Seagate Momentus 7200.4 thread

Well I tossed Vista on the first 60GB of my new 7200.4 and partitioned it off. Yay me?

Anyway...finally got this baby up and running. HDTune results were similar to what everyone else reported, so I didn't bother saving anything.

But I will say this thing is head and shoulders faster than my old 5400rpm drive. Startup/shutdown, hibernate, general tasks, games, it's amazing the difference a few seconds can make when you begin to add it all up

I used to get up to 10 seconds loading time for Trillian; now it loads in basically 2-3. Firefox is always instant. Steam is where I see the biggest change--loading up the client, L4D or TF2 used to take ages. Now Steam itself is up within 3 seconds (compared to 15+), and my games take about half the time to load.

Very satisfied! My brother also bought one but he's going from 100GB 7200 to 500GB 7200 so he just gets more space

 

Heh -

Ironically, even tho one of my posts helped facilitate the Scorpio/Momentus debate (which I enjoyed), I ended up canceling my Scorpio Newegg order later that day.

I'm still not really sure if I want an HDD or SSD, and who knows, it's not inconceivably that I may even end up with a Momentus yet.

 

Yeah, just a big missunderstanding
The only comparision i made was just the whole drive in one partition vs the other. Not in small parts vs each other And the comparision was just one screen vs another, prompt. So not a serious comparision what-so-ever

 

You got my point there, in the first sentance, that was ALL i wanted to make clear, nothing else And that's just according to the screens that you find here in this thread, it may vary for other results from other users

And you're absolutely correct in your post otherwise, i fully agree!

 

Haven´t had time to read the whole thread but has anyone posted non synthetic benchmarks yet?

 

This is actually not true. RPM matters for performance, but so does drive density.

A 5400 RPM 500GB drive will easily outperform a 100GB 7200RPM drive. They outperform my 200GB 7200RPM drive, and would probably do well against a drive up to maybe 300GB 7200RPM.

 

currently which online shop hav the stock wit g-force protection?

if not, which is the earliest ETA?

thks!

 

Does anyone know why this drive is so much less than the Momentus?

 

It's a desktop hard drive.

 

you beat me to it

 

tat is a 3.5" drive.

 

I'll let him know

 

I have been watching this thread for a long while... and wanted to upgrade to a 7200 rpm.

I had ordered the WD 320GB for 99 CDN Dollars... but then i saw the HItachi 7K model go for 79.99 plus GST CDN Dollar with a 20 dollar rebate so i jumped on that...

just fyi i am not sure if there are any or many available at NCIX in canada they do us shipping as well.

 

You made a good move, the Hitachi 7K320, and the WD3200BEKT are both excellent 320gb 7200rpm drives. They are cheap, which makes them all the better. I have three Hitachi 7K320 series drives, and they are all amazing. Very quiet, fast and reliable. One of mine already has just shy of 2000hrs on it.
You are getting a great deal, I should have waited. I bought all three of my 160Gb 7K320's when they were on sale for $110.

Dont worry about the Hitachi versus the 7200.4. Seagate has really dropped the bar on quality, and alot of their drives are failing because of poorly written firmware. Hitachi has always been reliable for me, never had a problem with them.

K-TRON

 

ncix in canada n usa also out of stock. checked many online store, but all out of stock too.

if some online store r having stock pls let us knw!

 

Good to hear.

I am looking forward to it and will post up some benchs which maybe useless (i am sure many others have posted them) but with my hardware maybe a bit off/differet?

You can still buy them but the promotion price is over... but the 20usd rebate is still on.

 

Yeah,

I decided early this morning to go (again) with the WD Scorpio Black WD3200BEVT (320GB 7200RPM 16MB) after seeing *literally* no availability anywhere (stateside) of the Momentus 7200.4. But I paid 10 bux more than my originally canceled order last week (89 USD currently @ Da Egg).

While availability was the primary issue, I am slightly concerned with the speed (or lack) of the 7200.4 roll-out. I'm not paranoiacly saying Seagate's got issues with the 7200.4, but it does sow a very tiny seed of doubt in my mind with it being a new product. I've always been wary of the very first batch, of the first gen, of a new product.

