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

7.9 is the maximum, and it means nothing, afaik, the disk performance WEI is not a benchmark and just looks at what type of HDD you have. Although I still haven't explained why mine scores 6.1 and the rest of the known universe scores 5.9

 

Any real life usage data about this? If I remember right there was contradicting benchmarks linked to in this thread.

 

That's correct. On my VAIO_F11 with OEM OS & Samsung 500 GB 5400 the boot time was 1:48 while it's 1:11 with a Seagate 7200.4 500 GB & the same bloated OEM OS installed from an image but in both case the useless WEI reports 5.9 for the HDD. Boot time went down to 0:48 with a clean install done with hacking the OEM recovery discs.

 

A 7200 RPM drive will almost undobtably use more than a 5400 RPM drive. I think while active the XT uses a bit more than the 7200.4 too. I didn't have mine long enough, let alone working well enough, to see what real word it did to battery life.

When I get the new one I'll check it out. That may not be for a while though........

 

Whatever happened to the dvd+ssd combo drive?

 

I'm talking about comparing apples to apples like XT 500 GB 7200 to Seagate 7200.4 and Hitachi 7K500 500 GB and the new WD Scorpio Black 500 GB WD5000BEKT 7200 rpm.

Does the SSD part of the XT saves HDD work & power or the scanning of most used files to mirror in the memory cost power more than the HDD savings?

 

Tomshardware has published battery life measurements of XT vs. 7200.4. You can find it in their XT review.

 

Yes, you posted a screen capture with link to that synthetic benchmark here.but several posters questioned that test:

Tech Report's XT review measured .6 Watts @ idle while Seagate's XT specs says Average idle power .8 Watts which lower than the 7200.4 (Seagate says 1 W here) and should be reflected in the 8 hours test of Tom's.



That's why I'm asking for real usage battery life info.

 

Hitachi-LG goes official with HyDrive: SSD-equipped optical drives landing in August -- Engadget

 

Thanks for the update Joe.

 

209.95 on ebay, ouch.............

 

no wonder they're out of stock!

 

Price gouging too, for 2 to do raid that would be 419.90 + 19.90 shipping. For 360 I can get a X25-m 160GB G2 from ebay and then a 7K500 for 79.99 plus 0.99 shipping from NewEgg. Same price and guarentied better 4K R/W performance and consitency without RAID0 worries.

 

$349?

 

That is the higher priced one.......

Edit; it is possible he knows the person so that they could list it and he could claim lowest price too............

 

yes, that's possible..............................................

 

They are back in stock at Newegg. Checked 1 minute ago.

WD could have made this quite interesting if they would have designed their new WD 500GB 7200rpm black as a Hybrid. I bet we wouldn't even be discussing Seagate. I have a preference to WD or Hitachi.

 

Yeah, before the XT i would not have touched Seagate with there failure record , come on WD hurry up.

 

My second one is now on order...........

Edit; once I get this, and the other one back from RMA, I'll test them in an encosure first to be sure there are no issues first............

 

that is so true...

 

Shame we will NEVER see actual drive failure statistics between all the major drive manufactures. I believe it's much easier to Google a list of parts and make several thermo nukes.

Seagate is getting a fair amount of noise complaints compared to the other drives and reportedly has had "bad" runs. When I search for out right failures I get a mix of ALL drives. Judging by all the “drive by” forum comments, I would say that Seagate needs some major PR and QC?

My XT has been great; I can boot into PS and others in half the time compared to stock 5400 rpm drive. For my on the road single drive options, I'm more than satisfied. It is a little noisier than some of my 5400 rpm dives during shutdown and running. So what; it's got a five year warranty. No matter which drive, I keep the important stuff backed up, no?

My battery life does not seem to be any issue as the UL30vt is just amazing in battery life; no complaints there! FWIW.

All and all, after using computers where you boot and run apps using 3.5" floppies, I'm not that hard to please Of course, YMMV.

