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

Even if they don't share this information with anyone, I think anyone interested should still contact them since it shows interest. I plan to do so myself. Imagine if so many people asked them this, it would leave an impression.

 

It certainly doesn't hurt to ask.

 

For a data drive, WD5000bekt and Samsung HM640JJ perform on the same level as an XT, while being half the price.

Here's the top 3 hard drives on Tomshardware, PC Mark Vantage. This is the first run so the XT didn't benefit from it's 4GB NAND.

 

No it doesn't hurt to ask, but I'm just saying to take what their response is with a grain of salt. CSR's only know what information they're given and aren't held to confidentiality clauses.

I don't know sales numbers but I'd bet to say that this is a successful product, and there's no reason not to improve it. NAND prices keep dropping, especially lower capacities, which is all they use in a drive like this. If they can fit 8GB of NAND in there why not. However, I'd like to see what the improvement is if any.

That's not surprising. As a data drive, I found the XT to be fast, but nothing significant compared with the regular Seagate it replaced. Only when I launched Starcraft 2 and maps repeatedly did it help but only a bit, and then maybe it was just a placebo effect.

 

Just some info for those that care, run some tests on my MP4 640gb Samsung drive and compare with a previous post for XT speeds.

Just numbers to me

HD Tune - Samsung

Crystal Mark - Samsung


XT Crystal Mark from post 793

 

No doubt without use of the NAND, the XT is only a competitive fast HDD. But you have the benefit of the NAND in certain instances, which makes it an overall better drive.

 

The problem people see I think, is the SSD is actually storing full programs and all of your Windows files on it. It only loads the most used and frequently accessed files. Not sure how intelligent it is, but it would be good for the end user to be able to see what's stored on there.

 

I heard back from Seagate Momentus XT Support and they hinted about future models having more SSD storage space. I have no idea how much support know about this or their influence but it is still encouraging to hear.

 

Well I'd be fine with NOT getting this drive, but it just seems like on newegg if I compare it to other drives it does have the highest cache. If someone has a better one to buy I'd really appreciate it

 

If you ignore the NAND, then no, it's not the absolute fastest drive. I think a WD scorpio black holds that crown. But aside from that, the XT isn't far behind in raw performance and it has the added benefit of the NAND, so overall it's the best laptop drive you can buy at the moment IMHO.

 

How much is the scorpio? I'm kinda torn.

 

Samsung HM640JJ is good too. And here's the new Seagate 750GB.

 

I'm hoping some HD gurus can help me out here.

At the beginning of the year, I upgraded to our beloved Momentus XT from the previous Momentus 7200.4. Both 500gig capacities, content was mirrored, so I was doing this entirely for the hybrid feature.

As promised, boot times were absolutely fantastic... 30-35 seconds into the Win7 desktop from a cold start. I didn't think much of it, but in the last several months, I could hear the drive audibly spin down and spin back up. It'd do this repeatedly, but didn't affect the computing experience -- otherwise I would've suspected trouble sooner.

A few days ago, this Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive went braindead. On startup, the notebook just said "No operating system found". Notebook's hard drive indicator light was stuck ON. The slight vibration on the palmrest indicated the drive platter was spinning, but no additional activity beyond that.

I moved the Momentus XT into an external enclosure and hooked it up via USB. Similar deal. Could feel it spinning up, but no further action. Where the enclosure's LED lamp would usually flash with activity, it now stays dark.

I unscrewed the logic board on the Momentus XT and couldn't detect any component being damaged in any catastrophic manner. With the platters still capable of spinning (and no screeching to indicate bad bearings or headcrash) let's presume the logic board died.

A youtube vid indicated that housekeeping things like bad sectors were written on a track on the platter iteself -- near the spindle for notebook drives (outter platter edge for desktop drives). Does this mean it's possible to replace a (presumably) bad Momentus XT logic board with an exact (new) replacement? -- or was there additional (MBR-style) data stored that's now lost in the logic board?

Having the Momentus 7200.4 drive mirrored from earlier lets me hobble along, what's currently lost are some projects on the Momentus XT completed in the last few months.

 

Why don't you RMA the XT?

 

Thanks for the suggestion Phil, but I don't think we're on the same page here.

