How much speed gain from Hitachi 7K500 to Momentus XT?

[hzxu]

I am currently using Hitachi 7K500(7200RPM, 500GB) in my MBP 13"(mid 2009), the speed gain is quite a lot compared to the stock 5400RPM 160GB Hitachi HDD, I saw many people recommending Momentus XT, it is 7200RPM with 4GB SSD for frequently used blocks, so I'm wondering is it worth replacing current HDD to Momentus XT? My main uses would be programming(XCode, Eclipse, Netbeans) and VM(Virtualbox), also, Safari for web surfing and iTunes for music, Photoshop. Will the increase in performance noticable in my case?

Thanks a lot!

 

[oakie]

I am currently using Hitachi 7K500(7200RPM, 500GB) in my MBP 13"(mid 2009), the speed gain is quite a lot compared to the stock 5400RPM 160GB Hitachi HDD, I saw many people recommending Momentus XT, it is 7200RPM with 4GB SSD for frequently used blocks, so I'm wondering is it worth replacing current HDD to Momentus XT? My main uses would be programming(XCode, Eclipse, Netbeans) and VM(Virtualbox), also, Safari for web surfing and iTunes for music, Photoshop. Will the increase in performance noticable in my case?

Thanks a lot!

avoid it, as that drive is not fully compatible with Macs, resulting in intermittent freezing. it's due to the drive powering down under it's own built-in power profile when the computer and OS least expect it, instead of following the power profile commands from the OS.

 

[ViviUO]

avoid it, as that drive is not fully compatible with Macs, resulting in intermittent freezing. it's due to the drive powering down under it's own built-in power profile when the computer and OS least expect it, instead of following the power profile commands from the OS.

4 months in and I do not have this problem.

 

[oakie]

4 months in and I do not have this problem.

congratulations?

it's a very well documented problem, although i just read another thread further down in here that a new firmware, SD24, seems to have fixed all of the freezing issues.

 

[ViviUO]

congratulations?

thanks?

 

[fortunecookie]

Your battery will also drain faster.

 

[talmy]

I installed a new Momentus XT on my Al Macbook a few days ago. It's been working fine. No freezes and has been in heavy use. I did the SD24 firmware upgrade when I first installed it so don't know if it makes a difference.

But as far as it being worth it for the OP, well keep in mind that it gives major speedups for users that are frequently reading from a small amount of drive. Compiling will pick up speed, although what percentage of the time are you coding and debugging (no improvement) compared to compiling? For iTunes, what is the size of the library and are you really disk bound? No improvement at all for Web surfing.