 

What is this "failure record" you speak of? I have never had any issues with Seagate drives. And I repeat, a single thread in this forum with a bunch of whiners, sorry, people who suddenly realize their drives makes "strange noises" just because somebody else claims to notice them, is evidence for nothing at all. Otherwise, if I do a Google search, it seems that drives failures hit all manufacturers pretty evenly. Conclusion: There is no evidence that would suggest that Seagate drives are any worse than others, on average.

 

hehe, I didn't want to be the first one to say it, but I agree. 'Failure rates' only exist in threads like these. If you found 20 people that had your specific drive fail on google, that's 20 out of what? A few ten thousand or so?

 

Doesn't anyone else besides me think that the Momentus XT is quite expensive? Of course, there isn't quite any competition for it, and SSDs are much more expensive still.

 

I go by what people say about what brand hdd to buy on this forum and also what drives fail, and i keep hearing that WD and Hitachi are more reliable that Seagate , did Seagate not reduce the warranty on some hdd`s from 5 year to 3 years, I know the XT has a 5 year warranty, that reassures me a bit about the reliability, or at least i can get it replaced for 5 years free.

Actually my oldest working hdd is an 80mb Seagate, I bough second had around 15 year or so ago and still works as i tried it last month.

 

If over 400 people leave a review and the average rating is 3.4 of 5, that not's very good.

And I don't know how long you've been keeping track of Seagate as a abrand but it's not the first time I see bad reports. I've seen it numerous times for Seagate. Also for their desktop drives.

I consider myself quite objective but if given the coice between Hitachi, WD and Seagate I'll glady choose Hitachi and WD. If one thing Seagate has proven it's that they release products early. Even if the product isn't entirely ready.

 

you're not serisouly going to use newegg reviews as a real statistical value are you? There is absolutely no standardization there. They're fun to look at, nothing more. Who's to say the 500-900 people that ratted the comparable WD drives had their drive fail a week after they already wrote their 5 star review? Or that the extra 400 reviews the seagate drive you posted is behind in versus the WD would have been a 5 stars and suffered no failures? Dell uses Seagate drives for All Alienware systems, and how many people report HDD failures for the couple thousand users in those 4 subgroups? What we need is real MTBF testing, and that simply does not exist. The only thing that we do have is hearsay and individual, opinionated responses.

 

I think it was 3.6. 23% 1 star ratings is pretty steap.

I can understand people had good experiences with Seagate, but if you've been keeping tack of the HDD market for a couple of years it's pretty obvious their track record is lees than perfect.

It wouldn't stop me from buying though, if their XT gets many good customer reviews.

 

I have been, and I'd say the opposite, that WD has had a high failure rate.



just as an example.

 

In your expierence? how many WD drives had you fail on you?

Even if you did, statistcally it doesn't mean much. Over 400 reviews on Newegg and many reports on NBR mean something though, at least to me.

No offense but Seagate is the brand that brings out drives really early, they've been doing it with the 7200.4 and with the XT. This has positive effects and negative.

PS. editing your messages when there's already been replies to it is a bit difficult for discussion.

 

I agree, with all points.

2, however as you said, my experience doesn't mean much by itself.

 

+1 for that post.

In 2003 I wanted the best drives for the 6 computers in my office so I got the expensive IBM's, all identical. Turns out they got nick named DeathStars & surely enough one failed in the worst moment & without a proper backup strategy. The backup was 2 days old so that meant loosing the work of 6 persons x 2 days.

So anecdotal reports means nothing about what will happen in the real world to YOUR copy of HDD brand X. The real or supposed reputation of that brand or that or previous models is no predictor of what could happen to you.

Besides, there is no mass of reports about the new XT, reports about older models can give a clue to be taken with a grain of salt @ best.

The moral here is do frequent backups, whatever brand or model of drive you use.

