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

It'll be backwards compatible. As mentioned, though, you won't get the full benefits of a SATA II connection.

But heck, it's an XT. You'll still see the difference.

 

I upgraded a Seagate 7200.4 500GB for the 500GB XT. Like others have reported biggest difference is in the boot time and loading frequently accessed applications. Transfer speeds seem to be about equal otherwise. Seems to be a very worthy upgrade for any laptop.

 

Unless you're using network shares, A/V file scanning is really unnecessary in a home environment unless you're some super p0rn freak. You scan all your files once to make sure you have no existing infections, and set your A/V to scan thumb drives.

From there on out you have Resident module that checks files as they are accessed as well as running processes. There's no need to constantly rescan the same files over and over again. Resident module should catch anything new that enters the system. I'll be handing out tin-foil hats at the end of the session.

Superfetch...........your mileage may vary. Seagate took superfetch and readyboost and moved it from the OS\Software implementation to the hard drive\Hardware implementation.

 

I just noticed that Newegg currently has a good price on this drive. Including a $10 off promo code thru 10/20 the price is $104.99 shipped.

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

 

Does a regular Vertex/Crucial M225 SSD blow this out of the water in terms of performance in everyday use?

Or does this perform comparable to an SSD?

 

Sometimes comparable to an SSD, but look it different way - you get 500 GB of free space with some pseudoSSD drive. I had Vertex previously, but I think it's useless since it got too less free space available (only 64 GB during that time). Momentus XT is enough IMO.

 

it is fast as a storage drive and boots quite fast and almost as fast as an SSD.. its worth getting but an SSD s faster for sure... as a storage drive , it still is excellent.

 

if you use the xt as a purely data drive for music, pictures, videos and documents will you see any performance benefits from the xt?

 

Wow this might force me to order one, if at least just to try it.

My plan was to wait till the next gen SSD's hit market (Q4?) which would drive down prices on current models. 64gb ssd + 5400rpm hdd in the ultrabay seemed like the perfect solution, but I use the same few programs daily (firefox, thunderbird, utorrent, trillian, mpc-hc, etc) so maybe the Momentus XT is all I need.

 

It will over a standard HDD have some advantages. The primary ones most likely will be that the folder information will get cached. so as you browse files etc it will help. Frequently accessed files may see a boon as well.

It most likely will not be as pronounced an advantage over a XT as the primary drive. There could be usage patterns that may even negate any performance advantage of the XT over say the new Samsung 640GB. Actuall for storage that new drive may be a better overall option. The access times seem low for an HDD and it seems to bench sequential files at fast transfer rates. I am excited to see where the new 750GB models will bench...............

 

That's what i do... it is an improvement in anyway for sure.

 

When you use it as a data drive it's fast but not any faster than a Samsung HM640JJ for example.

 

so as a purely data drive it performs like a any good 7200rpm hdd?

 

I've just ordered my xt and a ODD caddy. I will be running the XT with a 7k500. Steam is the largest thing on my drive atm, should I put it on the 7k500 data drive or the xt?

 

doesnt steam force install itself on the o/s drive?

 

Basically yes.

Unless for example: you installed a game on your data drive that you play often. Certain files may get cached and speed up the starting of the game.

 

thanks phil.

is it still worth while keeping your laptop on high performance for the xt or does it perform as well on balanced power mode now.

 

Balanced will be adequate.

 

No. couple more characters

 

it is better for sure... transfering data from SSD to HDD , it does it way faster due to the cache.

 

Do you have any idea what you are actually saying... (that was a rhetorical question)

 

I believe he is refering to the increased 32MB cache not the NAND. This of course can have some benefits. The XT does have benefits but not exrteme ones.

If you are primarily trasnfering files the faster Samsung 640GB will be more of a benefit. If you are doing alot of drive browsing where the XT gets to cache folder data then it may prove beneficial. As in just about anything YMMV.........

 

Does the performance difference between a typical 2.5" 500 GB 7200 RPM HDD (around $65-$75) and the 500 GB Momentus XT ($120-$130) justify the price difference? Or would I be better off saving the money for other upgrades?

 

If you check out the reviews, in many cases it does improve the performance. Whether thats worth the cash to you is another thing. I'd suggest taking a perusal through the reviews, and then decide if you think the outlay is worth it.

 

On my DM3 it boots about 25% faster than the WD5000bekt and launches your most used applications about twice as fast (maybe more).

