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

For browsing you might be better off upgrading to 8GB of RAM and creating a RAM disk for your browser.

The XT is still a fast hard drive, so you'll at least get standard performance without the XT.

 

the xt will most likely speed up your boot time and could load those webpages faster if you are visiting the same sites over and over.
the ssd will give you overall better performance but if you do the same tasks over and over again, the xt could give you similar performance plus a little more flexibilty in the storage department just in case you decide to add more programs or data.

 

My new XT is finally revving up with my most played games, Windows and programs...getting to love mine now

 

What advantage does installing the Intel Matrix driver provide if I'm not running a RAID configuration?

 

I use hibernate a lot and well this drive seems slower coming out of hibernation than I originally thought.

 

Isn't the idea of hibernate to save time? If you're already starting up fast... I see no reason to use hibernate.

 

Ya I am definitely at the point now where my computer boots up much faster than it returns from a hibernate.

hibernate definitely doesnt have as much use anymore. 6 gb or ram writing to hd? I dont even have to check its like 4 times as long as least.

 

Yeah, usually the more RAM you have the longer it takes to go into and resume from hibernate. At some point it becomes slower than a regular startup. It still has the advantage of keeping all your stuff open, but in some cases there is no point.

Personally I just use sleep, and restart only when required by an update. It only uses 1-2 watts of power, no big deal.

 

How much RAM would that be that it is slower than regular startup ? I have a 6G system which can resume from hibernation in 20 seconds or so on a 7K320.

I can boot up another system in about the same time with x25m.

I agree with you that using sleep is the best but hibernation is still much faster than boot except may be in the case of SSD(never tried resume in that case).

 

It really depends on the system, there's no specific amount of RAM you could say makes a hibernate slower than startup.

 

It's not the amount of RAM you have, it's how much is in use when you hibernate.

With my 8GB systems, I can hibernate fairly quickly if the system is powered up, left at the desktop for a couple of minutes and then hibernated. If though, I use the system for a while and I then hibernate (whether I shut down the programs or not), then hibernation takes much longer and it is better to simply shut down.

 

That I know. Microsoft only save the used memory(and with compression). I cannot confirm your claim that close a program makes no difference because the machine I mentioned is actively used by 3 different people(at different time) and always hibernate/resume and I never notice a difference as time goes by. The other two persons always close all their programs(like games) before they hibernate.

 

I never ever use hibernate.. too dangerous if you get any type of system recover error during start up. I only use it for emergency shutdown for low battery.

I use Sleep as I restart in 2 to 3 seconds back to desktop, so yes, you know what I use for 99% of the time The XT seems to love it.

My full cold boot was around 29 secs if you want to compare my XT to SSD, see Phil's boot timer thread if it's still up.

 

Do any of you have any experience with PerfectSpeed from the makers of PerfectDisk? Would the XT benefit from using PerfectSpeed or is it just better to go with PerfectDisk for it's defragging capabilities?

 

With the XT you probably want to avoid defragging often, so neither.

 

I understand you actually should defrag the XT since it is still a magnetic drive that gets fragmented. You just don't want to defrag too frequently. Since PerfectSpeed has a built-in defragger similar if not the same as PerfectDisk + extra features, I didn't know which one was better. Many people on this forum seem to like PerfectDisk. I'm thinking about switching from Diskeeper because its autodefrag is not recommended for the XT.

 

The ironic thing is, the way disk optimizers like PerfectDisk work is actually not how you'd want the XT done. Disk optimizers like PerfectDisk are all about putting the most used files on the outer edges of the platter, where transfer speeds are higher. The problem is, with the XT, since those are the most used files, they'll already be cached in the NAND, so putting them on the fastest part of the platter is "wasted". If anything, you'd want them in the slowest part of the platter, so you can put other data on the fastest parts of the platter, since the "most used" data should be read from the NAND anyway, and not the platter.

 

For our purposes, it's Intel's take on AHCI. Whether it squeezes out any more performance I can't say, but I can't imagine that Intel's latest and greatest disk driver is slower.

FWIW, one person just reported over on the Seagate forum that this driver stopped the drive's chirping/beeping.

 

I have 6GB of RAM and the XT 500GB. Hibernation is much quicker than bootup but either way, both don't take too long. Resume takes about 16 seconds. I have NTFS compression enabled though and sometimes that can actually speed things up surprisingly.

 

just did a test

rebooting is much faster than returning from hibernate.

your 20 second return from hibernate is not happening on this end of the world.

