Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid HDD w/ built-in 4GB SSD

i usually time my purchases when family will be visiting the us so i dont have to deal with international shipping rates.
good idea to contact seagate directly, afaik they do not have local support but it would never hurt to ask.

 

i will try johnnyair one of these days.
i know you have had v good feedback from their service and shipping tates.
thanks for reminding me kev.

 

Seagate Support;

Phillippines 1.800.14410356

Submit Email


English

8:00 A.M. to 5:30 P.M.
Monday - Friday
Philippine Standard Time (GMT +8)

 

thanks. is that a local number (philippines)?

 

Well..I don't know but an 800 number is usually free?

..good luck!

 

thanks
i did contact them and they did say they do not have a service center but do have a drop-off/pickup point for replacements and such.

however they did mention that they will not accept warranties for oem drives.
so how do i know if the bare drives in places like newegg and amazon are oem or retail?
these for example:

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive

Amazon.com: Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST95005620AS-Bare Drive: Electronics

 

Bare drives are considered oem.

 

whats the newest firmware for the xt?

 

SD23 , see link below.

Momentus XT Firmware Update

 

thanks tinder

i read in a some other forum that there have been reports of the momentus xt not performing very well after it has been cloned.
have any of you experienced this?

 

I made an backup of my XT yesterday, as i was messing about with other OS , and when i restored my original OS , my performance seems unchanged, though i did do an defrag to optimize data placement.

 

so it seems like that issue with the xt and cloning seems to be unfounded?
ive never seen anyone here complain baout cloning and the xt, although it could be that most of you xt owners did a fresh install instead.

 

Yes, it is unfounded. The claim makes no sense on the face of it anyway, to anybody who has a minimal understanding of how hard drives in general, and Seagate's XT in particular, work.

 

SSD's can have issues with cloning, namely with alignment, but the XT not sure how or why it would have issues.

 

thats good to know.
im not that tech savvy with regards to hdd/ssd's but at least that cloning rumor aint true!
thanks

 

Claiming of warranty for Seagate drives is very easy. They have a drop-off point at Paranaque. If ever the drive is defective and it is still under warranty, you have to obtain an RMA number from Seagate's website and ship/drop it off to that place and after some visual inspection of the drive (there should be no physical defects) they will ship you a replacement drive (either brand new or refurbished). This would take around 2 weeks all in all.

 

how do u see which version u have? Just correct me if i'm wrong.. do u go into
device manager , click on HDD and then under the info see firmware right? I'm not sure that's why i'm asking.

 

Use this to see the version number, it`s at the top of the window, or use device manger.

http://release.crystaldew.info/ijkl/CrystalDiskInfo3_8_0-en.exe

 

i got my replacement momentus xt today. once the drive ist built in there are no noticable vibrations anymore. the temps are also a bit lower and the drive is quite silent, even more than my old scorpio black. so i can say who has a vibrating momentus xt, obviously got a faulty one...
if no new problems arise, i'm very satisfied.

 

crystal disk mark cant seem to identify my momentus xt 500gb and it shows low scores.
i have the new sd23 firmware installed.
no vibration and no clicking sounds.
could i have missed some steps?

 

have you installed Intel RST driver? if not do that.

 

its not listed in my installed programs so i probably isnt.
can you direct me to a link?

 

Try the nr.1 hit on Google.com

 

Yesterday it was brought to my attention that the partitions on my cloned XT were mis-aligned and that this should be causing degraded performance. Did some cursory research and thought almost all of the partition alignment discussion pertained to RAID or SSDs.

Long story short, I've now got a fresh system running and there flat out is no performance gain as a result of my new partitions being aligned. I'm actually seeing /lower/ scores in CrystalDisk across the board. Multiple tests before and after were conducted after a thorough MyDefrag (monthly optimize script) was run.

Partition alignment in my experience has no bearing on the XT.

:|

 

thanks phil.
the reason i asked is i dont have a floppy nor an optical disk (RMA) and i was thinking that maybe you had a file that didnt require the floppy or setup dvd.

