Love my new Seagate Momentus XT !!!

[macchiato2009]

i've been using and owning Intel Postville SSDs since the very beginning on several Macs (MBP, Mac Mini)

but i was always frustrated by the price and capacity

i just received my Momentus XT and installed in my 13" MBP 2010

it is simply AWESOME

500 really fast Gb

 

[C64]

i've been using and owning Intel Postville SSDs since the very beginning on several Macs (MBP, Mac Mini)

but i was always frustrated by the price and capacity

i just received my Momentus XT and installed in my 13" MBP 2010

it is simply AWESOME

500 really fast Gb

What about noise / vibrations?

 

[ryannazaretian]

What about noise / vibrations?

From what I've used of it so far, it's better than the stock Hitachi 7200RPM that came with mine.

 

[rohit6060]

I just wanted to know if there is a standard size which all hard disk companies as well as laptop brands follow or there any size distinctions.I'm asking because apple usually follows its own standards hence just wanted to know if all those internal hard disks available on ebay and all gonna fit the macbook..Plz reply

 

[cube]

The usual height of 2.5" drives is 9.5mm.

The XT is 9.7mm

Some drives (eg, 1TB) are 12.5mm.

 

[macchiato2009]

What about noise / vibrations?

no noise, no vibration, no heat

seems like i'm using a ssd

absolutely happy

i've been playing with starcraft 2 with the stock hd for 2 days now, i've tried today with the momentus xt, it's way cooler and way faster for loading the game in general

compared to my previous ssd (intel postville), no "burst" write/read but speeds are really constant

i've been transferring data to my external drive and it was really fast

my neighbor also has a 13" MBP 2010 with a 7200 rpm drive inside, everything is at least twice faster than on his machine even the boot

 

[rohit6060]

The usual height of 2.5" drives is 9.5mm.

The XT is 9.7mm

Some drives (eg, 1TB) are 12.5mm.

So does macbook support all of these sizes or do i need to take special care of the size while purchasing one for macbook..

 

[wordoflife]

How is the drive that much faster with just a 4GB SSD? How do you know what is exactly saved on the 4GB portion and whats saved on the mechanical drive portion? Does that mean that only some files are faster than others?

 

[macgeek18]

Well,I checked out the XT and I'm impressed,I think I will be buying a 320GB for my MB and 4GB of ram.

 

[ryannazaretian]

How is the drive that much faster with just a 4GB SSD? How do you know what is exactly saved on the 4GB portion and whats saved on the mechanical drive portion? Does that mean that only some files are faster than others?

How is the drive that much faster with just a 4GB SSD?

It's not any faster than any other 7200RPM drive, unless what you're accessing is cached on that 4GB SSD, then it should, theoretically, get up to the speed of a SSD.

How do you know what is exactly saved on the 4GB portion and whats saved on the mechanical drive portion?

You don't, it's all automatic.

Does that mean that only some files are faster than others?

Yes.

It happens...

 

[Celticsun]

It's not any faster than any other 7200RPM drive, unless what you're accessing is cached on that 4GB SSD, then it should, theoretically, get up to the speed of a SSD.

It does have a 32MB Cache though which isn't the norm so will probably prevent a little bit of bottle necking and seem snappier.

Also if you are only using Safari and smaller apps that the drive can cache in the nand it is going to seem a lot faster than standard drives.

 

[ryannazaretian]

It does have a 32MB Cache though which isn't the norm so will probably prevent a little bit of bottle necking and seem snappier.

Also if you are only using Safari and smaller apps that the drive can cache in the nand it is going to seem a lot faster than standard drives.

That's true about the cache. It does have double of a regular laptop drive.

I guess this is a good way to see the drive.

If you use your computer for the same things every day, then you should get the performance of an SSD.

If you switch OSes, use different programs, play different games, etc... then the performance will be more like a normal HDD.

To be realistic, 4GB is quite a bit of data. Your OS is probably 200-300MB total when booting, then your application should be around 50MB.

 

[cube]

So does macbook support all of these sizes or do i need to take special care of the size while purchasing one for macbook..

You have to find out for your specific model.

 

[macagain]

...edited...
If you use your computer for the same things every day, then you should get the performance of an SSD.

If you switch OSes, use different programs, play different games, etc... then the performance will be more like a normal HDD.

...edited...

Well stated!

My observations after about a month...

1. Most folks don't reboot OS X all that much. I do maybe once every week or two, and boot times are back to about 1:05 - 1:15 range (from pushing button to login screen), just like on my 7200 drive. If I sit there and reboot over and over, it's consistently around 35-40 sec. But nobody really reboots OS X much do they? So, unless you are truly a mobile person and reboot everyday or more, the fast reboot thing doesn't do that much for you. One thing that is consistently faster is login to full desktop... this is now consistently < 15s compared with about 30-35 before.

2. There are apps I use everyday, like Safari and Mail -- those always start really fast... one bounce max. There are also lots of other apps I use, but for a few days at a time, like Word, Eclipse, Photoshop (on Rosetta), Xcode, Chrome, etc. depending on what I'm working on. So, for example, I'll be on Eclipse for a few days, then Word for a couple, then Xcode for 3 or 4, etc. In those situations, when I start a cycle of an activity, e.g. Xcode, the first couple of times the app loads, it's slow... 8-10 bounces for Xcode. Then it'll go down to 2-3. The when I start the next cycle, the new set of apps that I use will go through the same cycle. I guess this makes complete sense with the caching algorithm. But it also highlights the fact that 4Gb of SSD is not that much (or enough for me!).

