Seagate momentus xt hybrid fastest traditional laptop drive?

Does anybody else make hybrid drives?

 

Not yet. (10 char)

 

see here

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...e-momentus-xt-hybrid-hdd-w-built-4gb-ssd.html

 

Not exactly the fastest. Or actually very dependable on what you do or use it for. Quite a few problems with it too. Not sure it is worth it...

 

The fastest I've experienced, there are a couple of other drives that may do one task of many a little bit faster, but the XT poops on them for everything else by a considerable margin.

I had NTLDR missing problems with mine until I changed the firmware to S24, it hasn't done it since.

Seagate is no less reliable than WD or Hitachi in my experience.

If there's a faster drive out there, I'd like to know about it, a timed comparison over commonly used scenarios like our moderator Phil uses in his reviews is all I'm interested in....no benchmarks...no opinions...no BS, kthks

 

You have to define "faster" first!? The 4GB are used for cache or in other words for secondary RAM. The rest is a normal 7200 RPM HDD, which is beaten by Hitachi 7K500 in numerous benchmark tests. Instead of 4GB cache one can just add more RAM.

 

Indeed. However, if one frequently reboot or hibernate/resume, XT's NAND has an advantage in that it is non-volatile, unlike RAM.

So again, usage pattern determine whether it worths it.

 

Like I said......

Do you require a link to Phil's reviews?benchmarks mean jack.

 

You guys also gotta remember there's a difference between benchmarks fast, and in actuality "fast". Everyday tasks, I hardly see a difference between my MomentusXT 500 GB and my Scorpio Blue 640 GB...big letdown for me.

 

Do you have a Momentus XT drive? Mine has had no more issues than any other physical hard drive that I have. Of course one person's experience is not a large sample size so there very well could be issues, but in terms of overall usability problems (and not failures), there are no noticeable issues for me with the SD24 firmware; all of the spin down issues have been resolved. The only thing is that it can get a little noisier than the 5400 RPM drive that was previously in my computer, but that was to be expected.
I would say that it most definitely was worth it; I have a total boot time of around 30 seconds and can start using programs such as firefox within a couple seconds from when I log on.

 

A better comparison is using a stopwatch for commonly used tasks like this review Seagate Momentus 750GB 7200rpm Hard Drive Review
Of course in the same notebook.
If you don't notice differences like those "in seconds", your probably not going to see any benefit in buying a much faster again SSD either.
I guess it depends on ones perception of faster, but the XT is the only next generation 7.2k hard drive I've been able to notice an actual usage speed improvement with without resorting to benchmarks since the 7k60 was supposedly the big thing.

 

Yes I do. In my Lenovo. My impressions are - noisy, sometimes even slower than 7K500, rarely any advantage of the cache, especially if enough RAM is present.

 

I often wonder the same thing.

I find it odd that he constantly bashes drive technologies (hybrid HDD, SSDs) that are proven time and time again to be faster than 7200rpm drives.

 

The XT is a mixed issue. The HDD portion is actually a bit slow for 500GB 7200 RPM. This however isn't something that in other than speciallized situations you will notice. Now the SSD portion can under proper circumstances really make this tromp any HDD out there.

Now for the SSD to be of real use you need fairly casual usage. Start opening alot of programs or data reading and the advantages fade quickly.

Another advantage is the 16MB ram cache. For short bursts of small files, which the OS and internet love to do, this can be a real advantage.

Now if your heart is set on a RAID0 and 1TB here you gain again. Now you have effective 8GB nand and 32MB ram cache. of course you loose some effectiveness to the striping alogorythm as you would with any striped drive. Also since you can read so much faster with the NAND portion it could be more cpu intensive if you do not have a 100% hardware level controler. (note here PM/GM 45 notebook controlers are not 100% hardware but CPU driven)

Edit; I know Raid is not supported for the XT but I have done so with my P7805 PM45 chipset, I personally did not like the RAID CPU overhead so opted for a SSD.

 

I think anyone with a noisy XT should return it...it's defective IMHO if you have the latest SD24 fw on there.

My XT was noisy to begin with...squeaking and squealing randomly and consistently; after the SD24 update it's been as quiet as a mouse.

Or maybe try manually changing the AAM settings via HD Tune for ex.

As for performance I can't argue with anyone in reference to that...we are using different computers with different specifications and uses.

Edit: As for mine, the performance is good...have had no issues besides the noise in the beginning; and for the price why would I get anything else?

 

mine too it started out quiet but when it was updated it became silent.

I have it installed inches from a 7k500, it is quieter.

 

cache is what every HDDs has - it's rather small in size (8 - 32MB). The 4GB is a built in SSD that acts like cache but is power independent, i.e. you can boot up after power down from that SSD rather than loading information from the HDD platters itself (which would be slower), the here's the performance boost.

so you can not just add more RAM to replace the internal 4GB SSD

 

mine took 10 seconds off of my boot up times.

I have never beeen able to make it boot any application faster however even chrome. I did a cloned drive test also when I got my 7k500

 

I defragmented my HDD (which wipes the SSD portion), and was getting a boot time of around 50 seconds to a minute as measured by boottimer (which really isn't the most accurate of utilities, but its better than nothing). After the HDD started "learning" it dropped into the 30 second range, and even a little below that at some times.
My laptop boots faster and can start programs sooner after startup than my desktop with a samsung spinpoint F3 drive (which has 500GB platters and average write speeds above 100 mbps). It is true that the HDD part of the momentus XT isn't as fast as the spinpoint, but the SSD gives it an advantage.

 

Though the question is always, why would one frequently reboot and not use hibernation ?

 

because every one is differennt and maybe that is why the two options?

1.) Also you still need to reboot at time from updates.
2.) You get to close out all programs resetting memory.
3.) for those less security minded you could clear things from memory you don't want.
4.) some people need to have multi user access.

I guess there is a myriad of reasons, but I understand your point too.......

BOT; With the XT's YMMV. It depends highly on your usage passtern and if you do hibernate often the XT is probably a waist...................