Whether that's worth it is up to you to decide. You can check the review in my signature for more benchmarks.

PS. What notebook is it for?

 

When they go on sale they can be had much closer to $100, I think for that price its worth it as long as you want to use it as an OS drive.

Its hard to justify a SSD for me just due to the loss of storage space, but atleast with this hybrid you keep the storage space.

If your on the fence for a SSD this may be a good stepping stone. I think its very fairly priced. It was not long ago that a 500gb 2.5" drive was $100 without the extra SSD feature built in.

 

To me it is.
It feels so much faster coming from a Samsung Spinpoint M 5400 rpm drive.
See also: Leaderboard - Best Hard Drives & SSDs | StorageReview.com
and their review: Seagate Momentus XT Review | StorageReview.com

 

When I bought the Hitachi 7K500 at the original $80 offered price I was more than happy (I've paid $400 for high performance notebook drives in the past).

A short few months later, I bought the XT for $170 and thought the premium was still easily worth it - I kept the drive - still enjoying the performance it offers.

Now, with prices in the $100-$120 range for an XT, I feel that standard mechanical HD's are a rip-off - even at half price.

Note that my system(s) have the RAM maxed out (8GB), are run on Win7x64 and are heavily optimized for a consistent (heavy) usage pattern.

If you're already running Win7x64 with at least 4GB RAM and have setup your HDD as optimally as you can, then seeking more performance while keeping capacity at sane (2010/11) levels; the XT is not only the next step up. It is your only performance upgrade path available.

I'll repeat myself for emphasis: and... well worth it.


To optimize a mechanical HD via partitioning:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-hitachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.html


To see the effects of the above partitioning strategy:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6829380-post94.html


Hope this helps and, good luck.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone I've read several reviews about this drive, and while the numbers are reassuring, subjective opinions are always nice for knowing whether or not the performance difference is actually noticeable in real world scenarios.

Also, I'm actually replacing a dead hard drive so I'm basically forced to pay the current price since I can't afford to wait for a sale.

 

If you get the increase in performance that those who've posted above and are happy with the way the drive works then I'd definitely say it's worth the price.

But not everyone gets that increase, especially with complex software installations. And some folk have quite serious issues, especially Mac and Lenovo owners.

I'd suggest you do a bit more research before you buy. Check out your laptop manufacturers support forums and also the Seagate Momentus one: Momentus XT, Momentus and Momentus Thin notebook drives - Seagate Community Forums

Hopefully you can find someone with a similar set of circumstances to your own to base you decision on.

 

It's not worth it imo, I didn't notice a huge difference from my Scorpio Black (which is an excellent hdd). The flash size is too small I think. I'm returning the XT and getting a 64gb ssd + 5400rpm hdd.

The XT is also causing the machine to crash. Seagate forum suggests it's conflicting with some Thinkpad specific software.

 

IMHO it's worth it. Cost is $110 shipped from newegg.com right now for the 500GB.

I went from a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB to an OCZ Vertex 2 then to the Momentus XT 500GB. While not as quick as the Vertex 2, it definitely boots a lot quicker than my original Seagate as do the handful of apps I use on a regular basis. I think 4GB is still too little for anyone with a multitude of apps or multiboot configuration, but for the normal user who boots to Windows and loads Office and maybe a few other apps would see a noted improvement.

 

how would such drive react if raided? would the 4gb ssd still work

 

Of course it will.

 

seagate doesnt recommend the xt to be used in raid. you will see the link and quoted response a few pages back.

also remember reading some reactions from other forums (cant remember which ones) that the xt doesnt perform so well as raid drives. AFAIK only tanware tried this amongst the nbr guys. you should ask him for some feedback.

 

Just found PCPro's review of the 500GB XT... they weren't impressed, recommending people stick to standard mechanical drives after their tests showed no overall improvement to access times.

Sounds to me like they just looking the wrong way?

 

Don't Visit pcpro.co.uk. It's a waste of your bandwidth, and free advertising to a site that doesn't deserve it in any way.


They did a few of the most useless benchmarks, then decide to, without specifying even system specs, do an equally useless series of "file copy tests"

Then they go on to recommend a honkin' desktop HDD, even though the momentus XT is clearly a 2.5" laptop HDD. If they wanted to pull that crap, why not start recommending a Velociraptor? The momentus XT a laptop drive, with the same subtle speed benefits that a ssd grants. I find user comments from people with actual product usage, more beneficial than trash filled "reviews" like what pcpro is trying to pull.


