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Installed Momentus XT in my 13"

adding my 2 cents

got this drive installed last night, my observations...

- boot up time noticeably reduced, love it :)
- does it vibrate more than stock drive? yes, I can feel a very slight vibration when my palm is on the palm rest. I would say typical 7200rpm hd vibrations, nothing unexpected or annoying at all.
- don't have enough use with it to comment on battery usage, I would expect it to affect, ohms law tells us that ;) the trade off of slightly less battery time for faster performance is something i've always been willing to sacrifice. I'm not a heavy battery user, I'm usually plugged in anyways.

Honestly my biggest concern with any hard drive is quality. I/we are all taking a chance with this new drive. I have been a long time seagate fan, never having been burnt by their drives (just have to steer clear of problematic series...)

Bottom line so far... buy it :)
 
ooglek said:
I'm not sure you are right. I was thinking about it, and if I were Seagate, when a move occurs, the controller could be hooked into the command to update the block map for the 4GB cache.

For example, move block 1234 2048 bytes to block 4321 2048 bytes. If that block exists in the 4GB cache, simply update the map from 1234 to 4321. Then when that block is requested, it loads from the 4GB cache rather than the disk.

Of course, since Seagate doesn't fully (or at all?) disclose HOW the caching occurs, we may never know. But I have to assume that one of the discussions they had when developing the Momentus XT had to do with common activities that could negatively affect performance, such as defragmentation, which on Unix and OS X, happens automatically and regularly. In XP it did not, but maybe Win 7 and Vista implemented the same. It would seem silly NOT to consider and implement such logic into the controller.
Click to expand...



Yes, I can see your point.
However I was only repeating what I had read in a review. However I cannot find it as I have read so many of them. I think it was probably there speculation or a guess.
 
Momentus XT - calculation of Flash size

I'm about to order one of these.

Do anyone know if you can kinda calculate how many apps, that can have a spot on the Flash part of the drive?

Example (hope you understand):

Say the apps i use most often and would like to launch fast are:

Toast Titanium = 634 MB
Aperture = 491 MB
VMWare Fusion = 138 MB
Photoshop CS5 = 400 MB
iWork 09 = 380 MB

Total: 2043 MB

Say i open just these apps, a lot of times, right after getting the drive. Since it's under 4 GB (minus some for the OS), would that mean, that these apps gets stored in the Flash and thus will open very fast everytime?

Can you calculate it like that; based on the size of the App file in the Applications folder?
 
rasmusDoh said:
I'm about to order one of these.

Do anyone know if you can kinda calculate how many apps, that can have a spot on the Flash part of the drive?

Example (hope you understand):

Say the apps i use most often and would like to launch fast are:

Toast Titanium = 634 MB
Aperture = 491 MB
VMWare Fusion = 138 MB
Photoshop CS5 = 400 MB
iWork 09 = 380 MB

Total: 2043 MB

Say i open just these apps, a lot of times, right after getting the drive. Since it's under 4 GB (minus some for the OS), would that mean, that these apps gets stored in the Flash and thus will open very fast everytime?

Can you calculate it like that; based on the size of the App file in the Applications folder?
Click to expand...

It's not going to store all of those to the cache, probably less than 500MB at best. What the hard drive will do is load the most often used LBA blocks (think slices of your hard drive every 1mb, the most often you use the same slice, it'll store that slice to the cache)to the cache, not the actual application files. Meaning if you are running CS5 but never use the plugins, its not going to load the plugins to the cache until one day you do. It'll readjust to it.

So don't worry, it'll take several runs to actually cache them all and you'll be a happy clam.
 
Don't have the momentus xt anymore, but out of morbid curiosity:

Does this drive behave well with 10.6.4 update? I'm reading two negative reports about it on Newegg.
 
installed the 640gb just a few hours ago, running pretty smooth thus far, no comment on battery as i havent run it on just battery yet
 
thadoggfather said:
Don't have the momentus xt anymore, but out of morbid curiosity:

Does this drive behave well with 10.6.4 update? I'm reading two negative reports about it on Newegg.
Click to expand...

To the OS the drive is no different than any other OS. It will work with 10.6.4 and any future update.
 
I know this has been thrown around a lot - but you just installed it...

does it seem louder than stock drive? and how much louder if it is?
 
I know this has been thrown around a lot - but you just installed it...

does it seem louder than stock drive? and how much louder if it is?
Click to expand...

I have just bought one, for my 15" MBP 2010 i5 and compared to the stock 5400rpm drive it is a lot louder. As I could not hear the stock drive (until it started to brake). However I can only hear the XT when on my own in a quite environment.But you do notice the sound.

Also it is quieter than my brothers HP laptop fans, which I find funny :p.

So I dont think you will notice a sound difference if you already have a 7200rpm drive.

However the speed increase is worth it (both the flash and the faster spin speed)
 
I was seriously looking at getting the WD Scorpio black 500gb, but this drive has definitely caught my attention. I think I might go for one of these.
 
Another question about the Momentus XT

So if the most used applications are stored in the SSD, does it automatically update as other programs become more used?
 
greythorne said:
Can anyone answer the above?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes, it works.

The Momentus XT doesnt have its own G-sensor (because it will collide with MBPs own motion sensor), some drive has got its own sensor, which is only good for cheap notebooks, because they dont have their own. Im just saing that for completing the information :).
 
Can I use this drive in an optibay? should i? i currently have just a 256g ssd
 
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