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Momentus XT Review MBP

rmbrown09

rmbrown09

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 25, 2010
949
1
USA
So I ordered one of these early last week from Tiger Direct, and since the whole world has ordered one as well, it's severely back ordered.

But I have been getting concerned with all these reviews I am seeing, that it vibrates enough to be a sex toy.

the 13" MBP apparently is nuts.. but maybe that was just his drive? I used a friends 13" Sony Vaio last night, and it felt like a jack hammer, and i was like "Please please please don't be like this"

my MBP is 15" (see sig), the momentus is juts 7200 RPM right? not any more than another drive? what are your guys experience with 7200 RPM in MBP's (make sure you state your size)

I am almost thinking maybe I should cancel the order because there is still time, and just go for a pure SSD :(
 
I had a Hitachi TravelStar 7K500 in my previous 15" MBP and it vibrated no more and no less than the 5400 RPM Hitachi that it replaced. With that said, everything that I have read about Seagate's offering, the Momentus 7200.4, has lead me to believe that it does in fact vibrate more than a comparable 5400 RPM drive. That's why I have personally opted to shy away from their products, including the Momentus XT.

On the other hand, unless you are particularly sensitive to vibrations, I wouldn't worry about it, at least not until you've tried it yourself. There's nothing in the same price range that offers performance anywhere near what the Momentus XT is capable of unless you're willing to sacrifice capacity.
 
My WD 7200 drive in my Powerbook vibrates much less then the Seagate in my MBP. Maybe Seagates are just like that
 
The ones that vibrate excessively or make a "whistling" sound are lemons. If you do not receive a defective one, it will vibrate more than your current 5400rpm drive, but it (probably) won't be something you'll notice.
 
My momentus xt made a lot of vibration and questionable noises, and I returned it.

Going to install the Intel X25-M and Optibay.
 
Glad I passed on this drive. Sounds like a nuisance to get a little faster boot time. My 5400 rpm factory drive is plenty fast. I can live with 30 seconds longer boot time and microseconds difference with opening applications.

One day I'll get a real SSD, but until the prices fall, I'm perfectly fine with my 5400 drive. There will always be something faster out there...
 
hmm, well I'm going to just hope it isn't anything crazy. 5400 is nice and quiet, but slowwwwwwwwwwww

SSD is great! If you want to sell your house.

This seems like the perfect "Hybrid" but apparently it's a vibrator.

God why is there no answer!!!
 
fwiw, Seagate 250GB 7200rpm in MBP 17", I don't notice any vibration whatsoever.

Planning on trying the XT.
 
The only people worried about cost of SSD's are the people who haven't used them, imho.

I have an SSD as my boot drive in my PC and it's just night and day difference.

The SSD has been the best performance upgrade I've made to my PC *ever*. It trumps going to a dual core when they were new or even a latest and greatest video card, etc.. The responsiveness and immediacy of the drive is simply amazing, my MBP feels like an old dog in comparison.

Now I am worried about the longevity of the drive while using OS X and lacking TRIM support, my Win 7 PC w/ X25-M and Intel ICH9R chipset support TRIM all natively and the drive has never skipped a beat, it's just as fast as the day I bought it.

I'm also not convinced that losing the optical drive is the best answer as I have a WD Bllue 640GB drive in here that is over 1/2 full with a ton of stuff. And this drive, due to it's density, is actually quite fast for an HDD, even faster than most 7200RPM drives while maintaining lower power consumption and vibration, seemed like a perfect fit when I bought the drive for my Late 2008 model and am just as happy with it in this warranty replacement machine also, but still, not SSD fast.

I'm also not convinced of the algorithm used on the Momentus XT drive being able to cache everything efficiently and keep that NAND fresh like TRIM on a pure SSD does.

So I'll be waiting for TRIM in OS X before upgrading or finding a drive with comparable IOPS to the Intel drives that have their own garbage collection or something, so yeah.

I paid 225 for my SSD at NewEgg and they're 195 now, so they're an even better deal than mine was, it's just been amazing upgrading to it on my PC, everything loads instantly, no waiting for thumbnails to populate or menus to appear or anything, it's just immediate.
 