So, anyway, the BEVT is relatively inexpensive, proven, and mature, so I decided to be done with this waiting and get off the sidelines.

I'll be happy to post my benchmarks to add to the confusion!

 

Jeez...good thing I got my 7200.4 when I did then! Either way, I scanned/tested/checked the crap out of this HDD before I set it up. Still running smooth.

The week I bought it, NCIX had a WD 320GB 7200rpm on sale for 68 bucks after MIR. It was tempting, but I just really need that 500GB so oh well

 

Well, I still wait for my drive

In the meantime I read a small paper about the Seagate G-Force protection (PDF 120KB), and because this topic was discussed ago, too, I think it's interesting to post a small update:
Here are the most important facts:

I think these are interesting informations.
At least I didn't knew that I can read the history in the SMART values (maybe the 'G-sense error rate' value) and that I can completely turn off the hard disks free fall sensor, if I don't like it or if does not work as I want.

Still I don't know a software which can change the register to turn the free fall sensor off.

But now I finaly know that I prefer the ASG version

 

Not sure if this was posted before but some synthetic benchmark results here:
http://www.barefeats.com/note05.html

I'm still looking for real life comparisons / application benchmarks.

 

How loud is the drive?

 

Actually, it is an option with the X6 Ultrabay for ThinkPads. I have an optical drive in that slot, though.

 

Your information is correct. I could order the adaptor to use the Ultrabay as a home for a second HDD, but I'd rather have the DVD drive, so I returned the 2nd drive to TigerDirect. And yes, I could have (should have) looked first. I have a 1TB WD external drive for backup, etc. anyways.

 

somehow, whenever my harddrive freezes up, i get a bsod instead of it going back, does anybody know how to fix this?

 

any news about hitachi or WD drives?

 

let me try to write another review little quick:

- the HDD is very quiet, like every seagate I've used so far. Like you see the LED blinking but you cant hear it clicking, unlike Hitachis an WD drives.
- it does not produce clicking sounds from time to time like my 160GB Seagate does, probably when parking the heads.
- it is fast, like real fast, boot up time decreased from ~2 min to about 1:15, because I have lots of stuff loading at startup. To give an example, the 2 min boot was with the 160GB Seagate that would boot up in about 30-40 sec on a clean Windows XP install. I've got about 50 processes running.
- it does over 30MB/s over 4Kb blocks, much faster than most SSDs on that part. My ATTO results should be couple pages back on this thread.
- on Thinkpads HDTune does not show the full potential of the drive for some reason, on the standard test it would limit to about 80MB/s. When tested with changed block size to 128KB, it hits 100MB/s at the beginning. ATTO however gives much more information performance-wise.
- it's big .. nice. I've got 2 partitions of 250GB each (232GB actual)
- application load depends on the stuff that you are actually running on the computer. Like if I disable my antivirus, programs load much faster. But for the sake of curiousity, my photoshop 7 loads in about 10 sec with antivirus running. This is with checking online for updates. But I can make it faster if the load time is soo important.

overall, the best HDD my laptop had by now. Next time big SSD

cheers

 

You could have done 80GB + 420GB to get slightly better performance in the OS.



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Nice little review.

Now if only it were available for sale...

/me just ordered a 320 7200 WD Scorpio Black after not finding the Momentus available stateside

+rep

 

what about
7GB(for page file)+73GB(OS) + 420GB(p0rn0 video) to get slightly better performance in the OS

 

why does everyone comparing 500GB 7200.4 vs 320GB Scorpio Black? From what I understand:

Scorpio 320GB is ok if being compared to 320GB 7200.3. They are same generation.

 

I think its because the WD 320GB 7200rpm was the fastest drive around. Its still an option, so its being compared against. If there were other 500GB 7200rpm drives around we'd compare it against those.

 

Your right.

There's no point-of-reference to compare the Momentus with, since it's in a class-of-its-own (new gen, 500G 7200R). It seems a lot of peeps here have or respect the 320 Scorpio Black, I guess.

