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Installed Momentus XT in my 13"

thadoggfather

thadoggfather

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 1, 2007
16,330
17,437
2qmdaus.jpg


Arrived from Newegg this afternoon.

Removing the screws on the bottom plate of the 13" was really hard imo. I had to use plyers to have enough grip on the screwdriver to remove them, and it slipped twice (with hairline scratches) -- probably better anyways. I wear belts and worry about the buckle scratching up the bottom, but this just eliminates my OCD -- and it doesn't look horrendous but my heart stopped when I slipped, hoping I didn't too badly scar the machine ;).

The drive is noticeably faster than my stock Hitachi 250GB 5400rpm drive (which is now in an external enclosure: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817816001). I also notice an increase in the system vibration, but this probably a standard thing anyone would feel going from 5400 rpm to 7200rpm. I have yet to see how it holds up after remembering my favorite apps and battery life but will report once I have a better grasp.

If you have any questions, ask away!
 
thadoggfather said:
2qmdaus.jpg


Arrived from Newegg this afternoon.

Removing the screws on the bottom plate of the 13" was really hard imo. I had to use plyers to have enough grip on the screwdriver to remove them, and it slipped twice (with hairline scratches) -- probably better anyways. I wear belts and worry about the buckle scratching up the bottom, but this just eliminates my OCD -- and it doesn't look horrendous but my heart stopped when I slipped, hoping I didn't too badly scar the machine ;).

The drive is noticeably faster than my stock Hitachi 250GB 5400rpm drive (which is now in an external enclosure: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817816001). I also notice an increase in the system vibration, but this probably a standard thing anyone would feel going from 5400 rpm to 7200rpm. I have yet to see how it holds up after remembering my favorite apps and battery life but will report once I have a better grasp.

If you have any questions, ask away!
Click to expand...

Download and run xbench and post the #'s please.

Congrats ~~~~ and FWIW, my Hit 7200 HD (in optical bay) is dead quiet and has no vibration.

JohnG
 
15ciquu.png


Keep in mind it's probably not representative of real world tests because the drive is supposed to remember the most used apps, and since this is the first time I've fired up xbench, I doubt it's one of those "remembered apps."

But this drive is quite zippy, and for the twenty minutes I've used it, I'm pleased.

The machine is quite quiet, but I feel more vibration than the 5400rpm drive, which I'm sure is to be expected.
 
fehhkk said:
That can't be right. Run it a couple more times. I get a 55.67 with a regular Momentus 7200.4
Click to expand...


Ran it one more time and got 35.6 I wouldn't worry about xbenches and other benchmarks, more just how you think you will use it. It seems to perform very well.
 
thadoggfather said:
Ran it one more time and got 35.6 I wouldn't worry about xbenches and other benchmarks, more just how you think you will use it. It seems to perform very well.
Click to expand...

I wonder if there is another 'bench' program available. Those #'s are REALLY quite poor but the boot time would suggest otherwise. Somewhat perplexed......................

Anyways, congrats on being the first one here to try it out.

regards
JohnG
 
lol to the part when u said u feared scratching ur mbp with ur belt buckle. im the same way! btw, since you DID scratch your mbp with the screw driver, you've gone places others wish to never go. so now i have a question for you, how hard did you do it in order to scratch? and since you kno how much force to cause a scratch, how easy do u think it is to cause by accident?
 
johnnymg said:
I wonder if there is another 'bench' program available. Those #'s are REALLY quite poor but the boot time would suggest otherwise. Somewhat perplexed......................

Anyways, congrats on being the first one here to try it out.

regards
JohnG
Click to expand...

just one more reason why geekbench is a joke
 
dsprimal said:
lol to the part when u said u feared scratching ur mbp with ur belt buckle. im the same way! btw, since you DID scratch your mbp with the screw driver, you've gone places others wish to never go. so now i have a question for you, how hard did you do it in order to scratch? and since you kno how much force to cause a scratch, how easy do u think it is to cause by accident?
Click to expand...

You have to apply a lot of pressure to get the screws off so I think it's fairly easy to slip up and slide the screwdriver. You'll be ok though, trust me I was really really worried and pissed when I scratched, but it's so miniscule you'd have to flip the machine over and stare at those areas, it's not immediately obvious and discerning to the eye (one scratch looks deeper than the other but when I run my finger over the scratched area, I feel no difference).

Don't worry, just do it :)
 
does anyone know if there will be any problems running bootcamp and installing windows 7 on this drive?
 
I don't see why there would be problems with this drive on Win 7 using Boot camp. As stated in their marketing campaign, the drive does its efficiencies independent of the OS and I was more worried about OS X working with it, but my doubts have been eliminated.

Also, not very noisy as previously stated. Pretty quiet imo. Coming from 5400, more noticeable though.
 
Looks like Momentus XT is perfect for G-Drive mini FW800 with few VM images and other stuff like OS's onboard. But I'd stick with 120Gb Vertex as system drive.
 
maratus said:
Looks like Momentus XT is perfect for G-Drive mini FW800 with few VM images and other stuff like OS's onboard. But I'd stick with 120Gb Vertex as system drive.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's any better than your typical 7200rpm drives in this situation. It only has 4GB of Flash onboard, so if your VM image is far bigger than 4GB (I don't think it'll see that the vm file as "package" container, but merely a file), it's not going to get cached at all, it'll just load from the spinning drive instead. Therefore it makes no sense to have it as external drives or storage drives. Don't forget that the Flash is only used for reading, not writing. Therefore if you're doing a lot of things in the VM, changing files constantly in the VM, it will not get cached either.

Now bootable OS on it, is a different story. It'll probably be faster than typical 7200rpm drives as long as you use it often.
 
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