3. I do see the beachball due to drive spinning down once in awhile. Enough to notice but I don't think enough for me to dump the drive. (Seagate does have new firmware out that prevents idle spin down, but then the drive *never* spins down, and therefore eats more battery and gets hotter. see their forums. i'm not sure i'd like that better)

4. It's quieter, and runs cooler than the original hitachi 7200 drive. I don't notice more vibrations that some have reported.

5. I ask myself, knowing what I know now, would I still buy this drive? I think the answer is about 6-7 in 10 chance that I would... Net-net is that it is faster than the 7200 drive in many situations, but it definitely does not live up to the hype, and the rave reviews that people write after a day of use and repeated reboots.

 

[ryannazaretian]

Well stated!

My observations after about a month...

1. Most folks don't reboot OS X all that much. I do maybe once every week or two, and boot times are back to about 1:05 - 1:15 range (from pushing button to login screen), just like on my 7200 drive. If I sit there and reboot over and over, it's consistently around 35-40 sec. But nobody really reboots OS X much do they? So, unless you are truly a mobile person and reboot everyday or more, the fast reboot thing doesn't do that much for you. One thing that is consistently faster is login to full desktop... this is now consistently < 15s compared with about 30-35 before.

2. There are apps I use everyday, like Safari and Mail -- those always start really fast... one bounce max. There are also lots of other apps I use, but for a few days at a time, like Word, Eclipse, Photoshop (on Rosetta), Xcode, Chrome, etc. depending on what I'm working on. So, for example, I'll be on Eclipse for a few days, then Word for a couple, then Xcode for 3 or 4, etc. In those situations, when I start a cycle of an activity, e.g. Xcode, the first couple of times the app loads, it's slow... 8-10 bounces for Xcode. Then it'll go down to 2-3. The when I start the next cycle, the new set of apps that I use will go through the same cycle. I guess this makes complete sense with the caching algorithm. But it also highlights the fact that 4Gb of SSD is not that much (or enough for me!).

3. I do see the beachball due to drive spinning down once in awhile. Enough to notice but I don't think enough for me to dump the drive. (Seagate does have new firmware out that prevents idle spin down, but then the drive *never* spins down, and therefore eats more battery and gets hotter. see their forums. i'm not sure i'd like that better)

4. It's quieter, and runs cooler than the original hitachi 7200 drive. I don't notice more vibrations that some have reported.

5. I ask myself, knowing what I know now, would I still buy this drive? I think the answer is about 6-7 in 10 chance that I would... Net-net is that it is faster than the 7200 drive in many situations, but it definitely does not live up to the hype, and the rave reviews that people write after a day of use and repeated reboots.

#3: Whoops, installed that update...

#5: Yea, I used the drive for maybe 1 day before I decided to try out the SSD that I got. Since then, I've been sold on the SSD. I'm planning on putting the XT in the optical bay and using it for storage and lesser used programs, but I'm still waiting on the optibay converter I got off of eBay.

 

[mark28]

I'm going to use Windows, OS X and Linux. So the Momentus XT is bad buy for me then, untill they come with a hybrid drive that has more cache?

 

[ryannazaretian]

I'm going to use Windows, OS X and Linux. So the Momentus XT is bad buy for me then, untill they come with a hybrid drive that has more cache?

You're not going to get any better performance unless you go with a full blown SSD.

And really, 4GB is a lot of memory. I mean, really... how much data does your hard drive load when starting up? I don't think it can be more than a few hundred megabytes.

My personal opinion is to stay away from Hitachi. I've had 3 of them in my last two MacBook Pros. One just failed overnight, then got a replacement.

My current MBP had a Hitachi, but it's been going slower and slower. Maximum transfer rate of about 10MB/s, which is really sad.

For 500GB, 7200RPM, you have Seagate Momentus, Seagate Momentus XT, Western Digital Scorpio Black, and the Hitachi Travelstar.

Out of the 4, I would pick the XT.

NOTE: There are other hard drives, I'm sure, but I'm just picking the ones form Newegg.com.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...030594 600003459&IsNodeId=1&name=SATA 3.0Gb/s

 

[Maclver]

Just ordered mine from Amazon... Should be here in a couple of days! Im replacing a Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB.. Can't wait to see how this drive performs.

How does one install firmware updates for it and if there are any should I install them?

 

[Yimbie]

I've been using my new hard drive for a while and must say that I am happy with it. I definitely notice a speed increase in boot time, opening most used apps (for me.. Chrome, iTunes, iCal, Microsoft Word), and have not noticed increase noise or vibrations at all. I do notice though a little bit more heat, but nothing really to worry about.

 

[newConvert]

I loaded VMWare 3 and windows 7 onto my 2.4ghz i5 w/ 4gigs ram and momentus xt hard drive.

Initial time was about 20seconds, from click to when i had the windows mouse control.

After a few restarts, it launches in 8 seconds! Its pretty nice to be able to jump into windows after 8 seconds, almost like launching a regular app, good stuff.

 

[sk8r1230]

keep us posted on battery/heat/vibration issues!

 

[mrdm]

Spindown issue?

Been reading about the drive spinning down and then the system having to wait for it to spin up before proceeding. This seems to defeat the purpose of the high performance. Is anyone experiencing this or does it seem to be an isolated case?

 

[J&JPolangin]

Been reading about the drive spinning down and then the system having to wait for it to spin up before proceeding. This seems to defeat the purpose of the high performance. Is anyone experiencing this or does it seem to be an isolated case?

...there's supposed to be a firmware fix for the spindown...

 

[sk8r1230]

which then reeks havoc on the battery from what i have read

 

[greythorne]

can someone post the firmware here or atleast the link to the firmware?