Seagate Momentus XT: 750GB or 500GB?

I've tried to answer that question by myself for a while, but I keep thinking which one I need the most?

Money is not a problem and 500GB is enough for me when you consider that I have a external 500GB HDD, but (!! there is always a but) the 750GB comes with:

I've checked it all out and it seems legit enough according to several benchmarks
- A higher latency, 0,02 ms approx. (doesn't really matter, but worth mentioning)
- A I/O data transfer rate @ ~600MB/s (vs. the 500GB ~300MB/s)
- It also has double the cache NAND, going from 4GB to 8GB of SLC NAND

But for some reason I don't see a giant "leap", if you want, in bechmarks, does the cache size really do such a difference? Please do contribute

- jaug1337

 

did I hear money is not a prob??? you know very well what we are going to tell you! 750gb!!!! its the newer one, its much faster! there are a lot of benchmarks on the net. I bought the 500gb on black friday for $89, only reason it was good deal, i have used it b4 and its good and I cannot afford $249 after i just bought a expensive laptop!

 

If money truly is "no problem", get a real SSD with a large capacity.

This baby here will cost you $370:
Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

If you are content with using the external drive as storage, then perhaps this would be a possible way to go. It WILL be by far the "fastest" way to go in terms of performance.

 

I'm going to get a SSD, but this drive is going to be my second, the slave drive so basically I just want you guys to give me a good enough reason to buy one or another.

EDIT: If you so kindly will ofc

 

The Crucial drives are pretty good drives as well, they're a very close second in my mind just behind the Intel 510 series.

 

Are they cheaper than the Intel 510 series?
I've heard it has some compatibility issues with the Clevo P150HM (the Crucial SSD drives that is).

 

Well more space is always better, so I don't see why not. Also don't see much of a point in doing a hybrid secondary drive, would rather get a Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB or maybe a Blue 1TB.

In terms of SSDs, Intel has been revered for their drives reliability and the new 520 series is coming early next year.

 

For comparison to the Crucial 256GB M4 I linked to above:
Newegg.com - Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH250A2K5 2.5" 250GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Yeah, a lot cheaper in price, but not in quality.

The only compatibility issues I heard of with Clevos are SandForce SSDs.


If all you want is an internal storage drive, get a large capacity HDD for much less than you would spend on a small hybrid.

 

If you're looking to use this as a second drive (for storage), I wouldn't bother with anything but a mechanical HDD. The flash part of the hybrid drive only does anything when it's the primary. As a secondary, it's completely unused (thus making it an expensive drive with no more features than a typical HDD).

 

Yeah, no good reason to use it as a secondary storage drive.

 

Ah thank you very much! Sounds reasonable enough.

 

Perhaps. Perhaps not... It depends on what you'll be using it for - http://forum.notebookreview.com/8115119-post90.html

 

Thanks Appreciate the answer

 

you can get a crucial m4 128GB SSD for around 130 bucks now! I'd go for that

 

Oh so I've noticed, but this thread is quite old.

Just wanted to thank jclausius for his advice. I bought this hybrid drive a while ago

 

NP. How is it working out so far?

 

Perfect, but I must admit 4GB cache is slightly less than needed, but it works perfectly

 

I just put a hybrid drive i had laying around in an older desktop. When it was the first couple boot ups i counted the times the circle goes around when Windows is starting and it did it 37 times. Now its down to 4 times. They are a nice jump up from a regular drive but have gotten alot less popular then they were a year ago. I bet its because SSD prices have come down alot since then.

 

Well that is indeed one way to count boot time!!

Mine was 8 minutes and 40~50 seconds.
It's down to 1 minute and 10~20 seconds, amazing

 

Almost 9 minutes of boot time on a SSD!? What are you running on startup? The slow (C2D) computers at my school take about 1min to boot...

 

I took it to mean jaug1337 went from 9 min on a platter based drive to 80 sec on the XT.

 

9 minutes is still a hell of a long time on any drive.

 

Older hardware (CPU) with older 5400 RPM drive, super-extremely fragmented, with thousands of little Windows services at startup?

Although, I'm with you, a 9 minute boot would cause me to find the tallest building in town and launch the lappy from the roof. Luckily the XT saved the day.

 

As jclausius explains, I went from 9 minutes to 1½ minute

It sure is. dropbox, rainmeter avg, speedfan, setpoint, steam, skype, search everything, sysinternal process explorer, flux, utorrent, itunes, stackdock and a hell lot of other things

Those 9 minutes never really bothered me as I got fed up with the whole thing and just set the computer to hibernate every time I needed it to "shutdown", now booting up and shutting down is faster than ever

 

*bump* I can't afford an SSD large enough for my needs (and for my income can't justify buying one in the forseeable future), so I'm going to get a hybrid drive as my primary drive. 500gb should be ample for me (I do have an external if it's not, but I doubt i'll need it), but I was wondering how much difference the cache sizes make? Gaming isn't a huuuge thing for me
And how much difference does the 6gb/s vs 3gb/s transfer speeds make in the real world?