 

Like said, it's because the 3200bekt was the fastest hard drive in real life.
( http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15079/4)

The 7200.4 will probably be faster, but sofar I have not seen any evidence of it.

Synthetic benchmark results are nice but they are not a reliable indicator of real life performance.

 

Those tests are pretty old... since those were released, 4 extremely impressive consumer SSDs hit the market: Intel x25-m, G.Skill Titan, OCZ Apex, and OCZ Vertex.

And there are 5400rpm 500gb mechanical hard drives from Samsung, WD and Seagate that didn't make it to the testing either.

 

I was talking about traditional hard drives.... (and I assumed that would be obvious but I was wrong).

The 5400rpm 500GB drives are not as fast as the WD3200bekt in real life scenario's but synthetic benchmarks can give the impression that they are.

 

I thought you might have been, but the link you posted had SSDs in the comparison and the WD3200bekt compared very favorably, so I wasn't sure. A lot of people use the term "hard drive" as a phrase to describe both spinning magnetic disks and SSDs.

 

haiz... all online store from US keep draggin the date.

any other countries or shop hav in stock?

 

Any professional reviews out on the 7200.4? I've been looking but can find any.

Thanks.

 

Maybe because the reviewers can't find any 7200.4's???

Sry...couldn't resist.

 

This silence is scaring me!
I am using one of the first batch and although it runs very well I started to think that Seagate is trying to recover from a serious issue!!! I cannot explain why they had more than a month gap between the first and the second batches...


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Well,

I went with the WD320 Scorpio Black (received it today) because of availability. I did have a very slight nagging feeling over similar concerns to yours. But that was very slight. Pretty much a non-issue. I likely would've pulled the trigger on the Momentus if it was as easily available as the Scorpio.

But hey,

Your Momentus is working just fine and has a 3yr warranty, right?

I wouldn't even sweat it.

/ me passes ramgen a cyber beer

 

^ maybe the HDD is too good to be released that early

 

I luckily grabbed mine for $120.99 after shipping and tax from Nowdirect.com. They just came through and sent this email about the 7200.4, which has been delayed numerous times...ugh.


To Our Valued Customers –
Nowdirect has been informed by Seagate that the delivery date for ST9500420AS has been moved out again.
As you may already know, we have experienced several delays in getting these drives delivered from Seagate. Our latest update is that they are scheduled to arrive the first week of April, but because of the number of delays we have already seen we cannot guarantee this. We will continue to keep you informed on the status of the shipment as we receive updates from Seagate. Please rest assured that we will be receiving enough drives in our first shipment from Seagate to cover all open backorders as of today.
We have been told by Seagate that we are first in line to receive these hard drives, however if you cannot wait any longer we do have an alternative option available that is in stock.
ST9500325AS – Seagate 2.5” 500gb 5400rpm SATA. ($98.90 each)
Please remember that, as with all of our orders, you will not be charged until your product actually ships to you.
Thank you for shopping with Nowdirect!

 

Newegg deactivated their 7200.4 listing the other day, too, but that might not be anything new for them.

 

Stratcat... lets see some benchs on your black drive... do some real life tests e.g do wiht your existing drive for xp startup and gb file copy to and from and the usual hd utils as well.

then do new ones with the wd drive.

I should recieve my hitachi by next week i am looking forward to some of similar benches myself.

 

Sure, NP.

Won't get to it 'till Monday, tho.

 

Please try to keep this thread on topic: Seagate Momentus 7200.4

 

Are there any reviews of the 7200.4 250gig version out?
I'm interested in access time!

 

im planning on buying one of these things for my macbook pro. is there any performance difference between the one with the freefall sensor and the one without? is there any conflicts between apple's sudden motion sensor and seagate's?

 

I haven't heard of that model anywhere... In fact the 500GB version is not available either.

To get a clue, you may compare Seagate's 7200.3 160GB versus 320GB. That may give you a rough idea of how latency scales in single and double platter drives. Though it may not be exactly the same since these are newer generation drives.

Theoretically there should not be any performance difference and conflicts between those sensors. However if you already have a motion sensor you may go with the plain HDD (without the sensor). I don't think double sensors will add any benefit...


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