Seagate Momentus ST905003N3A1AS vs. ST9500420AS

Best Buy is selling ST905003N3A1AS and every other retailer seems to be carrying ST9500420AS. I'm looking at the Seagate Momentus 500gb 7200rpm hdd and can't seem to find any info or reviews on the first one and curious to know if there is any difference? Is one version older or newer?

ST905003N3A1AS
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Seagate...tops/9326428.p?id=1218085426687&skuId=9326428

ST9500420AS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148374

 

Seagate drives seem to fail a lot nowadays and especially the mometus ones... if u really want a 500GB 7200rpm drive , why not look at the hitachi 7K500... it costs more but almost gives half the performance of an SSD...

 

Well, I bought a new laptop (HP 6930P) and was planning on removing the optical drive and installing a a second hdd. Only thing I'm undecided on...
- should I suck it up and buy an SSD for the primary drive and just use a WD 500gb 5400rpm (that I already have) for the secondary.
- should I get the Hitachi 7k500 for the primary and use the WD for the secondary and run them in RAID. I don't REALLY need 1TB of space, but could probably fill them up if I tried. Plus, I don't really want to spend ~$400 on an SSD.

The Hitachi is half the performance of which SSD? An entry level SSD? Is this the Hitachi hdd you're talking about?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145275
If so, that's actually cheaper than what I paid for the Seagate.

 

That's the drive. Just remember that if you put a 7200 RPM drive in RAID 0 (striped) with a 5400 rpm drive, effective speed for the 7200 will drop to 5400 as well.

 

ALso, since the Momentus fail with a great frequency, and givent that Seagate warranty dept presents difficulties,and they misrepresent there warranty duration, I would go with the HItachi...in fact that is what I just purchased, as tired of Seagate's failing and their deceptive warranty practices.

 

yes that is the drive and get it...anyways i don't think u can RAID unless u got 2 drives of the same type and manufactuers...

 

not much knowledge on how raid works...
but if i had 2 hitachi travelstar 7k500 in RAID 0, since you say the performance is about half of an SSD's performance (still unclear which SSD), would that effectively give me the performance of an SSD with the bonus of having 1TB?

 

Not quite, but the 'theory' you state is ( mostly) sound.

I would not recommend RAID0 to anybody especially on a notebook (unless you're editing video files). You effectively double your chances of losing everything with not a doubling of performance.

Get the two 7K500's and maybe use this as a guide for increasing and sustaining your performance:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5617217#post5617217


Or, see the following link to an overview of my 7K500 upgrade:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=441674

Hope this helps.

Good luck and Happy Holidays!

 

that definitely narrows it down for me, much appreciated

i think i'll just pick up the hitachi and use it as my primary drive and use my WD as the secondary.

UNLESS i find an incredible deal on an SSD within the next week or so... totally would have jumped on the newegg OCZ vertex 120gb deal if it weren't already sold out!

 

Picked up the latest HItachi 500GB 7K500 at Fry's for $99...cheaper than Seagate, quieter, higher perf, and likely will outlast the 4 months I got out of 7200.4

 

nice!
i always forget about fry's since they rarely have any decent deals, plus the closest one is a 30 min drive.
i'm gonna go pick this one up and hopefully it'll be good enough to forget about SSDs for a year or two

 

I heard the hitachi's running hotter than usual... one of the reasons why i'm using western digitals in all my comps

 

Had the Scorpio Blue 500GB BEVT model, replaced by the Hitachi 7K500.

In same notebook, same use - same temps.

Actually, when I was able to check with the original Toshiba HD, again the temps were the same for identical usage patterns.

I would say the notebook matters more than the HD as to whether or not it runs hot?

 

any noticeable or significant improvements in day-to-day use?

 

Oh yes! Although this compared directly to the 'stock' Toshiba HD originally in my VAIO, the Scorpio Blue is very close performance-wise.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5609040#post5609040

 

hmmm... here's another option...

A) $200 for Intel 80gb G1 SSD and use my existing WD 5000BEVT as secondary storage.

B) $200 for 2 Hitachi 7k500 hdds (2 of them just because )

someone on this forum mentioned there was an article by tomshardware or anandtech (can't seem to find it myself), that the G1's "trash collection" was supposedly just as efficient as TRIM? So I'm hoping there's no long term regrets with option A?

 

I ended up going with the Hitachi Travelstar and so far, I'm impressed! In fact, I was so satisfied, that I bought a Hitachi Deskstar the next day, even though I couldn't find any reviews on it. I ran some benchmarks since my WD Caviar Black 3.5" 1TB felt a bit sluggish compared to the Hitachi Deskstar and not much faster than the Travelstar. Not quite sure if I did it right or if I did it fairly, but the benchmarks confirmed my thoughts. Surprisingly, the Travelstar 2.5" is almost neck and neck with the WD Caviar Black 3.5" in read and actually beat it in access time. The Deskstar pretty much blew the WD Black out of the water.
I'm gonna pick up another Hitachi Travelstar and another Deskstar tomorrow and return the WD