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

Ok that answers my question
Thanks

 

Hmm. How hot are these things supposed to run, normally?

I put a 500GB variant into my dock--I don't have a 1215n to install it into anymore, haha--and I'm running some tests on it before I get my second eeePC.

Anyway, I'm about seven minutes into a standard HDTune error scan and CDI is reporting my current temperature at 32C. It started out at 19C when I first switched on the dock.

I haven't tested notebook HDDs in a dock before, so I'm just wondering if this is normal.

Ambient is 65F.


EDIT: Ten mintues in, 36C.

 

36c is fine................

 

Yeah 36c is no problem - just be careful if you're constantly running it over/close to 50c.

 

25 minutes in, 40C.

I know it's below the tolerances, but I'm just wondering if they're supposed to heat up this quickly. I don't know how it'll react when it's a system drive and stuffed into a cramped netbook.

In short, I just want to know if this is normal for what I'm doing.

 

If you are still bashing away at the drive and see 40c that is fine, it will normally never see that kind of sustained usage.................

 

Just a simple error scan. I'm not sure how strenuous that is in the grand scheme of things.

 

To the HDD it is as strenuous as it gets.

 

Forge, I hit 45C regurly..same as both my hot running WD drives in my 6831 which when pushed hit 50C. This is the part where I fire up the ceiling fan..

What did your last drive run for comparison? My WD 1000fal gets tosty, in my drive dock, after 8 hours.

..for grins any SMART errors FWIW?

 

It's been about 50 minutes, and I think I've stabilized at 42C. Hasn't gone higher for the last ten minutes or so. No errors detected in SMART or the error scan. Still have roughly 325GB more to scan, though.

I'm running firmware SD23. Is it worth it to go to SD24?

 

SD24? Without a doubt (Seagate doesn't tell us (everything) about what they've fixed with each new firmware).

 

Hmm. When I have a chance, then. I assume I can update through my dock, yes? I think I did that with my Intel SSD when I first got it.

 

I think for the FW update to succed you need AHCI, not sure.................

 

I doubt it will work on a dock.

If I remember correctly on mine - it did the actual update during a reboot.

Shouldn't hurt to try though.

Good luck.

 

Lots of people affected with spin down issues..was this fixed? All suggest FW or other methods but very little in results. I may have to re-read the posts.

In my configuration, spin down not an issue especially in low clock/battery stealth mode..

 

Oh well. If I really need to update the firmware, I can install it in the bay my Samsung is currently occupying.

 

Okay, I finally have some time on my hands to rebuild my machine. I plan to take everyone's advice and install a "fresh" copy of windows 7 on my Momentus XT. This means I must download all of the Toshiba drivers for my machine.

Here is my question: Is there a faster way to download ALL of my Toshiba drivers than going to toshiba.com and manually downloading every single driver individually?

I know I am not going to reinstall ALL of them but I would like to have all of them on hand just in case something is needed.

 

At first I was very interested in this drive, but the WD Scorpio Black 500GB is faster when using the hard drive component, the XT is obviously faster when the flash cache is used....Not sure what to get. What do you guys think? There is a rather large price gap between the two, I'm leaning towards the Black.

 

I think they are actually exactly the same when not using the flash memory.

 

I've done quite a lot of real world benchmarks between the two in two different laptops, I'd say the XT is faster overall, even when it's not using it's cache. You can see examples in my signature.

Single plattter is faster and creates less noise according to measurements done by chip.de

 

I didn't realize the XT was faster than the scorpio... that's really impressive.

Ugh can't wait to finally buy one of these.

 

Thank you for pointing that out. This review in particular does show the Black to be faster from the hard drive component though, although workloads aren't set up to take advantage of the read cache of the XT (aka not repeated over and over so its cached).

Notebook hard drives square off at 7,200 RPM - The Tech Report - Page 7


Hows the noise on the XT and black? My current Scorpio Blue makes a constant whooosh thats fairly audible, and seeks are very audible as well. A quiet drive is important to me. Odd, because on page 16 someone was saying the Blue is the most quiet drive they have used, in my experience its very noticeable. I wonder if its seated wrong, or if its just the acoustics in my laptop?

 

Last night I couldn't access My Computer or any of the folders. It would just keep on searching for files. I think this is the second time it has happens. So I restarted the computer and I was able to access. Why does this happen/can I fix it?

 

My XT was noisy when I first got my notebook (fresh Windows 7 install) but after updating to the SD24 firmware it has been very quiet. So I know it definitely did something to the Acoustic setting. The difference was night and day, literally. Like a crying baby finally getting its bottle.

Not sure what's going on there but for starters you could see if Event Viewer gives any hints. Check for the latest drivers/updates.

 

I have an XT that is noisy AFTER the SD24 update, so much so I stuck it in a users notebook and sent it packing and went back to my SSD.

 

Anyone have a guess as to when we'll see XT 2.0? Hopefully they'll include 8 GB or even 16 GB SSD. They'll need to do something to compete with the Crucial C400 and Intel G3 SSD's.

 

I sure hope a 750GB version comes out, with a larger cache as you said.

 

Some of you might be interested in Paragon Drive Copy 10 Personal Special Edition which is available for free for a few more hours.

