Momentus XT: Best Hard Drive Ever?
We're having a hard time drawing one simple conclusion about Seagate's Momentus XT. Its hybrid nature necessitates performance evaluation across multiple runs of testing. If you try to capture the disk's behavior too early, you miss its purpose entirely. At the same time, the company claims that this drive performs similar to an SSD, which it just doesn't.
The Momentus XT is a hard drive complemented by 8 GB of flash memory that operates as a cache. So, when you hit it with a random workload, or a sequence that isn't cached, it performs just like any other 7200 RPM hard drive. That's a worst-case scenario, though.
On the other hand, the Momentus XT can also be nearly as fast as an SSD in the right situation, too. Once it has the opportunity to learn data access patterns and pin data into flash, performance improves significantly. We found that PCMark 7 storage performance typically doubles when compared to conventional 2.5” hard drives after a few repetitions of the workload. However, the most noticeable speed-up comes from booting Windows and launching popular applications. This second-generation model learns faster than its predecessor, and it more effectively minimizes load times.
If you're copying data, then you're probably willing to wait and do something else in the background. However, launching an applications means that you're about to do some sort of work, requiring you to wait until the application becomes available. We can at least say that the Momentus XT accelerates the right sort of task, then, by cutting down on the time you spend waiting. Yes, SSDs are much faster in more situations. However, in its target segment, the Momentus XT offers a great compromise between cost, performance, and capacity.
At the same time, there is hardly any noticeable impact on power consumption. Thus, this drive probably won’t help extend the battery life of your notebook. Nor will its blend of magnetic and solid-state storage hurt power use, either, though.
In choosing between an SSD or Seagate's latest effort, we'd still go with the SSD. To it, we'd add a hard drive in the same tiered configuration you're used to seeing us recommend. But consider a mobile system where you're only able to use one 2.5" storage device. Rather than being forced to pick between the big price tag and low capacity of an SSD or the mediocre performance of a hard drive, you can get as close as possible to blending the speed of flash and capacity of magnetic disks in a single device. Is it a perfect marriage? No. But the interaction between both technologies is unquestionably better than any hybrid effort seen before.
Must you pay extra for the hybrid functionality? Compared to 5400 RPM, 750 GB, 2.5" disks, sure. Those sell for as little as $110 right now. But the Momentus XT is actually less expensive than Western Digital's Scorpio Black 750 GB, which is pretty impressive. So, in environments only able to take a single 2.5" device, the Momentus XT is a great fit.
Related Stories :
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- WD Intros 'World's Thinnest' 2.5-inch Hybrid Hard Drive
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- Momentus XT 750 GB Review: A Second-Gen Hybrid Hard Drive
- OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid: Solid-State Speed With Hard Drive Capacity
- Samsung ships first hybrid hard drive
- Samsung's Hybrid hard-disk drive
- UPDATE: Samsung to ship hybrid hard disk drive in January 2007
- Should You Care About Hybrid Hard Drives?
- CES 2007: Hybrid hard drives promoted through industry alliance
This is what everyone with a laptop should do to get more speed. Remove your useless (in most case) DVD drive and put your HDD in their and put a SSD in your HDD bay.
I've got raid 0 first gen momentus xt 500's in this box and I love it. Not to sure I can swallow the much higher price of the 750's however..
I've got raid 0 first gen momentus xt 500's in this box and I love it. Not to sure I can swallow the much higher price of the 750's however..
Thailand flood. It'll be a while until prices drop...
too bad HDDs still cost the same as they do 2-3 years ago........
HDDs cost MORE than they did 2 years ago
4uck seagate - WD duopoly
HDDs cost MORE than they did 2 years ago 4uck seagate - WD duopoly
You know that the problem is the Thailand flood right?
Alternatively if they put them in an eternal storage you could buy the drivers alot cheaper, managed to get 2TB Samsung drives for £59 inside an external device. I know I break the warranty on the device, but the 2TB SATA drive for £59 at the moment is excellent. Look out for USB external storage devices, they could be going cheap based on there USB performance compared to USB, but at the same time provide a nice alternative to getting storage.