 

Personally I worry because the hardware is that of the 7200.4's, at least the platters. Now if segate redesigned around the 7200.4's weaknesses that could be a very good thing.

I seem to be the only DOA (Fluke?) so far, that to me is great news. Also I had high vibration and noise while others seem to report a fairly smooth quiet drive. I am really interested to see those reviews in 6 months or so. Despite this fear, with the XT I will be an early addopter and do the Raid0. I Just have to remember as in any early addoption to back up frequently.............

Edit; ooops spoke too soon, another DOA on NewEgg.............

 

And how do you guess that? Don't you think that over the past year Seagate made some progress in design or manufacturing? 7200.4 & XT have different performance, power consumption & firmware. To have different start & idle power needs means a different motor or platters or whatever.

Don't you think that they could have learned & modify components based on studying the 7200.4 RMA'd products?

That's why there are Revisions for HDD, SDD, motherboards, BIOS, firmware, etc, etc.

 

Well, decided to take the plunge on the Momentus to plug into my new Acer 3820T.

I'll let everyone know if it fails, trust me!

 

And that's precisely why user reports are relative. Happy users just use it while unhappy ones are more vocal & that's why you can't make significant stats from neweggs reviews or for any notebook threads in the forum for that matter.

Maybe 5% of laptop brand X owners report problems but that means nothing for the 95% who have none or how good will your brand X laptop copy will be. Odds @ best.

 

It was reported the platters are from the 7200.4's as the 7200.5's were a seperate design team.................

Also I am hoping they have learned from the 7200.4, we shall see. FYI I am taking the gamble that they have..............

 

Agreed you can't get a true percentage basis from the user reports as these are anything but random. Lets see your review when one day you get hit by the DOA or lost irretrivable data though. Again this can happen with any drive. Seagate has been plagued as of late with issues though, I'll be happy to see them turn this trend around...................

 

Any proofs to support that statement?

"...Lets see your review when one day you get hit by the DOA or lost irretrivable data though" - Well D.O.A. means Dead On Arrival, when the product you ordered comes in not working at all so it can't contain "lost irretrivable data", can it? I had a 1 TB WD external DOA out of the box but my 4 other ones work fine so I can't conclude that WD is all good or all bad. It's important to test drives before using them as that WD looked fine in Explorer and in S.M.A.R.T. but a WD test utility reported FAIL: too many bad sectors.

As I said above, 1 or my 6 IBM HDD's (with a stellar reputation before that specific model came out) failed on the job with lost irretrievable data. I did not spend all my spare time posting bashing comments on the web. I still have 2 of them working practically every day in an old desktop & one is fine & the other is healthy only @ 70% because of bad sectors as reported by HDD Sentinel. It's not used for anything critical, don't worry.

*****

 

Yep, it would be, if indeed there were any objective weaknesses of the 7200.4. So far, all we have is rumors and innuendo. Bottom line, as Lozz has said, there isn't even a shred of reliable evidence that would allow any of us here to objectively assign better or worse reliability to drives from one manufacturer over another, period.

Just to be clear: I am not claiming that there isn't anything wrong with the design or QC of any or all Seagate drives; all I am saying is that neither I, nor anybody else here really knows. The kind of "information" I have seen (like the completely useless thread on problems with Seagate drives right on this forum, or Newegg ratings) isn't worth spit. The only thing I know for certain is that none of my Seagate drives ever had an issue, but neither did any of the Hitachis, or WDs for that matter. So there.

 

Personally I don't think the numerous problems in the 7200.4 thread and the 409 Newegg customer reviews mean nothing, but hey each to his own.

 

So the 223 5 eggs reviews mean nothing, not counting all the other satisfied users NOT taking the time to post back in that product page?

As I replied to you previously, the oldest 7200.4 user report in that newegg product page is dated 1/29/2009 and there was revisions & firmware changes since then so a 1/29/2009 comment about an older model that is not made @ the present means nothing, especially in a thread about a different bran new Momentus XT Hybrid. It could be better & it could be worst. We don't know yet.

