Seagate Momentus 7200.4 thread

not much talk about these drives online yet... if the specs are anything to go by, i am excited however. they became available to order from the supplier in australia from the 17th of December. I ordered that day with an ETA of 12 days... Being christmas however, it's unlikely to arrive before the 5th of January which doesn't work well for me since I need to get someone to bring it to me overseas... grrr to seagate!

 

Could you please list where you bought them from? I talked to Seagate and they said the 500GB 7200.4 drives are not available till February.

 

CTi (Computertech International), claims to have the Momentus 7200.4 500GB, 7200 RPM, 16MB buffer, SATA II/300. 2.5", part number ST9500420AS in stock here: http://www.ctistore.com/product/1/code,ST9500420AS.html, but they're calling it a Special Order that takes two weeks to ship.

 

lol, this thread went over 20 pages for something that is not available yet.

if going like this, it will grow to like 30 pages before someone buys one of these HDDs, lol-ness

 

which is just another way of saying that they don't have it in stock. The company, btw, has very bad ratings at resellerratings.com

 

Yeah when it's released a new thread should be opened.

 

so.. any update?

 

nothing new in europe....

some online stores still have the 31.12.2008 as a possible date, but i guess this will not be the date when the hdd becomes available in europe.

 

here's an update: The drive is not available yet. So keep posting ...

cheers

 

I got some good news, this Acer Aspire notebook has a 500 GB 7200RPM and is available "now" through authorized resellers

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/...d=news_view&newsId=20081229005151&newsLang=en

 

Could be true. Or it could be two 250GB/7200rpm drives.

 

That, I thought, was obvious from the way I worded it (carefully). I wasn't saying that CTi has it in stock - just that they claim to, yet won't have it for two weeks.

But, sometimes things like this popping up provide a rough timeframe. Perhaps the seller has received notice of an anticipated shipment. I wouldn't be surprised if the 7200.4 500GB drive actually becomes available (from wherever) within a few weeks.

In no way was I endorsing the company. I was simply stating a fact - which I found worth mentioning here (in response to queries). It was the first time I've seen a store listing the drive.

Since you brought it up, I checked, and resellerratings.com has a total of 4 reviews for the store, dating from two months to two years ago. PriceGrabber has 611 reviews of CTi, with a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, dating back to 2003.

 

This is a little off-topic, but if 500GB 7200RPM HDDs are coming out, shouldn't 750GB 5400RPM HDDs be arriving shortly after? Right now, it's 320GB 7200RPM compared to 500GB 5400RPM.

 

It is quite possible although there is no upcoming news in that direction.

Currently Samsung (HM500LI) has the technology of assembling 3 platters in a standard 9.5mm case. This means that they can easily produce 750GB drives...


--

 

Heh -

I spoke to Seagate USA pre-sales support yesterday, and the CSR stated he had no shipping ETA except to say "The current roadmap shows no production dates".

Haha...so much for wasting that dime...

He did add me to the production release notice email list, tho.

 

Glad I got my SSD now

 

*points to recent edit in his sig's "upgrade path" line*

 

ugh...maybe i will just get the 320 7200 then :\

 

I really don't think anything much could be read into the CSR's statement, besides the fact he had no date. He was simply reading the P/N off his computer screen and not seeing a date in the production availability field.

Honestly, he wasn't even familiar with the drive, but was simply doing a data query on the P/N I gave him from Seagate's press release. He did find the P/N was valid including it having the correct discription, tho.

 

there is so much confusion concerning this hdd...

today some shops in germany and austria claimed as a possible shipping date for the 7200.4.
have had a look at some shops and they have shifted the estimated delivery date for the shipment to 2.01.2009, which would be friday this week.

this keeps my hope up, because if the drives would not be available for some time they would know that and most likely not shift the delivery date for only 2 days.

// Edit

02.01.2009

before someone asks....

no the drive is not available yet.

the shops that had listed the drive to be available for today pushed back the delivey date for another 3 days. guess this is gonna go on like this.....