I've got a 512GB ssd in my macbook, but I was planning on going w/ the XT for a home server I'm building. I read a bunch of reviews on newegg, and they mention it's noisy.... so i decided to pass.
 
I got mine coming in on Monday. I read about the vibrations but I'm going to take a chance with it. If I don't like it, I'll return it. SSD was not an option for me because I plan on Bootcamping Win 7 with lots of games and Movies. I also don't care for a opti-bay so I want to added speed.

Minus the NAND ram, i believe this drive has the biggest cache at 32mb. All other 2.5 sata drives i've seen max out at 16mb.

I'm going to take extra measures to reduce vibrations by installing some foam around the drive bay.

I will post a review when I get this finished.
 
spaceballl said:
I've got a 512GB ssd in my macbook, but I was planning on going w/ the XT for a home server I'm building. I read a bunch of reviews on newegg, and they mention it's noisy.... so i decided to pass.
Click to expand...

Unless you're building a fan-less server, I really doubt any laptop HD drive would be able to be heard/felt in a relatively noisy (compared to MBP's) desktop. I've got one and it's barely louder than the stock 5400rpm drive in my 13 MBP.
 
I've had mine installed for nearly a week now and haven't experienced any vibrations at all.
Heck, I can barely hear any noise difference compared to the stock 5400rpm drive that was in here. The only time I ever notice it is when it spins down/up.

The boot/app launch speed is definitely noticable though.
 
Yeah, what's the vibrating everyone is talking about? I installed mine in last week. The only thing making it vibrate is the SuperDrive spinning...

As for noise, I guess if you have to have absolutely complete silence, the drive's clicking will annoy you, so just pony up the cash for an SSD if that's a deal breaker.

It is not, nor will it ever be, competition for an SSD. It is, however, the fastest 7400rpm notebook HDD on the market.
 
I have one of these on order. Its sitting in Tennessee right now. It should be here on Tuesday, I'll report back after I get everything installed.
 
TRIM support is now available on 10.7 Lion. Should we be enabling it with these drives? Currently Apple only enables TRIM on their own SSD drives but it can be enabled using TRIM Enabler which turns on support using non-Apple SSDs (it's a simple change to one of the ktext files that the enabler makes).

http://www.groths.org/?p=308
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
TRIM support is now available on 10.7 Lion. Should we be enabling it with these drives? Currently Apple only enables TRIM on their own SSD drives but it can be enabled using TRIM Enabler which turns on support using non-Apple SSDs (it's a simple change to one of the ktext files that the enabler makes).

http://www.groths.org/?p=308
Click to expand...

It isn't available for this drive as it is a hybrid drive, so no (not that to could even be enabled as it can't on this drive not being a true SSD).
 
I have the Momentus XT drive now and I love it! It takes about a week for it to learn what you use the most and then it puts that in its 4GB cache. I really recommend it for people who would like a faster computer, but can't justify the cost of the SSD's as of current. Setup/Installation took me awhile, but that is all user error on my part. I'd highly recommend one!
 
I just installed the Momentus XT yesterday in my 13" MBP! Vibrtions?? I can't even tell when the drive is being accessed, with my MBP on my lap. I can't hear or feel it at all. I know it's obviously working fine since I am typing this reply!

And before I had placed it in this MBP, I had it sitting in a NexStar hard drive dock so I could clone my old HDD via USB. It's not an actual enclosure... it's literally a dock that you just sit the HD down into. So if it was a very noisy drive with lots of vibrations I surely would have noticed when it was transferring all my data - since the drive is mostly exposed in the dock! And it was still very quiet and no vibrations.

Something to note though when installing the new HDD make sure it's snug in the bracket! I made sure mine was securely in place before I replaced the back lid and booted er' up. I suppose if you don't screw the bracket down tight enough it could maybe cause some vibrations. I imagine the bracket might work like a shock mount to a degree. So just make sure it's in there snugly.
 
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