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

the best i got with the xt was 20.124
but boot time is affected by a lot of factors like processes and startup programs. even if its a 'normal' loading, some of the programs you have, may have installed processes/startups like updaters and such , that you may not be aware of.
i have around 55 processes at startup.

 

Hmm. Perhaps the fault lies with boot timer. According to my stopwatch, 22 seconds gets me to the welcome screen. I'll measure how long it takes me to get a cursor on the desktop.

Edit: 28.9 seconds, according to the stopwatch. Regardless, whether it is 22 or 29 seconds, I'm interested in how many seconds people have shaved off their boot times with the XT compared to a 7200 RPM HDD

 

There's are more factors that influence boot time. For example: a basic Intel CULV with IGP will boot faster than a quad core desktop replacement with heavy GPU (if they're using the same hard drive.).

To answer your question: on my HP DM3 with a lot of software installed the Scorpio Black booted in 32 seconds, the Seagate Momentus XT booted on average in 27 seconds. After a couple of runs in 24 seconds.

The fastest SSD I had booted in 21.5 seconds.

These times are all without start up optimization. With it can go below ten seconds.

 

Down to $110 with free shipping at Newegg!

Newegg: Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hybrid Drive with 4gb SLC SSD $109.99 shipped - SlickDeals.net Forums

 

Unbelievable, I just bought one on Saturday for 120...

 

I just bought another for $115.00 on Saturday , Oh well.

 

I was wondering, would I be ok cloneing my Hard Drive in my M11X over to the Montentus XT that I just bought, or is there somthing diffrent that would effect preformence?

 

Clonig can be problematic with SSDs, with the Momentus XT it shouldn't be any problem.

A clean install does have performance benefits though.

 

Does anyone have temp readings of their (preferably 500GB) XT after a few hours of use? My 7200.4 is right now at 45C after several hours of internet, some videos and a malware scan. I'm wondering what kind of real numbers the XT puts out.

 

My 500GB XT is always around 40-42 just like my Seagate 500GB 7200rpm was. I think it's pretty much the same temp as a standard 7200rpm drive and any fluctuation in temps is based on usage trends and your laptop's HDD cooling

 

$20 off promo from Newegg

320GB Momentus XT for $95

Ends Oct. 6

Sweet!

 

If you're going to buy smaller I'd recommend getting the 250GB instead of 320GB because of the one platter design.

 

flynnaz

I did a clone of my original Seagate 7.200 OS drive to the Momentus XT & was fine no problems @ all.I used Seagate Disc Wizard.If your not lazy like me do a fresh install.But all was fine doing a clone Disc.

 

Thank you for the info. I just did a fresh install, everything works great

 

has anyone tried to low level format the drive?

if yes, what tool do you guys use?


thanks

 

I haven't 'low level formatted' a drive in about 20 years.

Why would you need to do that?

 

my XT is perfect. Temperature has Nver gone above 40C.. and stingbandel , why do you need such a format? A normal format is perfect.

 

oh well, just want to do a clean wipe. that's all.


ok, I'm gonna do a regular format then

thanks

 

You can use kill disk to wipe your drive but it isn't necessary any more. Kill disk is more for privacy purposes. Do a full format and it will make sure all blocks are good.

 

that's what I am using right now.


thanks

 

Im still confused how adaptive memory works.

 

Then don't worry about it. It works. Seagate hasn't published any details on how, precisely, it works anyway. Thankfully, the algorithm can't be adjusted by the users, otherwise this forum would by now be flooded by all those fiddlers who have all those "awesome tweaks" to "optimize" the "performance" of those XTs...

 

haha allright sounds good. so in the end its worth it for the price as opposed to a pure SSD?

 

If you read thru the posts, some of us think so

 

Does the flash part still works when the drive is used as a pure data drive? Basically i want to use the xt and a 120gb agility 2. With all my games, music and pictures on the xt and everything else like visual studio, browser and 3d design stuff on the ssd.

 

The XT cache is designed to be most effective as a boot drive, not as a data drive.

In your case, I'm sure most will agree, just get a regular old 7.2 or 5.4k drive for data and put the money saved (~$50) toward your SSD.

 

Although, from what I understand, it will still add the most accessed files (from the data drive) such as games, etc to the cache, will will provide a noticeable increase in speed.

 

Well, there are few users that do use the XT as a data drive. Flynnaz wrote Seagate who said it was not worth it as a data drive; honest or uninformed?

How bout it htwingnut? Would you recommend the drive as a data drive?

 

I am still useing it as a data drive in my M17X, I really do not know if it's faster than a 7200rpm, it seems to load things faster.

 

my guess is that if you are accessing the same data so often and it is not bigger than 4gb then you may see some increase in performance from the xt as a data drive.

 

Hi, registered because of this thread. I'm looking at the Momentus XT and very curious about performance in regards to larger files and quick access. There are other threads around the net including the Seagate forums about a particular issue of the drive spinning down then not recovering quickly and lagging. It's the interweb for sure and some of this seems to be users trying to raid two drives which isn't recommended etc.
I would be using it as a main drive in a laptop for hardcore audio work, and am personally torn between it and the 500GB WD Scorpio. I'm curious if any of you have had any issues with the drive spinning down or not responding to huge file requests quickly from a static state?

 

the spindown issue can be solved by applying the new firmware update and keeping your laptop in high performance mode.