Whatever care I had for that junk outfit, is definately done.

I'd recommend anandtech's (I think bittech had one, too?) review over that POS website.

Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Much more insight, and with actual useable information, tests, and analysis.

 

Where? Tried, but couldn't find the post you are referring to.

I am running two XTs in RAID, and they work perfectly fine. Speedup compared to my previous standard 7,200rpm Seagate Momentus is noticeable.

 

I think they had a bad sample.

I had one in my notebook, I was very impressed with the performance. You can read the review in my signature.

 

taken from here:
Momentus XT does NOT support RAID! - Seagate Community Forums

could you post some benches on your raid xt? im sure it would be faster than a single 7200hdd but the question is, is it faster than regular 7200's in raid.

 

Yeah does the cache still work in RAID?

 

trvelbug,

Interesting link! Seems like the problem is only a problem with a dedicated RAID card though.

I'm pretty sure that Pirx is using software RAID in his M6500 though?


Phil, the cache will still work - it doesn't know not to (hard programmed).

 

I understand that too but that doesn't automatically mean that the user can also benefit from it in the same way when it's used in RAID.

The fact that Seagate says "These drives are not designed or intended to be used in a RAID configuration" could mean something.

There for I asked some one with first hand experience.

 

Seagate states that disclaimer as they don't want to go through the process to certify them for enterprise use.

I don't take it to mean that the user won't benefit though.

Of course, we'll both have to wait for Pirx (or someone else who has XT's in software RAID) to let us all know for sure.

The original link by trvelbug does hint that there is benefits (using software RAID).

 

It's faster than the 7200s in RAID, with boot times dropping by roughly 10 seconds on a boot that, with regular 7,200rpm Seagates takes about 50 seconds. Note that the exact benefit on boot times of course depends on how the machine is used. If I do nothing but booting, the savings will be more.

Can't be bothered to futz around with benchmark programs, though, sorry. This is a production machine, not a toy...

There is absolutely no reason for it not to work. All the cache does is monitor what blocks on the drive are accessed. This will work in exactly the same way no matter how you use the drive.

No, this is a hardware controller, and the array is set up in a matrix configuration, splitting it up into two volumes, one RAID0, and one RAID1.

There is no reason why there would be any difference between RAID and non-RAID configurations in that respect. Well, other than the fact that, with two drives in RAID0, you'll effectively have 8GB of NAND cache to work with.

I think it means nothing other than: "We can't be bothered providing RAID support for these drives". There should be no issue with RAID, at least I haven't seen one in the couple of months I have been using the system now. There is a caveat, though, in that, in principle, there are hard drives that don't play well with RAID arrays. Sometimes you have situations where drives that remap sectors because of a normal read/write error go into a Deep Recovery Cycle, which can take a long time (well, more than 7 seconds...), causing certain controller and/or driver code to time out and throw a fit. Like I said, I have not seen any problems with my drives so far.

What I can tell you is that the drives seem to work fine in hardware-RAID, and that the performance benefits are the same as you would see for a single-drive configuration (like the one I have in my M4500).

 

Pirx,

Thanks for all the above.

Just a question about your hardware raid - is this in a notebook? With an actual discreet controller?

Just curious!

 

Yep. Of course, that RAID controller isn't as powerful as the boards you have in servers, but it should be similar in performance to the built-in controllers that many desktop motherboards have. The big advantage is that to any piece of regular software, the RAID array appears as a regular drive (or two drives in my case), so you don't need any special drivers, fiddling around with driver installs during OS installs, or anything like that.

And of course, performance is much better than with software RAID. In my opinion, there's no reason to bother with software RAID on a laptop, or any other machine for that matter.

 

I was looking for practical answers. Not theories.

For example: the first boot took 40 seconds, then 20, then 16. Or something like that.

 

I gave you both. I must admit, though, that your question reminds me of questions like "Is it o.k. to drive a car while wearing red socks?" In both cases one is tempted to ask why in the world there should be any difference...

 

I see, I didn't read that part.

There are some posts online saying it doesn't work. That's enough reason for me.

People can tell me 'ofcourse it works, there's no reason it shouldn't work, they're just hard drives etc' but that's not the way I work. I want to see real life results instead of theories.

The comparison with the red socks example is quite inaccurate in my opinion. Thanks for the real answer though.