 

Hi,
My 7200.2 just died and i need to find a replacement.
I don't even consider a 500 Gb drive i do not need more than 160 Gb.
Should i get the 250 7200.3 or wait for the 250 GB 7200.4
Is there really a difference between these two ?
I am not really in a rush and i can probably wait an extra few weeks.
Thanks

 

It will be hard/impossible to tell the difference in normal use.

 

How about a 250GB 7200.4 vs a 500GB 7200.4? How significant would the performance boost be?

 

No performance boost at all... That is what I presume...

The reason is especially during searches more platters become overheads. As long as the rpms and the data density (GB/platter) are the same, you should prefer smaller number of platters for better performance.

As far as I remember, 160GB 7200.3 was performing better than the 320GB 7200.3 series. I think that will hold for the 7200.4 series too...


--

 

It will be hard/impossible to notice without using benchmarks.

Acces times on the 250GB will be slightly better due to the single platter design. Power consumption will be a tiny bit better too.

 

That's so strange. I'm looking for the next big thing in speed besides SSDs but it looks like I might just have to wait for them to drop in price rather than pursuing another hard drive.

 

I started to feel the same as you. But after spending some time reading The New SSD Thread and it's associated links and references, I just may end up grabbing this or another 7200 HDD.

I'm somewhat blown away by the idiosyncrasies of SSD's, not too mention their cost. Cost is a big factor, but I think they may still need some evolutionary development work, too (at least in the case of the more affordable MLR variety).

 

A dutch shop has set back the delivery date to 16th Jan. But this may as well mean 'we have no idea when it's coming'.

 

a UK vendor has listed restocking date to be Jan 5, that is just 2 days away.
http://www.morecomputers.co.uk/extra.asp?pn=ST9500420AS

 

Just talk to seagate presale support through chat and they told me that the earliest availability will be late Feb, beginning of march ...

 

If that is true, they should have released a press release last year, instead of jerking us around. I have postponed reformatting and reinstalling my system for 3 months now just for this drive and now they said they would postpone it for another 3 months? If this is how they treat their customers, I would never trust anything that Seagate has to say.

This whole debacle remind me with the demise of 3Dfx. For months I had been waiting for Voodoo 5 6000, a card that never made it to the market. This could be the same thing. This drive may never see the light of the day. Seagate will be out of business just like 3Dfx

 

Well i was waiting for this one also but i just ordered a 7200.3.
My next upgrade will certainly be a Intel SSD and i'll use the 7200.3 as a external hdd...

 

Remember guys, the big leagues (Dell, Apple) have their orders in, and there are informal promises. The last I heard, they're still on time - but this is just one source.

Perhaps this has something to do with the delays:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3188

 

Drives purchased prior to January 3, 2009 will still carry the 5 year warranty.

I hope that's the only reason in which they can start selling it to us on January 4 which is tomorrow. I want to see this drive start selling tomorrow.

 

Even if it was available tomorrow at a trusted vendor in your geographical area, would you really want to buy the first lot of a new run of a new product before there were any retail level sales feedback?

I'll be waiting for a few weeks after they hit the retail channels, personally (if I decide to buy this product at all).

JMHO

 

I can't wait anymore. I have been waiting for 3 months now. As if the drive goes bad, I can always ask for a replacement. Seagate btw, has their own low level diagnostic utility, callled Seatool that will check every single sector of your drive for sign of defect.

 

Understood. I wasn't just thinking of initial production defects, as much as along the lines of those small production issues that get quickly improved in small evolutionary steps (i.e. firmware upgrade), or even whether the new device will actually perform as hoped (perhaps it has some nasty negative design issue like noise, heat, etc.).

But yeah, this is simply an HDD at a moderate price WRT other higher priced more impactiful decisions (like maybe a mobo to build a desktop around), and can easily be returned.

I just always feel better when I start seeing some good feedback from the retail buying public in the forums and other online venues I trust.