 

Cool, so for most people the firmware update works. As an owner what is your opinion on how the 4GB is allocated? What I'm hoping for is something similar to the way the Native Instruments Kontakt Sampler streams long audio samples direct from disk. What it does is commits a small section of the audio file to RAM, of hundreds of files. This way RAM isn't overused.
My fear is the XT will "learn" say the first project or song etc. I'm working on and after the 4GB limit reverts to being a regular HD. Remember a typical unfinished composition is about 2GB. So if the SSD part isn't allocating just the first burst of information from a project then it's limit would be reached quick.

I'm kind of thinking this particular question is one of just gambling that it works as advertised.

 

If you "registered just for this thread", then why don't you read it, rather than asking the same questions that have been asked, and answered, a dozen times already?

 

i dont think anyone here, or anywhere else (aside from seagate engineers), know exactly how the 4gb nand works.

 

From what I understand, the cache "learns" what files you access the most, so the first 1-2 times you access a file it starts to notice a trend. If you are working on the same couple of files (or folders, or whatever) for a period of time, it will start to load those in the cache and increase your access times. There are plenty of posts on here that report significant access gains (mostly to boot times but the principle applies) NOT at the 2-3 access but even more so at the 4-5 access. FWIW

 

Yes, I don't pretend to know exactly how it works, just my understanding from what I've read here and logically what would make sense to me.

 

one thing is certain though- it decreases boot time and shutdown (to a lesser degree) significantly

 

As far as I know it stores the most read files on the cache. (not necessarily the most accessed)

 

I hate these kind of reactions. Why don't you just help the guy instead of reprimanding him or the like. Questions being asked a several times are very common among every forum I am at. If you don't want to help the guy, just keep quiet.

 

Pirx's response is justified. The threads on the Seagate forum, threads on other forums, and as well as this thread have clearly and repeatedly hammered down how the 4GB buffer works. machinesworking even describes it in post #833. It's only a matter of reading the material rather than waiting for someone else to spoon feed it to him. The seeking user keeping quiet and just taking the time to sit down and read keeps the number of filler posts/threads at a minimum.

 

Amen to this.

Certainly in threads like this, it is simply boring.
People reading first might cut it down 50% or even more.

 

You know, I have been around these kinds of forums for a while, and by now I think I have a good feeling of how such forums grow and, eventually, also die. Forums like this start out fresh, and grow, when there are a number of extremely competent posters that are able to answer questions and solve problems from other users that are similarly competent, or at least have a genuine interest. They die (like Notebookforums, for example, which used to be the prime place to visit a few years ago) when there's an influx of people who also have questions, but are too lazy to do a minimum amount of homework, so the same questions are asked over and over again. The competent people start getting tired of this, and of there being no new challenges, and leave. Once they're gone, the forum deteriorates to mindless blather. During this dying stage, posting volume may still be high, but then even the, hmm, not-so-smart forum visitors realize there's nothing to be gained here, and leave. And the forum dies.

I have been on this forum for a while now, too, and this one, too, is in a state of decline. I can already see that quite a few of the more valuable posters are not coming in anymore, so the signal-to-noise ratio has gone up substantially. Not a good sign.

 

Well said, I have nothing against you guys, was just my comment. Anyway, back to topic.

 

by the way your describing your usage, it seems you will be using it more as a data drive, with large blocks of data/files.
as one poster quoted, seagate does not recommend using the xt as a data drive.
as for the specific algorithms and programs for caching, i think only the seagate engineers know how that works exactly.

 

Yes,try help the guy as this is new product people tend to ask questions and also people have different capabilities and this forum should cater for everyone.

 

Instead of telling someone to shut up and read, maybe you could also compile your educated information in an FAQ and forward it to the OP to add to the original post. Much more constructive and helpful.

Asking people to filter through 800+ posts is not a good suggestion. Why not have the op or a mod post the relevent faq in the first post. There's many threads on certain subjects that easily exceed 1000 posts. If all the relevent info was compiled in the first post, just point them there. That's more effective than asking dozens of users to spend hours sorting through something that could easily be answered by someone that's been on top of the subject. Not everyone has the free time you do or as educated on the topic as you are. Heck I've even read what I thought was the right answer and later find out it was contradictory to what others have said and am unclear to the proper answer.

The search system on this forum (and many vbulletin ones) is not great, it frequently dumps on me with more than one or two keywords. Not to mention the 15 second wait time before another search. It makes it darn near impossible to always find the right keyword and subsequent answer.

 

This applies to regularly accessed data as well?

I read the entire thread, I see no answers on how the Momentus XT will respond to large projects. Playing a game or other regular activities is a little different than opening 2GB plus projects over and over.
If I open 10 projects in a program like Ableton Live for instance, and each project contains 2+GB of audio files is the algorithm smart enough to load a tiny bit of data from those 150 odd files if I open the files on an almost daily basis? I'm not accessing random amounts of data here, but the data itself is large.
This is different than some MP3 or movie library, but I see nothing in this thread that talks about this sort of use. Point me to the page in this thread where this sort of access is talked about, fine, but after reading 23 odd pages I didn't see anything relating to this particular activity. I'm getting the impression that it's not a question that can be answered here. Probably better asked of Seagate tech support. Though the likeliness of a sales pitch is there.

 

Suggesting someone to read the thread is a valid suggestion.

Please on topic now.

 

True, the assumption that someone hasn't is where it gets tricky though.

Your review in your sig has me again interested in the XT. File copy performance and multi task performance are both better than the WD Scorpio I'm also considering.