The primary goal isn't to get back a working drive for further long-term use. It's an attempt to retrieve a few months of projects and my recent wedding pix.

I just finished a tech call to Seagate and they confirmed that a warranty RMA for any hard drive only results in them sending out a REPLACEMENT drive. There's no attempt to try fixing the existing drive.

The upside of the call is they were able to use my serial number to look up the firmware. Turns out my drive manufactured in May 2010 has the same firmware (SD22) as those currently being manufactured.

Looks like I'll find out first-hand the answer to my original question in a few days.

 

That sound like terrible bad luck.
It will not hold me back from investing in a XT as soon as funds are available.

Just reinforces the need for backups for me.
No hardware is foolproof, sorry if you had to find out the hard way :S

 

CarterTG,

As long as the logic board is the only faulty part, then replacing it will simply force the nand to possibly re-populate itself (at the worst case scenario).

To verify if this is the case (just the logic board) is simple with a new drive to try/test with.

Good luck (and curious to know what transpires).

 

Hello all,

I've just installed a 500Gb XT on my laptop(Timeline 3810T) and it has been a positive experience so far. Win7 cold boots in about 26seconds. And things feel alot snappier. My question is, is it really that important to disable superfetch? As I have tried to enable/disable it the last couple of days, and I can't feel anything different in my daily usage.

 

Why would you disable SuperFetch? With a HD like the XT, it is only a beneficial experience with no downsides at all.

As long as you have 4GB of RAM or more (with Win7x64), SuperFetch speeds up even SSD's noticably.

 

Thanks for the encouragement Tiller, a new Momentus XT was ordered last night and shipping notification given today.

The Tech call from this afternoon seemed to agree (hypothetically and VERY MUCH off-the-record) that if the logic boards on two drives were absolutely identical -- down to the firmware -- that there's a chance of this working.

Your suggestion boosts this intended course and I'm grateful for it.

New drive should arrive Thursday-ish and we'll see what happens. Worst case, I'm prepared to ship it off to a data recovery service.

Thing is... I'm usually the one being preachy about this to all my non-geek friends. It's why I kept a mirror on my Momentus 7200.4 -- only that 1.) this predicament hit before my next quasi-annual backup and 2.) that July-September was particularly more busy/productive than any time in the last 3 years and thus the urge to increase my mirror interval wasn't in my mind's forefront.

 

Yep, an episode like this is what prompted me to go with Windows Home Server. System backup every night, and keeps up to six months worth of backups (or more if you desire). Grab an old PC, buy a copy of WHS and a couple 2TB drives and you can sleep easy. Completely hands-off.

 

I have been wanting to build my WHS for like 3 years now :/

Never save enough money to do it because other things come up.

Like 2 days ago there was a deal 2TB Seagate drives for $60.00 !!

Thing is with like 6TB of stuff on my desktop right now I need 12TB of drives in the WHS so that I can keep a backup and have the backup redundancy.

Much of the 6TB of stuff can be transferred onto the server but a lot of it I want to keep a local copy.

 

Before I built my WHS I actually started buying drives one or two at a time (1TB at that time) when they went on sale. Took me about a year to get everything together. I already had half the components I needed for the build on hand, basically case, PSU, RAM, and only had to buy the mobo and CPU. I had a CPU but decided on something a little more powerful. So it wasn't too bad an investment. I recently updated from five 1TB drives to four 2TB and kept one 1TB with the OS on it because I really didn't want to do a full reinstall of the server and you can't image it from one drive to another. Vail (WHS2) will be different in that respect.

My case isn't ideal though, it only has five hard drive bays. Actually had four but did a mod to make it five. But it's small, a Silverstone SG01, so not too cumbersome, and it only consumes about 55W when idle.

 

Nice setup.. i don't know how you ppl get that much data but i barely have 500GB

 

New Momentus XT arrived today and from the get-go it wasn't rosy. The new drive is labeled with a "SD23" firmware contrary to what the folks at Seagate Support knows.

With my dead drive sporting the "SD22" firmware, I played through to see what would happen. The dead drive got frankensteined to the new logic board, placed in the USB enclosure, and plugged into the notebook.

