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

So I installed one of these in my HP DV6-6135DX last night and installed Windows 7 just fine.

Everything seems great, but I thought I would update the firmware anyway. However, when I tried the window update version, after the reboot to install the update, it failed to find the drive for some reason, so it wouldn't update. It shows searching, then 0 found and then a big "FAILED" in red on the screen.

I'm not sure why it's not finding it. It's the only drive on my system and windows boots fine, so the computer see it. Would the CDROM version of the update make a difference?

Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

What firmware do you have now?

 

That's a good question. How do I check?

 

CrystalDiskInfo

 

Thanks. I'll give that a shot tonight.

I'm guessing it's 26 now since I just got it from Amazon and from reading, that seems to be the version most are getting these days from Amazon.

Also, in my readings I see that the update untility doesn't always recognize SATA controllers. Some suggest changing it to IDE in the bios, but I don't think HP has that option the bios(at least not on my machine).

 

Another option is if you have Intel RST installed, just check the advanced properties of the drive within the RST utility. There should be a firmware label providing info about the drive.

 

Go at Momentus XT Firmware Update
and :

 

Ok so now we have three ways. Here's a fourth: AS-SSD

 

For thoroughness sake, of these four utilities, I believe Intel RST and the Momentus Drive Detect Software are the only two which can still tell you the firmware even if you have multiple XTs and they participate in a RAID volume.

 

Alright, this is the way I went. It says I have SD26. However, when I do the drive detect check and put in the serial and model, it tells me mine is not due to be updated. However, my drive model matches one on the list on the SD28 firmware page.

Anyway, I cannot get it to recognize my drive anyway as the update process doesn't seem to like my SATA controller and doesn't see the drive. I have no way in the bios to change the way the drive is seen, so I guess I am SOL for the time being.

Everything seems to be OK with the drive so I dunno if updating will gain me anything anyway.

 

Force flashing SD28 to my OEM Dell drive worked great and was a rather simple procedure.

I did this in my M17xR3 .

If someone has a questions how to do it let me know or i can lay it out here later for everyone.

I was going to post the process of doing this but there is the whole voiding warranty and taking no responsibility thing as to why i did not.

 

I've been on the hunt for some experiences people have had with this drive and World of Warcraft load times. I know it's pretty silly to put such emphasis on a single application, but it is what my system gets used for 75% of the time, and the primary reason for upgrading.

Plus, when you spend $200+ on a game every year, you can understand where you would want to run it as fast and smoothly as possible. (Why did I just do that math ugh lol)

 

If you're that heavily 'invested' in WoW, then stop thinking about it and spend the $500-$600 needed to get a 250GB Intel 510 Series SSD.

Seriously.

Load times are that important? Get the SSD and be done.

 

It definitely helps the load times, but it's not a miracle worker. A lot of the issue is WOW itself. It's not optimized to handle the amount of add ons people throw at it. So while the drive load will be faster, WOW itself will still hold your load times back.

 

Well, to put closure to this, I am still unable to get the firmware install to recognize the drive on my HP DV6-6135DX. So I temporarily moved the drive over to my 2 yr old Netbook and booted the CDROM version of the install. It found the drive and I installed SD28 from there and reinstalled it back into my HP Laptop. It's working fine.

Swapping drives is a real PITA but until Seagate gets their install program up to par so it recognizes my SATA controller, it looks to be the only option if I want to update my firmware.

 

Yeah, a new platform will take time to be supported.

Not really Seagate's issue at this time - it's simply you getting a new/unknown platform.

Do you notice any difference with SD28 now?

 

It's kinda hard to say since I've really only had the drive for a week to begin with and the drive came with SD26 anyway. So nothing really stands out as being better/worse.

It would be nice if Seagate put out a list of changes for each firmware. I haven't been able to find one.

 

I'm planning to raid 0 the two hybrid drives in my g73. Is there any known problem or setbacks that could occur with this setup?

 

Except for the usual RAID0 disclaimers, the setup should be pretty straightforward assuming you're familiar with RAID.

But, what exactly are you hoping from a RAID0 install vs. simply two HDD's properly partitioned and setup?

