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Installed Momentus XT in my 13"
- Thread starter thadoggfather
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My stock Hitachi 320GB 5400 drive is the quietest drive I have ever owned...I simply NEVER hear or feel this drive...I've been amazed at just how quiet they can make drives these days...truly astounding...
Finally got mine, yay! Been using it for almost a day now.
The stock Hitachi was pretty much silent. The XT is slightly audible, you can hear the platter spinning. It's less audible than the WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM that I had in my previous MBP though.
My first impressions of this disk is very good. Boot time (from the moment I see the spinning wheel under the apple) is 10 seconds to it's fully booted. That's with some startup items (iStat, Growlhelper, RightZoom, VMware fusion helper, Coolbook). It feels very fast indeed. Once I see the desktop background, everything else pops up in a flash. Guess that is what they call the "SSD" feeling. There is a clear improvement in app startup time. Safari and other often used apps start very quickly.
I cloned my old drive, so I can clearly tell the improvement from how it was before. I did make a defragmented image though (hdiutil create -srcfolder), but that's obviously not gonna help this much.
All in all, I'm very pleased with having a 500GB drive that also increases the responsiveness of my machine by a lot.
The stock Hitachi was pretty much silent. The XT is slightly audible, you can hear the platter spinning. It's less audible than the WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM that I had in my previous MBP though.
My first impressions of this disk is very good. Boot time (from the moment I see the spinning wheel under the apple) is 10 seconds to it's fully booted. That's with some startup items (iStat, Growlhelper, RightZoom, VMware fusion helper, Coolbook). It feels very fast indeed. Once I see the desktop background, everything else pops up in a flash. Guess that is what they call the "SSD" feeling. There is a clear improvement in app startup time. Safari and other often used apps start very quickly.
I cloned my old drive, so I can clearly tell the improvement from how it was before. I did make a defragmented image though (hdiutil create -srcfolder), but that's obviously not gonna help this much.
All in all, I'm very pleased with having a 500GB drive that also increases the responsiveness of my machine by a lot.
You need to at least restart 3 times to let the hybrid drive "learn" your system for it to fully perform.
My experiences with a 500GB Momentus XT
To give a little backdrop, I have a 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, unibody MacBook (aluminum). About 2 months ago I upgraded the stock drive to a 500GB Seagate drive. I was happy enough with it; I could feel some slight vibration, it ran a bit hotter and I took a slight, but noticeable, hit on my battery life. The drive was faster than my stock drive but I still looked at my wife's speedy MBA (2.13GHz with 128GB SSD) with envy.
Recently, I heard about the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive. I read over the posts outlining other peoples' experiences and saw a couple YouTube videos. Almost everything looked pretty good and I decided to pick one up. I tried to order one through TigerDirect but it wouldn't accept my Canadian postal code (rather than a zip code). Good thing too: I found it in stock at a local NCIX store. Got it for $151 Canadian.
On to the results (all times in seconds)...
Times with 500GB, 7200rpm Seagate drive:
Startup to login screen (from the press of the power button): 41.7 / 40.0 / 42.0
Word : 16.9 / 10.5
Excel : 3.0 / 3.1
Pages : 9.9 / 9.4
Keynote : 6.3 / 7.5
PowerPoint : 5 / 10.5
iTunes : 5.2 / 6.2
Times with 500GB Seagate XT drive:
Startup to login screen (from the press of the power button): 45.6 / 42.1 / 38.5 / 29.3 / 28.4
Word : 10.9 / 7.8
Excel : 3.3 / 3.0
Pages : 7.3/ 3.6 /
Keynote : 6.0 / 3.2
PowerPoint : 4.8 / 3.9
iTunes : 4.2 / 3.4
So, generally, the times are faster. It also feels snappier. Even though this is a 7200rpm drive, like the Seagate it replaced, I feel less vibration. Also, it seems to run cooler thus far.
I am quite happy with it so far. I'll post back if that changes. I hope this helps anyone on the fence.
Good luck,
m&c
To give a little backdrop, I have a 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, unibody MacBook (aluminum). About 2 months ago I upgraded the stock drive to a 500GB Seagate drive. I was happy enough with it; I could feel some slight vibration, it ran a bit hotter and I took a slight, but noticeable, hit on my battery life. The drive was faster than my stock drive but I still looked at my wife's speedy MBA (2.13GHz with 128GB SSD) with envy.