Just like the reviews of previous IBM HDD's meant nothing about the new IBM HDD model I bought.

It was sunny yesterday, does it mean that it will be sunny also tomorrow?

 

Hummmm. Just did a long generic and MY smooth running 7200.4 fails at about 65%. Nuf proof for me,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

2x BSOD, multiple os attempts varoius serious performance issues is DOA too me. If you have a car that will turn over but wont start that is DOA, just because it does part of what it is supposed to do................

Gang up all you wan't, pour it on I have no issue there, 7200.4's have issues, too bad some of you do not see that. As Phil said to each his own.

I didn't have a lost data issue as soon after purchasing the 7200.4 I didn't trust it. Now that it has been sitting undisturbed on a shelf in an enclosure, in a cool dry sealed case, and I've tested it I am glad I didn't...............

 

Yes, it will be sunny tomorrow. Trust me.

Oh, and "everybody" "knows" that Vista is the worst OS ever. Interestingly enough, everybody also knows that Vista 1.1 (Windows 7, which is almost identical to Vista in almost all respects, except for a little touch-up paint here and there) is the best OS ever. I'll draw my own conclusions.

 

Dude go back, look at the 1 egg reviews, there are much more recent on the 7200.4's...............

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148374&cm_re=7200.4-_-22-148-374-_-Product

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...eoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&Page=1&Keywords=

Edit; and yes it means BE WARY....................

 

regardless of what conclusions you take, the newegg reviews represent < 10% of all owners of those drives I would estimate from OEM usage and other retail outlets. If you can name any other situation where 10% is a substantial amount to draw a conclusion from, I'm all ears. Also, whether you acknowledge it or not, Seagate shipped record amounts of HDD's in 2010, and shipp ~ 160+million units a year, which is a lot. Obviously they're doing something right. They even estimate supply will run out before demand does.

 

Can we stop this back & forth about old products & agree that the XT is new & that there is no stats about initial quality or reliability yet?

OK, so you got a dud. Well all mass produced things have a percentage of duds, that's why there is a return period & warranty.

The top rated cars in Consumer Report also have a percentage of failure. The lowest ones get the top rating but it does not mean that the top rated models will never have problems.

Let's move on please!

 

Who said they mean nothing? Of course they mean something statistically. Just like the 93 (23%) 1 star ratings means something.

Let's hope Seagate does better with the XT.

 

Ever heard about the vocal minority & the silent majority?

Do you admit that the newegg 7200.4 numbers are skewed because:

1- Don't you think that Seagate would pull from the market an HDD with a 23% failure rate or are they crazy or something & like to loose money and destroy their reputation? I could stop right here.

2- They include the first version of the 7200.4 that had a firmware problem that is now fixed?

3- Unsatisfied customers are more vocal & post more about a defective product than satisfied ones? Or do I have to post links to marketing research documents describing this fact?

4- The longer a drive is on the market, the more failure will happen as the failure rate progresses over time like for all things? Besides, we don't know how rough users are with their laptop & HDD's don't like to be bumped around when in use.

From an interesting study by warranty company SquareTrade (Nov. 2009) .pdf downloadable here with short analysis articles here and here.



Does that mean that your laptop will fail? Does it mean that my Vaio_F that was launched after the study was published will have a 11% chance of failure rate after 2 years? I would like to see some similar hard data about drives.

Everything is relative including that study. Failure rates seems quite high to me, which could be skewed by owners taking advantage of the extended service plans & maybe being less careful with their machine. High failure rates are also a very good sale argument for SquareTrade's plans. OTOH the comparison between brands is interesting.

Now go to any brand of laptop thread in this forum & please post a link to a new model with 95% of the reports are made by satisfied users w/o any problems in the first year as the stats above show. The unhappy ones are much more vocal.

*****

 

Let's get the discussion back on topic: Momentus XT.