 

I am already pretty set on the 500...especially given that as of today any Seagate I buy only has a 3 year warranty. Had I known this yesterday I would have just got the 320 and been done with it, dammit.

Makes me even more unhappy

I don't buy their reasoning...if 95% of returns happen in the first 3 years, there's no harm in leaving the last 2 years on the warranty. It's certainly a big factor in my purchase decisions...At this point I'm pretty unhappy either way. I missed the 5 year deadline by 1 day, and now who knows how long I'll have to wait for the 500?

Edit: been told that Seagate is dropping the last two years because of their recent high return rate + Maxtor crap + economic crunch, but who knows whether that's all true :\

 

Considering it's the same product regardless of whether it has a 3 year or 5 year warranty, I'm not too hung up on the warranty length. If the HDD (or most any other compy device) craps out at >3years, the state of technology will likely have moved forward enough that I'll probably not be happy with a 3+ years old replacement technology to make it worth R&Ring the device, and going thru an RMA process vs buying a newer device. Performance, protocols, form-fit-function, all seem to change pretty quickly.

That being said, yeah, I do agree. A 5 year warranty gives me the impression (rightly or wrongly) that the manufacturer believes they have a quality product and are willing to stand behind it. A 5 years warranty won't sway me into a product less than my ideal. But if doing a new purchase and choosing between two very similar devices, especially if they are somewhat utilitarian or prosaic in function, I could be swayed by the longer warranty.

This is for my personal and family items. If I was doing corporate I.T. or was an S.I. selling to clients, I'd weigh the warranty more heavily, of course.

 

I believe if you were RMAing something >3 years out they would no longer be making that product and would probably send you something newer. I had a Dell laptop replaced (after a motherboard replacement on my original unit started to overheat) and they sent me the same spec but it had a faster CPU because they were no longer stocking the CPU I originally ordered it with.

I agree with your assessments, though.

 

You know what?

Good point.

That actually did happen to me once (an OCZ 520 Powerstream desktop PSU died). I received an 850W newer PSU as a replacement. It just showed up at my door.

Thanks for pointing that out. But in my instance, unfortunately, that still left the consumer choice out of the equation (I didn't like the PSU and bought another, anyway). But yeah, valid point.

 

What's the point of 3 year warranty? Realistically, it's useless. If my Seagate Momentus 7200.4 failed 30 months from now, I bet the Seagate Momentus 7200.6 1.5TB will be out and the 7200.4 will be ancient.

 

I personally see the point of an extended warranty like this : when my drive fail i get it replace no matter what by warranty, if i need more space i buy a new one but will use the old one as an external hard drive...

 

2 more weeks

 

This is just in:
http://media.seagate.com/2008/09/se...uters-with-worlds-highest-capacity-and-speed/

Seagate Technology
Posted January 5, 2009 at 10:44 am

Momentus Availability Update:

Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 hard drives are now on track to ship in late January.

Edit: 5400.6 is now on sale at Newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148371 but 7200.4 will have to wait.

 

grrrr. then why did they tell suppliers that stock would be incoming shortly after 17th of December. how annoying.

 

guess they were just as informed as we are. when i check the german and austrian online stores they are setting back the estimated delivey date daily - delivery date is always the following day.

they don´t know much more than we do, and i guess most of them already have sold quite some of these hdd´s, without knowing when this drive really hits the market.


edit //

just checked for the 5400.6 , and this one is widely availabe. most shops have this drive in stock now. prices start at around 90 euros.

http://geizhals.at/eu/a379667.html

 

Wouldn't recommend it though, acces times are above 20ms in the HDTune results I saw.

WD5000BEVT is the faster drive, but possibly has some noise problems.

 

thanks phil,
i would not get the 5400.6 anyway. always peaked at the 7200.4, and i have waited this long, guess i can wait a few more days.

 

I would rather them fix whatever problems there are BEFORE the release, rather than afterwards. Last thing you want is to find out you bought a bunk drive.

I plan on getting two after the first reviews come out.