Recently, I heard about the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive. I read over the posts outlining other peoples' experiences and saw a couple YouTube videos. Almost everything looked pretty good and I decided to pick one up. I tried to order one through TigerDirect but it wouldn't accept my Canadian postal code (rather than a zip code). Good thing too: I found it in stock at a local NCIX store. Got it for $151 Canadian.
On to the results (all times in seconds)...
Times with 500GB, 7200rpm Seagate drive:
Startup to login screen (from the press of the power button): 41.7 / 40.0 / 42.0
Word : 16.9 / 10.5
Excel : 3.0 / 3.1
Pages : 9.9 / 9.4
Keynote : 6.3 / 7.5
PowerPoint : 5 / 10.5
iTunes : 5.2 / 6.2
Times with 500GB Seagate XT drive:
Startup to login screen (from the press of the power button): 45.6 / 42.1 / 38.5 / 29.3 / 28.4
Word : 10.9 / 7.8
Excel : 3.3 / 3.0
Pages : 7.3/ 3.6 /
Keynote : 6.0 / 3.2
PowerPoint : 4.8 / 3.9
iTunes : 4.2 / 3.4
So, generally, the times are faster. It also feels snappier. Even though this is a 7200rpm drive, like the Seagate it replaced, I feel less vibration. Also, it seems to run cooler thus far.
I am quite happy with it so far. I'll post back if that changes. I hope this helps anyone on the fence.
Good luck,
m&c
Are you using bootcamp? Would like to know if dual boot has any effect on the times.
You feel less vibration because there's less seeking with the files cached on the flash instead of the drive, same reason for less heat and a bit longer battery life, the drive is idling while the file are accessed from the cache.
If you don't already have a CCC clone, just install SL and restore it from Time Machine, it'll be a bit longer from CCC clone installation but you should be fine either way.
Does anyone know where I can buy this in the UK (from a trust worthy seller)?
Thanks, Oh yeh has anyone experienced noise when you move the laptop with the drive in?
Thanks, Oh yeh has anyone experienced noise when you move the laptop with the drive in?
I'd like to know this too. I've searched high and low and nobody has stock.
I don't think they'll be in the UK before next week
Eeeew moving parts. Come on chipmakers! LOWER the prices of real SSD's and stop these half-baked drives.
It's not half-baked drives, you need to understand that it's an evolution of hard drives, not SSDs. Hard drives are not going anywhere for another decade. Anything to help make them faster is good.
The price of the SSD is dependent on the flash chips itself and the economy as well. Fabs are still producing at low levels to try to maintain its profit margin as the recession continues to hurt them. They are now just getting the largest orders from Apple for the flash chips on all its iOS devices, which stabilize the cost of the flash chips as well as increasing the cost as the supply decline in order to push the orders out.
The switch to sub 20nm process by the end of the year will help decrease the cost of flash chips, it'll allow the fabs to produce more smaller, denser and faster chips per wafer, which means the cost will decrease automatically for more storage. The first one will probably be Intel G3 SSDs by Q4 of this year, we should see 160GB SSD for 300-400$ and 320GB for 700-800$ from them with the rest following up.
I'm in the US and Newegg is backordered a week and amazon is pre-order. Anyone know who in the US has em in stock?
Be sure to sign up on newegg for autonotify. Thats what I did and ordered Friday and it was delievered today. ABSOLUTELY love mine.
I used autonotify and received my drive today. I opened the box and was a little surprised.
I don't have much experience buying from Newegg (usually it's Amazon). I was expecting a disk in it's retail box with manual, warranty info, etc. Instead I got a disk in the electrostatic bag and a packing list.
Is this typical for Newegg? I would've expected some kind of notice on the page like "does not include retail packaging" or something like that. Or maybe I missed that.
The disk says it's the 500G Momentus XT. Is this normal practice for Newegg?
LT
Hard drives are, in most cases, are sold as "OEM". So no, they do not come with retail packaging, manual, warranty info, stickers, etc.
And this is especially the case with sites such as Newegg, NCIX, DirectCanada, and other online stores.
Newegg's prices are good because they sell a lot of OEM listed items without the retail packaging...