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Seagate Momentus XT 750GB MBP 13.3 help...

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bubsnews

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 10, 2012
4
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I have an early 2011 13.3 MBP with stock 320 GB drive. Just bought the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid drive. I did a clone using CCC and am wondering if I've missed a setting or something.

I'm seeing some pretty solid gains in program load times, but my boot times were much slower initially, then after half a dozen reboots, my boot times are nearing where they were before but still slower.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I remember reading others boot times were cut in half (say 40 seconds to 20 seconds). My boot times (from start button to password query) were right under 50 seconds. My first boot after cloning the XT was 1:21, then 1:00, then :54, :52, :51.

I get a long delay right after hitting power, where I see a white screen for maybe 30 seconds.

Have I missed a setting somewhere? I just purchased the drive from Amazon (was the exact same bare drive as from NewEgg), was not sure how to check firmware date.

Thanks for any help.
 
bubsnews said:
I have an early 2011 13.3 MBP with stock 320 GB drive. Just bought the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid drive. I did a clone using CCC and am wondering if I've missed a setting or something.

I'm seeing some pretty solid gains in program load times, but my boot times were much slower initially, then after half a dozen reboots, my boot times are nearing where they were before but still slower.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I remember reading others boot times were cut in half (say 40 seconds to 20 seconds). My boot times (from start button to password query) were right under 50 seconds. My first boot after cloning the XT was 1:21, then 1:00, then :54, :52, :51.

I get a long delay right after hitting power, where I see a white screen for maybe 30 seconds.

Have I missed a setting somewhere? I just purchased the drive from Amazon (was the exact same bare drive as from NewEgg), was not sure how to check firmware date.

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

You need to go into settings and set the new drive as your default boot device.
 
The Momentus XT's flash component acts as a cache, not as a full SSD. It has to "learn" what data you access frequently so that it can add that data to the flash component. If data is random and/or newly accessed then it is on the HDD and the speed will be that of a standard 2.5" HDD.

Those boot times do seem a little long, but theoretically, the performance should get better over time.
 
phpmaven said:
You need to go into settings and set the new drive as your default boot device.
Click to expand...

Wow!!! Thanks, 0:21.

Forgot to ask if you had any other 'gems' like that for a new Mac user (I'm computer literate as far as Win boxes, but first Mac)?
 
Last edited:
bubsnews said:
I have an early 2011 13.3 MBP with stock 320 GB drive. Just bought the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid drive. I did a clone using CCC and am wondering if I've missed a setting or something.

I'm seeing some pretty solid gains in program load times, but my boot times were much slower initially, then after half a dozen reboots, my boot times are nearing where they were before but still slower.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I remember reading others boot times were cut in half (say 40 seconds to 20 seconds). My boot times (from start button to password query) were right under 50 seconds. My first boot after cloning the XT was 1:21, then 1:00, then :54, :52, :51.

I get a long delay right after hitting power, where I see a white screen for maybe 30 seconds.

Have I missed a setting somewhere? I just purchased the drive from Amazon (was the exact same bare drive as from NewEgg), was not sure how to check firmware date.

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

Because the SSD cache is a "learning" disk cache, it takes a few boot cycles before the drive can start determining what information needs to be stored in the SSD instead of on the HDD platters. That's why you have been seeing your boot times slowly speed up, because each reboot means one more cycle that the drive can learn from.
 
dmccloud said:
Because the SSD cache is a "learning" disk cache, it takes a few boot cycles before the drive can start determining what information needs to be stored in the SSD instead of on the HDD platters. That's why you have been seeing your boot times slowly speed up, because each reboot means one more cycle that the drive can learn from.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I did plenty of research before buying this hybrid drive, so was well aware of how things worked. What I didn't learn was that I had to go and designate this drive as the bootable drive (I'm a new Mac user) so even though it would boot, there was a 30 second delay during every boot cycle that was eliminated by setting the drive. Went from :52 to :21 simply by doing this.

I'm so new to Mac's that I'm betting a bunch of settings that you all take for granted, I have no idea about. If there are any other 'tricks' you can think of, I'm all ears.
 
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