You know that the problem is the Thailand flood right?
They used this "problem" to make money. Look at their profit reports.
http://www.techpowerup.com/159766/ [...] sults.html
They used this "problem" to make money. Look at their profit reports.http://www.techpowerup.com/159766/ [...] sults.html
Nothing wrong with a company making money, it is how they stay in business, innovate, and keep people employed.
I have a 500GB XT and it is excellent ... well worth it for the price.
The 750GB XT model if it is priced around the same will sell like hotcakes.
I can't afford a large SSD so these seem the right fit for me in terms of price and performance.
They get my tick of approval.
Exceptionally well written article from the German team at toms ... well done guys !!
Not Impressive and not for me.
Other than boot and repeating the same thing over and over again this drive just is not fast enough.
Since I dont use laptops as my primary computers and have a server and two workstations my laptops dont need 500+GB of storage on them either.
Money is better spend on a ~120gb SSD for ~$130 that will give ten+ times the performance of this hybrid drive.
Nothing wrong with a company making money, it is how they stay in business, innovate, and keep people employed.
so is it ok if the customer gets raped ?
so is it ok if the customer gets raped ?
Then vote with your money and dont buy.
Good article and I agree with most of the points made. I have used both the 1st Gen 500 GB and am currently using the 750GB discussed in this article. Like browsers, people are now putting too much emphasis into benchmarks. This doesn't necessarily translate to real-world experience. I have a Lenovo W510 that is now about two years old. It came with a Hitachi 7200 rpm HDD. It wasn't slow, but it also wasn't fast. The laptop also only has one HDD bay. Apparently the Ultra Bay that you can purchase to stick a second drive in doesn't fit too well. Out of curiosity, I decided to try the 500 GB Momentus XT and was immediately and pleasantly surprised at the performance increase. I would've loved to have put an SSD instead, but to get a 500GB+ costs way too much. When the 750GB version came out, and I saw it on sale, I figured I'd get that and swap out my wife's 5400 rpm drive in her 4 year old laptop (she really only uses it for Internet) which was SLOW. The 750GB did show a little bit better performance over the 500GB but not much. Putting the 500GB in my wife's laptop, however, was like night and day. Boot times are incredibly faster, and overall system responsiveness is greatly improved. Yet, the Windows Index for Storage never changed. Therefore, I'm curious whether Tom's benchmarks can really be used to state how a user's experience will be with these drives. I would recommend this drive, however, as a relatively inexpensive upgrade in performance as well as storage space. Especially if you'd like to keep an older laptop running for a bit longer.
so is it ok if the customer gets raped ?
Their profits didn't come from raping the consumer. They came from liquidating their stocks rapidly as OEMs bought up all the drives they could anticipating that the supply would dry up rapidly, which it did. You make money when you sell huge amounts of your product that have been sitting in a warehouse.
I'm getting really, really sick of all these entitled brats whining about how a disaster that killed more than a thousand people and displaced millions more from their homes made their hard drives more expensive for a little while.
Get some perspective you twat.
I totally lost faith in Seagate drives. I won't touch any of them and never recommend them to anyone.
Neat idea but why such a small SS cache?
My 500GB died without notice. One minute it was working the next minute it was dead. The hard drive didn't even show up in the BIOS anymore. It was like it never existed. I removed it and put it back in and nothing. I tried many utilities on a CD that I booted up and none of them recognized that a hard drive existed. In my book that means the drive is dead.
I'm not sure if I have any recourse as I am the second owner of this computer.
I haven't yet gone to their site and see if the drive is under warranty.
Make sure if you own one you back up daily. Perhaps because of the flash involved there are no warning signs of a drive failing. Usually there are little noises or something that gives you a clue.
Good Luck.
My 500GB died without notice ..... Make sure if you own one you back up daily.
Seriously? Back up a 500GB drive daily? Other than an IT admin, who the hell would back up a 500GB disk daily?
I would take a wait and see approach. The first gen hybrid drives were plagued with reliability problems. These seem like good tech, but I'm not buying one right away.