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750GB Momentus XT Guinea Pigs, sound off!

Very brave fellows!

I'm waiting for a 16 - 32gb Flashbased 750gb/1TB Hybrid drive. Would be nice to keep the entire OS on the flash.

At $260, it's a little too pricey.
 
Which one to get, 500GB Scorpio Black for 109EUR or 500GB Momentus XT for 133EUR? Running Lion 1.7.2 on MacBook Pro 13" 2,53GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM (soon to be 8GB)
 
waltervt said:
Which one to get, 500GB Scorpio Black for 109EUR or 500GB Momentus XT for 133EUR? Running Lion 1.7.2 on MacBook Pro 13" 2,53GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM (soon to be 8GB)
Click to expand...

As SSDs are too expensive, I only want hybrid.
 
ctyhntr said:
I have a 2009 15" MBP with Core 2 Duo. I upgraded my RAM to 8GB, would this help with iMovie 11 or FCPX rendering times in 1080p?
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Probably not rendering, as that's mainly the CPU/RAM's job. Anything being rendered is probably already loaded in the RAM.

It may speed up other things, though.
 
I just upgraded my Early 2011 15" MBP (low end) to the Momentus XT 750GB (2nd Gen/SATA 3.0) and I must say the results are satisfying. For the $110 I paid for mine it's a steal of a deal for anyone looking to upgrade their HDD but can't afford a SSD with enough space.

A cold boot up to dock on Mountain Lion (10.8.2) went from 1:30 to 0:25.

Here are my BlackMagic speed test results.

Stock Apple Toshiba 500GB 5400rpm drive
BdQOm.png


Momentus XT 750GB
e7WtA.png
 
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Speed tests don't do that drive much justice, it's more of a real-world performer to my understanding.

I got ~70 MB/s Read/Write out of my stock 5400 RPM drive. ~90 is what you would see from a regular 7200 RPM, possibly higher.
 
I was thinking about upgrading my MBP 15" mid 2009 (A1286) to this drive.
Will it work and will I get all the bennifits of the speed.? I think i have the EFF 1.7 firmware.
Thanks.
 
martinirams said:
I was thinking about upgrading my MBP 15" mid 2009 (A1286) to this drive.
Will it work and will I get all the bennifits of the speed.? I think i have the EFF 1.7 firmware.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes it will work without issue and yes you will see a nice performance gain. Make sure you go with the 750GB model since that is the newer version with more backside SSD. I have enjoyed mine for a few years now including the first 500GB version. I am now using a rMBP with built in SSD so I no longer have a need for the XT but for the cost of the XT you will truly increase your enjoyment of the 2009 MBP.
 
duffer6 said:
Yes it will work without issue and yes you will see a nice performance gain. Make sure you go with the 750GB model since that is the newer version with more backside SSD. I have enjoyed mine for a few years now including the first 500GB version. I am now using a rMBP with built in SSD so I no longer have a need for the XT but for the cost of the XT you will truly increase your enjoyment of the 2009 MBP.
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Thanks :) I was looking at the 750 model.
I have read some bad things about the XT around the web. But it seems like it's mostly the 500gb model that has issues.
Thanks for the advice.
 
martinirams said:
Thanks :) I was looking at the 750 model.
I have read some bad things about the XT around the web. But it seems like it's mostly the 500gb model that has issues.
Thanks for the advice.
Click to expand...

All the issues were worked out under the XT2 (750 GB model) I have had no issues for a year with that version. You won't be disappointed. If money was not a issue I would recommend a true SSD which will provide you the ultimate in a performance upgrade but cost is high for a capacity that will be lower than 750GB. For the cost to storage to benefit ratio the XT is really the way to go. The fusion drive that Apple is using is similar in technology but they are using a much larger SSD (128GB) with a 750 GB to 1TB HHD combo.

Simply put if you want a nice performance bump max out your RAM and pop in a XT and you will feel like your MBP is new once again.
 
duffer6 said:
All the issues were worked out under the XT2 (750 GB model) I have had no issues for a year with that version. You won't be disappointed. If money was not a issue I would recommend a true SSD which will provide you the ultimate in a performance upgrade but cost is high for a capacity that will be lower than 750GB. For the cost to storage to benefit ratio the XT is really the way to go. The fusion drive that Apple is using is similar in technology but they are using a much larger SSD (128GB) with a 750 GB to 1TB HHD combo.

Simply put if you want a nice performance bump max out your RAM and pop in a XT and you will feel like your MBP is new once again.
Click to expand...

You where completely right. I'm running with the XT 750gb and 8gb of ram now.
Boot time went from 3 minutes to 40 secs.. So i'm a happy man :)
The harddrive noise is slightly louder than the stock drive, but it's still super quiete.

Thanks for the advice :D
 
martinirams said:
You where completely right. I'm running with the XT 750gb and 8gb of ram now.
Boot time went from 3 minutes to 40 secs.. So i'm a happy man :)
The harddrive noise is slightly louder than the stock drive, but it's still super quiete.

Thanks for the advice :D
Click to expand...

Make sure you reset the PRAM and repair disk permissions and you will truly be on fire. Glad it worked out. Enjoy!
 
can't hear, but definitely can 'feel' it spinning/vibrating more than the stock toshiba, which will also go back inside as soon as the 'optibay dock' thing I bought on ebay arrives here.

cheers.
 
Put one in my cMBP-15 last night along with 16GB RAM (Corsair). Ahhh the speed of it all! Nova-benched at 936 with 9 (plus the standard OSX ones) menu bar processes running while surfing the web and listening to iTunes. Still needs more use before I hit the instant shutdowns and 12-15 second boots that my wife sees on her cMBP-13 though, just down to 20 second boots at the moment.
 
Hi there.
Im kind of reviving this one.

How does the new XT perform for you after some days / weeks?
Does it cause any trouble when splitting it for bootcamp + osx usage?

I currently have the toshiba inside my macbook, but i would like to go up for 750GB and make a bootcamp partition.
Is there anything i should be aware of?

Thanks a a lot.

nopw
 
I put one into an external OWC USB 3 enclosure. I didn't really want to put HDD inside my cMBP... Right now, I'm using it for Time machine. It has about 2000 hours in use, without one single glitch.

I get about 100 MB/s read and write speeds. See below:
 

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Hi thank you for your response.
Is there any experience with bootcamp and the hybrid?

Does the dual boot confuse the cache?
Does the ssd speed up still work with filevault encrypted partitions?
 
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Haven't used it with Bootcamp, but do use with a VM and it works fine, just like any other 7200rpm drive. I don't use the VM often enough really that it's caching in the NAND flash.
 
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