forum members for your help along the way while I've been lurking. As requested above, I got curious so ran a benchmark on these drives in raid0 on an M6400. This computer is still pretty new, so you can probably do better than this with tweaking.

 

"That guy" did it because he read about firmware 0001, with people saying "yeah my firmware is 0001 and you?", and I also heard about flaws in the first batch of disks. So sorry for my annoying questions, but I had reason to ask I think... And it seemed I had my answer.
Respectfully
toni

 

@i.visionary

Thx for the Raid0 Benchmark. My plan is to build up a raid in my notebook with these HDDs, too.
Why are the values of Burstrate and seektime lacking in your bench? I would like to know, if the seektime gets worse in raid connection!

 

In raid0 the seek/access/ra time is never gonna get any better than a single drive. It's mostly the same as a single or just a little, little bit above.


I wonder why it's lacking results of access times and burst rate too, seems strange?

 

Quoting myself (sadly):

Haha!

It would seem so!

/end rampant speculation mode

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Edit: The link above displayed the Momentus as being in stock and available at the time of this post (I'm adding this edit since the link is obviously time-sensitive).

 

I dont think there is anything wrong with the first batch of 7200.4 drives. I think they are just having inventory problems or maybe they are trying to get rid of their old stock? But my 7200.4 drive is working awesome and I don't notice any slow downs or any problems.

 

I've been following this thread for a while, but I've decided that now's a good time to jump in and start posting.

The reason why I'm here is that I got a nice auto-notify email from Newegg, so I got all excited and went to check it out. However, it turns out that the drive is still out of stock, but at least it's no longer discontinued :-D.

Also, I read one of the reviews, and apparently one of the users with SATA-I was only able to reach a peak throughput of 80MB/s. Can anyone running this drive on SATA-I please post their benchmark results? I want to know if its the interface causing the decreased throughput, or whether its some other factor on that user's machine (80MB/s is still faster than what I have now, but ~100MB/s is even better).

 

As of the time of my post #690 the drive was in stock.

FWIW, I got the email, too, at 10:32A CST (GMT -6).

I'll edit my post to add this info.

 

Thanks for the benchmark. I ordered my pair from Tigerdirect a few minutes ago and am hoping that the raid 0 setup should be much faster than my current 320GB 5400rpm.

 

Thanks!

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...asp?EdpNo=4434267&sku=TMD-500AS2&srkey=7200.4

here is the link for the drive for anyone else who is desperate to get it!
It should be about the same price after shipping at TigerDirect.com as the newegg's 139.99

 

I used their 10% live cashback promo, and shipping was $1.99, so these cost me net $118.00 each. Certainly not a bad deal.

 

. I've been waiting for this one and now that I'm strapped for cash, I find one available. UGHHHH

 

How did you do that?

 

Go to http://search.live.com and type "tigerdirect", click on the Cashback link next to the sponsored TigerDirect link, enter your Live cashback account ID and purchase.

 

I wrote that review as it is what my drive showed. Read coupe pages back and you'll see all graphs .. and the solution (kind of)

 

Couple things...I stumbled upon this thread whilst trying to find out where my Momentus was. I ordered from nowdirect.com ($120 US) on Sunday, with the promise that they would be in stock starting this week. Now I find out from Otherworldcomputing.com that it wont be until the end of February. However, tigerdirect.com says they have some in stock and are ready to ship.
Let the confusion begin.

I have a Macbook Pro (circa September 2007). Ive already upgraded to 4GB of ram, and my plan was to throw the momentus in her because I do alot of video editing work, and a bigger, faster drive would solve the problem of editing on the road without an external to capture to. HOWEVER, after reading a previous post about the deficiencies of this hard drives performance in a MBP, I'm a little wary.

So my question is this:
Has any one else put one of these in a MBP?
Does anyone use a MPB for video work, and if so, what sort of internal drive do you use?
I will take suggestions for a decent replacement to the Momentus, as it now seems to be at least 3 weeks away from hitting the market. Although I intend to investigate tigerdirect and find out why they have some in stock...