 

I just did a firmware update (SD24) om my XT, and now the Windows Experience Index dropped to 5.9!!

Determined by Disk Data Transfer: 5.9

Before it was 6.9...

What´s that all about, is it dying??

 

When you flash the firmware it clears the cache. Use your laptop like normal for a while (like a week) and run it again.

 

Ok thanks, I´ll wait and see...

What about defragging this "not a SSD, not a ordinary HDD"?

Some folks say careful... I use O & O with space and namedefrag.

 

i thought defrag resets the NAND, but its read only so you can't possibly mess it up by defragging it unlike real SSDs, i use auslogics defrag,

 

So did everyone decide the XT is a good buy??? I am looking at one.

 

I just installed mine today. Booted several times and all looks good. This is on a W7/64 Acer 1810T 4GB Ram. Photoshop opens very fast! The speed is much faster than the old 320GB 5400rpm drive.

 

I think general concensus is that the XT is a good value, depending on your useage of course. Some people expected to get a 500GB drive with SSD performance all around, which obviously is not realistic. It will offer a quicker windows startup and general more responsive desktop environment. Beyond that it's a normal HDD.

 

Sigh. I wonder when these new Brazos netbooks are coming out. I have a 500GB XT just begging to be installed. Right now it's parked in a dock, haha.

 

But remember the NAND cache is only 4GB.

Even by leaving the already-cached-files on the fastest part of the disk, you're only wasting 4GB of "fast" mechanical space - it's a none-issue. There's still plenty of GBs of "fast" mechanical space left for other files that need it.

 

Oh, sure, for this specific incarnation. Don't forget that one of the first things that everyone asks, though, is "Why isn't there more NAND?" And from what I've seen of short-stroking, the fastest part of the drive is the outer quarter to fifth, so assuming worst case (fifth of single-platter 250 GB), your 4 GB is almost 10% of 50 GB. That's worst case, though. My point was really just to point out the irony.

 

Well I have the XT for 2-3 days, and must say the performance is not bad at all for the money, combine with 16GB ram ….. It’s just fine for now.

 

so is the momentus still worth buying with all the issue still going around?

 

Does everyone who owns one run only one volume w/the default allocation size of 4K [on Win 7], or are there any that run two (or more) w/different allocation sizes? Wondering 'bout the performance of the SSD part of the this drive when that is done?

... I'm curious if any owners have done this already and find the hybrid nature of this drive behaves just as well this way as when only a single volume is used? I created a new thread, so if you have some experience w/this, hope you'll visit it and share.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...e-volumes-having-different-cluster-sizes.html

thanx very much.

 

I just got my Momentus XT 500 GB installed in my E6410...any specific firmware suggestions?

 

i think the stock one is just fine, you can upgrade to SD24 if u wish though

 

I went from a 7200rpm 500gb drive, to the 500gb Momentus XT, and now to a Corsair Force F120. I will say that the Momentus XT is a great buy. It really does perform somewhat close to an SSD drive. I've been using the Corsair SSD for a month now and got used to the speed, so when I took out an old laptop today with the 7200rpm 500gb drive, it was REALLY slow even though its a somewhat high end spec computer. I would highly recommend the Momentus XT for a single drive computer.

 

After using my laptop with a momentus XT for a few months, my desktop with a samsung spinpoint F3 (which is pretty fast as far as mechanical hard drives go; it has 500 GB platters) felt very slow on boot up. While my laptop boots up in about 30 seconds and is ready to go a few seconds later, my desktop took a few minutes to fully load everything, meaning I could not start up firefox and other programs as quickly. The momentus XT really makes much more of a difference than I had thought it did; it just takes some comparison to standard hard drives to notice it sometimes.

 

The SD24 made a dramatic difference for most people (crippling pausing issue), so I'm surprised to see anyone saying that the stock one is just fine.

 

when i changed to the 24 it made the drive much quieter and a bit slower.

I have hdtune but i have been unable to change the setting of the acoustic management settings with it or any seagate software.

So thats what happened to me I feel this is overall a negative but no big deal.

I didnt care about the noise level but i do notice it is now silent.

 

Mine isn't particularly noisy...I mean the worst thing that can happen to upgrading the firmware would be bricking the drive?

 

SD24 seems to have fixed the NTLDR-missing problem I had with the original SD23 firmware

 

750GB Scorpio Black review...Back to being uncertain which I want.