My vendor only offers the 500gb one (at a pretty reasonable price, really), but if it's worth spending a little more (plus the extra time installing OS and whatnot - which tbh I find annoying, i've been wanting this machine for a long time, when it arrives it'd be nice to have it ready to go).

 

Sorry if this doesn't answer your questions, but I would not get the hybrid drive at all. I almost got one for my p170em, but realized it would be somewhat redundant to have since I'm planning to get a mSata in the near future. Are you getting a laptop that supports mSata? If so, the Intel RST w/mSata will do essentially the same thing as the momentus drive. I'd get either the 750gb 7200rpm or 1tb 5400rpm now. If money is tight, you can get an mSata later, and you can set that up to cache files just like the momentus does. Plus you'll have the left over space on the mSata to use as a regular ssd.

Edit: Tom's hardware has a nice review comparing the 750 to 500 hybrid as well as SSDs and standard HDDs.
Momentus XT 750 GB Review: A Second-Gen Hybrid Hard Drive : Seagate's Momentus XT Picks Up FAST Technology

 

Unfortunately my model doesn't support mSata, which is rather annoying as It would be the most ideal setup. I was initially going with the 150em, but it was overkill and blew my budget too much. I have settled on this Logical Blue One - Horize W25B Clevo Notebook PC (it's a custom Horize model, doesn't have a Sager equivalent). I suppose I could get clarification from my reseller, but as far as I'm aware there isn't an mSata option in w series clevos (and it'd be odd that LBO wouldn't offer it when they do on other models).

 

Hmmm, don't know what to tell you. Your situation is unique since you are ordering from Australia. What is your budget? And what is your current configuration? If you, for example, currently have the i7-3720 selected, you could save a bunch by getting the i7-3610 since the performance difference is small, and use that money for a better hard drive. Seriously though, if there is any way you can afford a SSD, go for it. The performance increase is insane. You can get Crucial m4 256gb for pretty cheap now, and then skip the optical drive for a 500gb hdd so you'll have some speed for your OS and applications, and then plenty of storage space on the hdd.

 

I live in New Zealand, so it becomes roughly the same as ordering from some of the 'cheaper' american resellers once shipping is accounted for - and it's a hellova lot easier if I need to send anything back/get parts replaced. Plus my reseller is looking at setting up shop in New Zealand in the future.

Current config:

Intel Ivy Bridge i7-3610QM 2.3-3.3Ghz Turbo
8GB 1600Mhz RAM, 500GB 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive
Bluray Reader / DVD Burner Combo (this is important to me, it'll be my bluray player when i go to uni soon, and being external defeats the purpose of the laptop - if someone can show me a well priced external br player I might consider it)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Standard Wireless Card + Bluetooth
Standard 1920x1080 Matte Display
3 Year RTB Warranty + 90 Day 100% Pixel Guarantee

Which comes to $1991NZD (when shipping, bank fees and GST are accounted for). Which is about $9 less that I was willing to go up to.. Buying a laptop in New Zealand is expensive Hence why I am only looking at stretching it another $100

 

Hey guys,

can anyone really confirm that the Momentus XT 4 or 8GB ssd cache is NOT used when it is not the OS drive?

Meaning if it's a secundary drive just for applications, it won't at all benefit from the NAND cache?

Need to know since I ordered one yesterday, not being aware of that...

 

No, that's completely bogus. The NAND is completely OS independant and is managed by the drive itself. The NAND on the drive (when not used as the primary OS drive) obviously won't help your boot times unless you're installing autostarting applications on it, but it certainly will help reduce load times for your recently accessed data on it.

 

Thanks a lot. Yeah obviously it won't speed up boot times, but thats what you have the SSD for

Well this post of a retailer on page 1 really reads like the NAND is being unused... thats why I was worried

Could you explain this Anthony?

 

The NAND acts as a cache for your most recently used data.

With that in mind, performance really depends what you use the drive for. If it's for long term storage, backups and archival purposes, then no, the NAND is going to have less of an effect. If you use it for games, say, it's going to be used more as recently accessed data in the game is going to be available in the NAND when you switch levels etc.

 

sirana,

The information you've been provided with is technically incorrect. Over time, the XT's firmware will cache all READ accesses to the LBA on the drive. This happens regardless of what the drive is used for.

Also, I would recommend making sure you get the 2nd Gen. of the XT (ST750LX003). It supports SATA III, has 8GB NAND cache, and has been reported Seagate is working on adding WRITE capabilities to the NAND cache.

In regards to your question about the XT for a secondary drive, I've summarized this in an older post here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...te-momentous-xt-second-drive.html#post8738161

 

Thanks jclausius. I was just confused because of Anthonys post.

My order confirmation only states "750GB SEAGATE XT 7200 SATA-III", so it should be the second generation XT because of Sata III, right?

 

Yes. The first generation is SATA-II (500GB) the second generation is SATA-III (750GB)

 

I'm not 100%, but I do believe the 2nd Gen drives come in a 500GB/750GB flavor. The key on the 500GB drive would be the 8GB NAND SSD cache.