 

Thanks for clearing that up.

Trying to get whatever speed boost i cant get. My main reason is to just combine those 2 drives together. I'm not a fan of having two separate drives. Prefer just one.

 

By having 'just' one - you are guaranteeing that you will have the slowest experience possible (eventually).

A properly partitioned and setup system can make even SSD setups less desirable when cost, capacity and performance are all equally important.

I highly recommend to at least install the O/S to C: with a 100GB partition maximum size - use the rest of the capacity as an 'archive' drive where you simply move the data you're not currently using to as C: drive fills up past 60-70%. Even with RAID0, this will still give an obvious performance boost to a system (possibly even more than the RAID0 will, tbh).

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

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...rades/608752-hdd-partitioning-help-500gb.html

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...le-copy-result-hdds-ssds-easy-comparison.html


(The above link shows my HDD partitioning strategy beating identical HDD's at 'default' installs - not to mention that the XT actually beat an SSD and came close to dethroning another one too).

If I were you; I would seriously forget about RAID0 (you don't have one good reason to use it - Sorry! ) and consider at least trying partitioning a system properly (use the links above to move the Users folder too for even greater, sustained storage subsystem performance over time).

Good luck.

 

since I have 2 hdds, can I just use the first hdd for OS and the second one for data storage?

Is is still the same ?

 

Doesn't seem you read the links at all?

No, not the same: I would say better.

 

I did... too much words at one time... My puny brain could not comprehend all those info in one go...

I still do not understand the part where u get Windows to automatically save data on the d drive, which in my case would be my second hdd. Was doing fine until the part where you said to move all the files from C/user except AppData and downloads. Then I saw T drive or something and I crashed and burn. I suxxor.

I get what you are saying but not sure about the implementation.

Just to make sure. Your summary.

Move everything from folders inside my username except downloads and Appdata to my new folder in the second drive. This will enable OS and all software installed to remain in hdd1 while my other data will be in hdd2. Downloads is left in hdd1 so that it stays in the same hdd as the OS. Files are then moved to hdd2 manually. (you said something about temp and downloads being in same partition. din get that part.)

 

Yeah, a lot of info to digest, I'll agree.

Try looking at the second link I provided and see if automatically moving the Users folder during a clean Windows 7 x64 Ultimate install is something that you would want to do (make sure you read that thread fully...).

I do provide a file that you simply have to have on your Windows install media (USB key, preferred) and it will automatically setup your Users folder to the drive specified (as long as that drive was partitioned (optionally) and formatted first.

Cheers!

 

Another thing I still dun get is the partitioning. Must I still do the partitions even though I have 2 hdds?

My laptop came in today and I couldnt wait. Reinstalled Windows 7. Now I have the second hdd empty. Most likely gonna try your first move method.

p/s haha troll post got deleted.

 

Hi, does anyone have temperature issues whit this hard drive. Mine is above 52 °C in normal use (that is 15 degrees higher than my 5400 rpm disk) and during hard use is around 60 °C, and my highest registered, is 61 °C.

Which are your temperatures during normal use?

 

Hi,

Yes it is hot, too hot
Here you are my t°C, normal use, internet, not gaming, room t°C is about 22°C :


Check for dust anywhere ?

 

How does the Boot-time caching and other performance respond on this HDD for people who might have tried Dual / Triple Booting with multiple operating systems.

e.g. Windows 7 | Windows XP | Mac OSX SL / Lion | Linux Distros?

ADDING OTHER COMMENTS AND PEOPLE WHO ASKED THE SAME QUESTION: Dual/ Multi Boot Performance

 

As it's not dependent on specific O/S drivers to work - the nand caching is transparent and works at the block (not file) level - the performance increase will be similar for all O/S's.

When triple booting though; if you don't go into a specific O/S a few times in a row, then you will most likely not see any benefits - especially if you boot into each different O/S on every boot. You'll still see some benefits, but much less than when you're concentrating and using a single O/S between boots.

 

Hmm.. Ok. Lets do a specific scenario. Alternatively Booting Mac OSX and Windows 7

Or any two OSes, but always alternating.