The enclosure's LED lit up. The "New Hardware" icon popped up with its audible tone, a SysTray alert indicated it was installing new drivers (very normal so far) and nothing further seemed to happen. I clicked on the appropriate SysTray icon and saw it was still finishing up it's driver install.. seemed to take some 3-4 minutes. (see attached pic)

When it finally finished, I opened up "My Computer" and didn't see any extra hard drives. Rebooted. Same deal.

Wondering if the USB-to-SATA interface was adding more complexity, I pulled out the bare frankensten drive and installed it inside the notebook. At bootup, the notebook gave the now familiar "No operating system found". Only difference between then and now was the external Disk Activity light wasn't stuck.

I've done all I'm able to do, so it's now packed up and en route to hopefully more capable hands.

 

The drive can spin but if the vibration level was enough to break or knock the heads out then you are in trouble. Most likely you had a mechanincal rather than controler failure. SD23 from SD22 is a non data volatile flash so the platters data should not matter to the FW. Sorry though to hear of your troubles.....

 

CarterTG,

I'm really sorry to hear about this outcome.

Hope that the data recovery route that you'll pursue will bring satisfactory results.

Thank you updating all of us.

Good luck.

 

Interesting data here about the XT 250GB vs. 500GB

Vergleich: Notebook-Festplatten im Test - CHIP Online

It shows the 250GB as quieter, more power efficient and lower access times. I was already expecting this because of the single platter design, but it's nice to see it backed up by some data.

 

OT
Interesting, I'm using a 2 year old $60 WDtv running two 1.5G drives that sends it all via HDMI. I do sneaker net with the drives so no networking hassles. 8- watts. I run lossless audio and up to 720P video, NP.

I keep thinking about another big box but would rather spend the money on media and drives when on sale

What type media were you planning to stream, all, or as a central do all data server?

N/M I missed your post for hands off back-up. I do this locally as my needs are not enterprise.

 

It's for system backups, file storage, servers (TeamSpeak, Hamachi, Apache), and streaming media to my Xbox 360 or PS3. Works great.

 

I bought a 500 GB Momentus XT yesterday. It's very fast and I love it, but the vibration issue is a bit of a worry to me. I first used a USB SATA Adapter to clone my old drive, but the drive was vibrating a lot when I held it in my hands. My 5400 rpm drive never vibrates noticably even when I'm holding it in my hand, so I was alarmed a bit.

I installed the drive to the notebook, and now there seems to be no problem, it's working OK and there's no noticable vibration on the notebook's case, but I'm wondering what's happening inside the case and if keeping something that's constantly vibrating inside the notebook healthy for the other components.

So is this normal for a 7200rpm drive or specifically Momentus XT? Has anyone else connected the drive externally with a USB adapter and checked the vibration outside the notebook case?

 

I've had two XT here, both vibrated noticeably. When it's in my notebook I can feel it but it's not disturbing.

Most 7200rpm drives vibrate somewhat.

 

I don't see it vibrating more than the regular Momentus hard drive, if anything its less. Although externally, were you just hooked up to a bare drive or in an enclosure? It definitely is noticeable externally, but that's to be expected from a 7200RPM drive. An enclosure it should be less though.

 

I hooked up the bare drive without an enclosure and the vibration was alarming. In comparison, my old 5400 rpm drive doesn't vibrate at all. Even if you hold it in your hand during a file copy operation, you don't feel anything. Momentus XT vibrates like crazy even when it's idle.

However, this is probably normal as Phil said. I've been using the drive for a day, the vibration is not really noticable when it's inside the notebook and it's been working without any problems so far.

But for people who hate vibrating hard disks, they won't be happy with this one for sure. I personally don't really care as long as it doesn't break down.

 

Not bad for a platter drive

A normal boot is 14 seconds now.

 

That is very impressive, what system are you running this on?

 

Acer 1830T with Core i3 330 um. Very little hardware in their to slow down the boot.

 

That is the way it is with the U81a,verry little hardware to slow it down. The XT works wonders there............

 

i agree... very fast data storage drive.. worth the extra

But 10s is really insane for an XT.. i guess u get 5s with SSD Phill?

 

Afternoon!