Free Paragon Drive Copy 10 Personal Special Edition

I like it a lot and have used it several times to create virtual machines from an old system so that I can use that system on another computer.

This is the full version and can be fully registered. The next version will be coming out soon though.

 

That review was done on a desktop, mine was on a laptop.

I've done a second review that hasn't been published yet, it confirms the XT beats the WD black in most situations even when the cache is not used.

 

Is your AAM not on FEh (Performance) as mine is, automatically with SD24? I don't know if it changed with SD24 or not, since I never looked before.

 

^^^ Nope. Like you I never checked before to see what my settings were until after the update. But one thing I do know for sure is that the drive was very noisy before the update; after I did the update it toned down ALOT. To the point that I rarely ever do hear it.

See attached print screens below; untouched default settings after the SD24 update.

 

How has disk performance changed from SD23 to SD24?

 

There was a guy in the UL30VT forums coming from a the Black to the XT. He was totally not impressed with the XT even though he said he gained 8 seconds with the XT in his own benchmarks.

So, check your expectations, this is not a $800 500G SSD drive.

If I had twin bays or did not mind dragging around an external drive on a seat tray, then my options may have changed.

All in all the XT has been really good to me

 

Before I upgraded to SD24, my drive would make somewhat high pitch sounds whenever I picked up my laptop. Now, it is much quieter overall. Therefore, the SD24 gets my vote in the sound department.

 

Yeah I saw him. Not sure what he was expecting... It will be a big performance increase compared to my 5400rpm drive though.

 

Ahhh.. mine sounds like a light saber, the green one, when pitched on different axis

I'm still on SD23...

 

That's incredible. I also used CrystalInfo to check it, and my AAM is on the far right, just the opposite. Our APM is the same. I just got this drive last week (it came with SD23, but I upgraded before using CrystalInfo).

 

^^^ Weird.

 

Same, obviously has very flexible platters that get a big shimmy due to gyroscopic forces....makes me take a bit more care when moving the notebook !

On SD23 as well, drive doesn't seem any noisier than any others normally to me....I don't use spin down

 

Black just came out with 750GB, I hope an XT upgrade is coming soon

WD throws out 2.5-inch 750GB Scorpio Black hard drive, makes your laptop beg for an upgrade -- Engadget

 

Ditto! Many, many thanks!

 

Huh, I just played with that for a while and it didn't seem to make a difference, either acoustically or performance-wise. I tested multiple times with HD Tune, the lowest AAM setting had the same sound/performance as the highest. 59MB/s average and 17ms seek.

 

Then the drive would be destroyed in a millisecond if platters could flex in this manner, not a floppy drive I suspect it is the arm servos protesting. My WD drives makes a different bit of racket when moved. These drives are rated for a certain amount of G force when spun up but yes I am very carefull when drive is active.

Two years ago our cat knocked one of my spun up 500G Seagate 3.5 FA drives off the desk, 3 foot drop to the carpet, horrible screech of death. Cat OK.

 

Sounds like a light saber because the platters are making the noise, everything flexes and oscillates to varying degrees, thin discs spinning at high speed and then rotated on it's axis, don't have to be as floppy as a floppy disc to flex and vibrate from gyroscopic forces, rotate an external dvd burner on it's axis when it's at full speed to see how much the disc bends and vibrates when doing so, you don't have to rotate it on it's axis very quickly to get the disc to touch the housing.
Back OT, I'm RMAing mine, it has been plagued by random NTLDR missing problems since new, half a dozen re-images and three new installs, somethings wacky with it, also runs around 8 degC hotter than 7200.4 I've put back in, must have a dud controller or something.

Yep. cats are a pain with computers, they seem to have an attraction to all things pc

 

Can someone explain how these hybrid drives work in a RAID configuration? And if there are any benchmarks or anything with them in RAID I'd appreciate that.

 

Seagate Momentus XT 500GB ST95005620AS Review - Overclockers Club

 

I just got my wife's BGF's HP desktop back up. These "multimedia wonder boxes" came factory set up with two 250G WD drives in raid 0.

Go for the SSD for max performance.

I feel like any system running raid 0 is like holding two guns to your head, if one drive fails your toast.

My 6831 was raid 0 for a year, fast but dangerous? Sorry, just my 2 cents.

 

OK, let us know how your turn around time goes. Newegg did one of my old WD's in 4 days..where I got my XT.

 

i was set on getting a 64GB SSD but now that I've ran into this thread I'm reconsidering.

I mostly use my laptop for browsing the internet (opening up 10-20 tabs. i open up these tabs as i browse my RSS feeds to queue my reading faster). i also download a lot of torrents (but i always download them to my 1TB external hard drive).

Would the Momentus XT be good for what I'll be doing? I guess with the SSD, i'll always know it'll be fast, but with the MXT, I wonder how long it'll be fast because my web browsing will always be changing?

 

I don't imagine it will make a whole lot of difference for web browsing. Like you said, a browsers cache is something that has to change day to day, heck even hour to hour, so the adaptive memory of the XT might not ever help. Not that an SSD would make a web browser much faster either, unless your very low on RAM and always swapping to the hard drive.