Momentus XT Review: Seagate's Marriage Of The HDD And Flash Memory

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Update: with more real-world testing under our belts, Seagate's Momentus XT is receiving our rare Best of Tom's award for excellent performance. This new hybrid hard drive combines up to 500GB of storage and 4GB of flash memory to maximize performance.

Test Setup And Throughput Diagram

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Low Level Benchmarks Test System
Hardware Details
CPU Intel Core i7-920 (45 nm, 2.66 GHz, 8MB Shared L3 Cache)
Motherboard (Socket 1366) Supermicro X8SAX Revision: 1.0; Chipset: Intel X58 + ICH10R; BIOS: 1.0B
RAM 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
HDD Seagate NL35, 400GB ST3400832NS; 7,200 RPM, SATA 1.5Gb/s, 8MB Cache
Power Supply OCZ EliteXstream 800W; OCZ800EXS-EU
Benchmarks
Performance Measurements h2benchw 3.12PCMark Vantage 1.0
I/O Performance IOMeter 2006.07.27Fileserver-BenchmarkWebserver-BenchmarkDatabase-BenchmarkWorkstation-BenchmarkStreaming ReadsStreaming Writes
System Software and Drivers
Driver Details
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate SP1
Intel Chipset Drivers Chipset Installation Utility 9.1.0.1007
AMD Graphics Radeon 8.12
Intel Matrix Storage 8.7.0.1007
Notebook Benchmarks Test Platform
Notebook Dell Latitude D630Mobile Intel GM965 Express Chipset
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 (45 nm; 2600 MHz, 6MB L2 Cache)
RAM Corsair ValueRAM 2 x 2,048 MB DDR2-667 SDRAM 5-5-5-15
HDD I Seagate Momentus 7200.4 7,200 RPM, 500GB, 16MB Cache
HDD II Seagate Momentus XT 7,200 RPM, 500GB, 16MB Cache
DVD-ROM 8x DVD+/-RW
Wireless Intel 4965 WLAN (802.11a/g/n) mini Card
Screen 14.1 inch WideScreen WXGA+ LCD (1400x900)
Graphics Card Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Sound Card Integrated
Power Supply 9-Cell/85WHr Primary Battery
System Software and Drivers
OS Windows 7; Updated on March 20 2010
Benchmarks and Settings
MobileMark 2007 Version 1.06Productivity