So my boss and I ordered a 500GB XT for him and a 320GB XT for me. They are going in Macbook Pro's.

The reason for my post is, before today, i knew nothing about thie whole single vs dual platter business. While ignorance is bliss, now i know so I must ask...

In real world performance, meaning, just everyday use, would a 250GB or 320GB or 500GB really be that much different? Are we talking milliseconds here? I see that a 250GB is one platter, which everyone seems to think is great and the 320 and 500 are 2 platter, but they have more read heads so it should balance out right?

 

I doubt you are going to notice any difference.

However, over at the seagate support forum, there are quite some people reporting random spin down(showing as sudden freeze for a few sconds) and MBP top the list.

 

pzimmerman,

You will notice a difference (or not? depending on how sensitive you are to these things) between single platter and two platter designs of the same, identical HD technology if you are partitioning your drive for maximum performance.

With a single platter, of the same partition capacity (let's say 100GB for sake of simplicity) it will be a much greater % of the total capacity and it will need a larger area (with correspondingly more distance/work for the heads to cover) to achieve that capacity.

With a two platter design, that same partition size will be half the % of the area covered to achieve the same capacity (100GB). With it being at the fastest, outer edge of the platters which will not only give the highest performance, but also the most consistent performance too (less variance re: lowest, avg., highest 'scores') than the single platter design.

The noise/heat/vibration differences are too small for me to care about when the very obvious (to me) performance differences are considered.

While it might just be 'milliseconds' we're talking about, the difference is enough over a standard 'default' installation to make me very unsatisfied not only with a non-partitioned system, but also almost all the SSD's I have tried too.

Yes, my systems are very 'tweaked', but tweaked in ways that bring a tangible benefit to me over their lifespan.

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


The above specifies how I've been setting up my HD's for a few years now (notebooks and desktops). Including the 500GB XT.

 

@tilleroftheearth

You are effectively using a single HDD as a staged storage system, short stroking it so your mostly used data is using the fastest portion of the storage.

I am kind of doing it in similar way but didn't bother to go to that length.

 

Yeah, you summarized it pretty well.

The reason to go 'to that length'?

That setup is what gives me the most consistent performance over many months of use - without a need to re-install - with the least maintenance possible (ccleaner and PerfectDisk are my friends).

 

For the people having problems with their XTs, I recommend using this software since it fixed my XT. I was gonna send it for RMA but it wasnt broken anymore after running this program: Dmitriy Primochenko Online - Product Info

It should also work on other HDDs.

 

In either case, I would RMA a drive if it found bad physical sectors, whether it fixed them or not.

 

Okay, I downloaded this program, installed and hit 'Full Version', 'Check for update' and it told me to download the HRv2011 update. Did that and it finally agreed I had the latest version available.

I immediately started a 'scan only' of my Inferno SSD. 15 minutes later: it was finished (at only 106 MB/s scan speed) and it warned me to backup my data now! and indicated my drive was overheating at 262 F with 2112 sectors re-allocated. But, no bad sectors found.

So, I thought I would try it on a Seagate 7200.11 that was under very, very light usage for just under 16 months that went belly up last week (a trim and very clean original Windows XP install will load up in around 30 minutes with this drive - if it loads).

So far, it has only scanned 40 sectors in 25 minutes (all bad, none recoverable) out of 976768065 sectors in 465GB and is not able to 'regenerate' even one.

Note that I did recover all the data from this drive (slowly) when not used as a boot drive. There really is something physically wrong with it (not a virus).

I do not see how this program can do anything more than Windows chkdsk - I think that is all it does, imo.

I've had not much better results with SpinRite technology too.

If it really fixed your drive, I can almost guarantee you that chkdsk would have given you the same results.

 

I very much doubt modern day HDD drive needs any of these, including the good old chkdsk.

The controller is already doing this kind of thing and if it is something beyond what the controller can fix, I would just throw that device in the trash.

 

Well, especially on XP systems, I've seen chkdsk extend the life of the HD/system for a couple of years and this is with the newer HDD tech (2007/8 Hitachi's).

But you're right that if any 'symptoms' were shown by a HDD - in the trash it goes (after a good hammering, with a hammer).

 

I say power it up with a USB power supply and an M80 or two while spinning....................