 

got to install the .exe file for intel rst driver. these are my crystal mark numbers. seems quite low compared to what ive seen in reviews.


anything else i may have missed?

 

It is because the drive is so full. If you do the primary partion at like 100 GB for the OS and programs then place the other files on the remaining partition you will get better numbers. It also will perform better with the data files not pushing the program files apart on the platters. Below is my Crystal Disk Mark with a primary partition.

 

Yes I agree with TANWare, make a 100GB primary partition. Also make sure your laptop is in high performance mode.

If that doesn't raise your scores to normal levels you could try this registry tweak:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm

Change the "Start" from 3 to 4. Watch temperatures if you apply this tweak.

 

thanks tan and phil ill try those tweaks.
are my scores 'normal' however considering those tweaks have not been applied yet?

 

Your scores seem low. Try HDTune.

I don't think the tweak will actually work, but it can't hurt to try.

 

I'll be surprised if the stamatisx tweak works for trvelbug.

I tried it on my VAIO and 500GB XT and it actually made a negative impact on productivity (albiet a small one).

I can't get to my VAIO right now, I'll post a CDM benchmark score of the first partition (my 'temp' partition) in a few hours.

 

my scores did increase with your tweak.
i cant do tanawares tweak just yet because ill have to reformat the drive and load everything, and i just cant spare the time to do that right now.
i also cloned this xt from my 5400 wd. but as mentioned before that should not be a factor for performance.
so with these new scores now does it seems more 'normal' or is my drive still lagging in performance?
it doesnt make any sound, or does not vibrate, it came with the new sd23 firmware, so i did not have to upgrade it.

 

Seems a bit better. Please run HDTune, then we will know.

 

here it is. i dont know how to interpret hdtune but that 12.5mb/s doesnt look good

 

That's just some background service accessing it. No problem.

Now we know you do get a 108MB/sec peak in the beginning and a 17ms access. Performance seems quite normal.

The only two things holding you back are a dirty installation and a too large first partition.

If it was me I'd fix both those things, but many people are ok with them.

 

by dirty installation do you mean the cloning?
the only way to fix these (dirty and partition) is through a reformat and reinstallation right?

 

By dirty installation I mean an installation that has been running for months with many programs installed, updates over updates, many startup services etc.

I'm not sure if you have that, I was just assuming it

 

i do
10char

however i do some regular maintenance with ccleaner and checking services
i have 363gb of data/programs on the drive with one partition only, im thinking this could be whats holding me back mainly.

 

How many background processes do you have running trvelbug?

 

20 when i start up phil

 

Do you mean this number says 20 after you've normally booted your laptop?

 

After my system, U81a, has settled down I'm at 82...........

Edit; I got it down to 80, alot of bloat but I like the bloat I have. Perfect Disk, Rainelander, VirtuaWin, Window Blinds, RocketDock, HP Printer Utilities amongst others......

 

those are the number of active processes in task manager yes

 

Then you probably don't need a clean install.

 

correction:
that number down there is 55
however the number of entries in the processes pane is 20
is 55 too large?

 

55 doesn't sound too bad. It doesn't say everything though, it's just a quick gauge.

 

true.
i like your 35 though.

 

Well that's from a 2 day old install, hardly any software installed. So not really a fair comparison.

 

aha!

my plan is to use my old 5400 with an hdd in the optical bay. ill transfer data, and some older games to the 5400 and shrink the primary partition of the xt to around 250gb. i dont think i can shrink it any further than that.
if i do those steps would i still benefit from the stripping tanware was talking about?

 

Have the power issues (the spindown and lag while it revs back up) been resolved? Sorry to be lazy, I just read the Envy 17 thread, the cooler thread, and the undervolting thread, and I just can't do another atm.

Also, Amazon has three different oem versions of this drive.

ST95005620AS $129.99
ST93205620AS $120.20
ST92505610AS $99.99
Amazon.com: seagate momentus xt

Anyone know what the differences are? +30%ish price for the latest version is steep, and maybe you can firmware update your way to the same result with the oldest version?