Can someone here please test that out?

 

Given that all we're doing is simply booting up and shutting down and booting into the alternate O/S and repeating...

With 4GB nand I would expect the XT's superiority to be almost exactly like a single O/S setup vs. a normal HDD.

This is based on the boot files being ~2GB or so per O/S. This way, they could all get cached to the nand (of course, I'm assuming that Mac OS/x is the same - I don't know; just guessing).

With the upcoming 8GB nand XT - this will almost certainly be true for 3 or possibly 4 O/S's. The necessary boot files are not that large (overall) and even 4GB nand is enough to dual boot and see performance increases.

I too would like someone to test this out: but you're asking a lot for someone to setup a system (exact/identical) on their XT and a regular HDD and then proceed to reboot a few dozen times...

 

I don't know what you're asking. Running two OS's won't matter.

The XT starts caching chunks as soon as the HDD begins to read. This is entirely independent of the OS.

As I've said before in here the way a cache works is that as soona s the read begins it attempts to learn what will be needed next and moves it to the cache. You can run Windows and OSX and you'll see the same exact benefits on both of them with 0 degradation.

 

I bought a 500GB XT a couple of months ago for 89 euros here, now it's 165 euros!

I wonder what it's going on.

Edit: I guess it's because of the problems in Thailand.

 

Is that sarcasm?

If not, it's because of the flooding in Thailand.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Here are my results with sd28. My drive is not partitioned so all 500gb is in the c:\> drive.

 

Phil,

yes, it appears that is the case. More info here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...upgrades/619669-hdd-prices-skyrocketting.html

 

Interesting development. While first a 500GB XT was about equally priced to a 64GB Crucial M4, now you can get a 128GB M4 for the price of the 500GB XT.

That makes SSDs a lot more appealing imo.

 

Since it seems SSD prices (at this time) are remaining unaffected, I totally agree.

 

Created thread see here.

 

Windows task manager enable i/o read and write and see what process is writing/reading to the harddrive during your test.

 

Sorry, how do I do this?

 

1. CTRL-ALT-DEL
2. Task Manager
3. Click process tab
4. Under "view" at the top, click select columns
5. Check i/o reads and i/o writes
6. Click OK
7. Then under process tab sort by i/o read or i/o writes

This lets you know what is thrashing your hard drive.

 

Question on updating firmware... I have a pair of these in raid 0 on my 17xr3, I have no way of separating them to update the firmware. Is it possible to delete the raid from the controller, boot to the firmware cd, update the drives, and then recreate the raid without causing it to loose everything?

 

Good question. I didn't want to rebuild the mirror, as my XTs are in RAID-1, so I don't think this is an apples to apples comparison to RAID-0, but all I did to flash to SD28 was:

• downloaded the "bootable CD ISO image" file
• burned it to CD-ROM
• rebooted -> went to BIOS to set the x7200 to boot to DVD drive
• exited /saved BIOS settings (rebooted)
• booted into the Seagate bootable CD-ROM, which found/updated both XTs to SD28.
• Rebooted (after complete) and reset BIOS to not look for DVD drive on boot.

No problems to report. It just booted, detected both drives, and then updated the [FW]. I don't wanna say that will work in your situation, but I don't see why the steps would be any different.

 

If you are running Windows you can just run the firmware .exe from Seagate that will reboot and update the firmware for you, no CD-ROM needed.

 

Would that work w/ a RAID-0 array?

 

Ohh actually I'm not sure. I thought it'd just detect each drive separately but what you did is probably the only solution for RAID. My bad.

 

The price of this drive was always around 150$ ? Cause i read some dudes got it for 90-100$, or maybe they got it on some offer. Is the price now higher than it was ?

 

No, it is up 40 to 50 %. (Got mine for $109 one year ago). In fact, the price of most platter based HDD drives are up in the last month or two due to the flooding in Thailand - affecting HDD component manufacturers.

See - http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...upgrades/619669-hdd-prices-skyrocketting.html

and

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...en-will-hard-drive-prices-go-back-normal.html

for more info.