Western Digital's Scorpio Black 750GB notebook hard drive - The Tech Report - Page 1

I hope theres a XT 750GB refresh soon.

 

I am staying with SD23 firmware for now as I haven't had problems with it. I actually moved this drive to a desktop after upgrading the lappy to a Sandforce SSD. It's quite a bit faster and less noisy than the WD Caviar Black 1TB drive it replaced.

 

Hi guys!

I've been reading the 20 last pages, it's quiet a lot to eat At this point, I'm confused with all I red, could anyone do a little summary for me? I know all answered can be found earlier, but I'm not sure with what I red.

Here is my point: I bought a XT 500GB for my Acer 4820TG (which ships with Scorpio Blue 5,4k). I'me pretty happy with perfs, really, the 4GB SSD really adds boost to startup of usual apps and Windows.

I have problems that some users seem to have too: the noise and vibration.

1. Noise: I'm not an english speaker and so cannot find the best words to describe it but there are 2 noise-related problems. The first one is the very high frequency low volume noise it does all the time except when it's under heavy load. Some ears won't ear it, mine do, and it's annoying. The second one a kind of "clog" noise it does after each reading or writing sequence. Again, it's low volume, but it's odd! It does like if the heads were touching something when coming back after reading/writing, but lightly. A little metallic or plastic sound.

2. Vibrations... god it's vibrating! My desk just echoes the vibrations and i'm annoyed with the low frequency sound emitted from the desk itself.

For all that, I have read two clues: firmware update and intel driver, but i can really not tell what i should do from that. Also, are all my problems the common ones described earlier here? I'm not at ease with the vocabulary used.

Thank you guys!

 

I haven't had a vibration problem so I can't chime in there. I upgraded from a 500gb 7200rpm Seagate drive so I'm not sure if you're experiencing more NVH associated with a faster spinning drive as you upgraded from a 5400rpm drive.

I did have a problem with a noise after moving the drive to a desktop (I never got the noise on my laptop, so I'm not sure what brought that on). The noise is just like the one in this video:

YouTube - MacBook pro 7200rpm click + beep + freeze


However it only surfaced when idle so I never noticed any stutter with it. Is this one of the noises you are experiencing? If so, download QuietHDD, this small program fixed it for me.

Before trying anything though, Install firmware SD24. I checked the Seagate forums and people are expressing that this firmware update fixed MANY issues they were experiencing and most poeple seem quite happy with it.

So try updating to SD24 first, have a look around the Seagate community forums if you're having any other issues, then use QuietHDD if you're getting the noise like the one in the video. Good luck and let us know!

 

@ aardvarksystems: Hi, thank you for answering. I'm absolutely not having noise as loud his one. And it's even quiet different sound. I'll try to record it. What seems odd to me is that it happens at the end of every sequence of normal HDD noise (you know, the usual scrrrr).

Ok, I'm trying to record Will let you know.

 

Hi to everyone!

I have an XT and after upgrade to FW SD24, the Hard Driver Protection of my Sony Vaio Laptop is not working.
I've posted this issue in Seagate Forums However nobody know what's happening.

Does anyone have a similar problem?

Thanks!

 

Ok so here it is, the audio file:
20110122-012301.wav

Put earphones (compulsory!), raise up the volume to almost max, and listen, you can hear three kind of sounds:
- the background noise is the HDD spining (my laptop had all fans off)
- the higher noise is when the HDD works
- at the end of every work sequence, there's a sound, a "clac" you can hear pretty well : it's not loud, but still a little louder than the writing/reading normal noise.

Anyone with the same? Any idea? I should update the firmware, but i want to get some "proof" before all is saved

 

I listened to the audio file. Sounds like normal sounds to me of head seeking. After seeking, the heads return to park, which is that clack sound which is definitely normal. It sounds like your drive is seeking a lot though? what were you doing when you recorded that audio clip, and how much RAM do you have?

NVH is somewhat subjective, but i'm thinking you must work in a really quiet environment? I use a Momentus XT 500gb in a laptop and a desktop, but neither are quiet environments since the laptop is on a dock that has a desktop video card in it and that fan adds noise. I don't consider them loud environments but its definitely louder than the average laptop by itself. In my opinion I don't think you have anything to worry about. Your first post though you said that it has significant vibrations. What kind of laptop are you using? Also what kind of surface are you using it on?

What firmware are you on right now?

 

Hi Ninj,

My XT with SD23 used to work very similar like the audio file you've posted.
After upgrade to SD24, is very quiet and the battery life improved too.