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Love my new Seagate Momentus XT !!!

EmeraldICE said:
Now to figure out what to do with the old drive... I think I might just stick it in my server. I've already got enough external drives.
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I'll be more than happy to take it off of your hands! I can always use more storage! :D

First impressions: The drive is a definitely noisier than the original Hitachi, but not my much and certainly not enough to annoy. No vibrations whatsoever. At all. For those of you experiencing vibrations: you either got a faulty drive and should RMA or you didn't use the little prongs that you were supposed to remove from the old drive
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andothfc said:
I'm pretty fussy when it comes to noise and, to a lesser degree, vibration from a hard drive so I'm keen to find out whether this is within my comfort range.
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I can confirm that after almost a week of use I have experienced nothing in the form of increased vibration vs. the stock drive.

As far as noise, I have my fans bumped up more often than not using SMCfanControl and that masks most drive noise so I haven't really noticed enough to compare to the stocker.

Overall I am very happy with it.
 
Ralzy said:
Mind testing the affect on battery life? I've read its noisier and drains more battery life which is why I haven't gotten one yet.
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that is completely the opposite.

no moving parts means no noise and less power because it doesnt have to make it spin
 
tflournoy95 said:
that is completely the opposite.

no moving parts means no noise and less power because it doesnt have to make it spin
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Incorrect.

We're not talking about a pure SSD drive here (unless I missed something). The meat of storage on the XT is on a conventional 7200rpm mechanical drive - only 4GB is solid state. Therefore energy consumption is still a valid concern for folks.
 
I have the 500GB Momentus XT in my 2010 Mac mini. It's definitely a lot better than the 320GB 5400rpm drive that was in there originally, but it's not in the same league as a real SSD, like the OCZ Vertex in my iMac. But then again, that's to be expected.
 
WilliamG said:
it's not in the same league as a real SSD, like the OCZ Vertex in my iMac. But then again, that's to be expected.
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Exactly. No one is expecting this to match SSD performance but a 500gb SSD will cost you around £1500, as opposed to a £100 for an XT.
 
andothfc said:
Exactly. No one is expecting this to match SSD performance but a 500gb SSD will cost you around £1500, as opposed to a £100 for an XT.
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I'd much rather have a 120GB SSD than a 500GB spinning disk as my main drive. In fact, that's what I did with my iMac. My Mac mini has the XT, but only because it's just used as a file server.
 
Just got my 250GB Momentus XT in. Going to pair it with my 80gb IntelG2 SSD in optibay. Copying over my files from current optibay storage partition to the XT now and then will install windows 7 on the XT in 2nd partition. Badaboom, will update sometime again!

*edit*

got the new XT installed in the optibay, no issues thus far. I think since it's not my main access drive it doesn't make much noise at all since it's not being used a lot. I have my "Home" folder moved to the optibay and just applications and system files on the SSD.

Used it mostly in Windows since I have it split partitioned for Win7 Ultimate. Installed SC2, steam games on it but haven't fully tested or, nor examined boot times just yet. But yeah so far no major noises or vibration issues over the stock Hitachi 5400rpm
 
Installed mine earlier today. No discernible difference under normal operation yet. It clearly runs louder and vibrates more than the stock 5400rpm drive but it's not at all bad.
 
I had a crappy 320gb Momentus XT that was a real vibrator, i sent it back and got a 500gb one which is perfect. You really have to concentrate to feel the vibration and it's quieter than the WD Black it's replacing.

If it's louder than the original 500gb drive, it's really a small difference. As my 320gb experience proves you can get bad drives and if you stay with that single impression you can think they are all the same.

Loving the speed.
 
tflournoy95 said:
that is completely the opposite.

no moving parts means no noise and less power because it doesnt have to make it spin
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Anandtech ran some tests on an SSD and found that it actually drew more power than the MBPs original hard disk. this surprised me, as I assumed that no moving parts would mean less battery drain too.
 
I just popped an XT in my MBP. I have the latest MBP 15" with the i7 CPU.
AT first, it didn't seem like anything to really get excited about, but the more you use it, the faster things seem, which makes sense.

I don't think the the noise or vibration is much more noticeable than what was in it, which I did have an Hitatchi 7200 RPM drive in it.

As for spin down, The drive has spun down while I was doing something, and it stayed down, until I did something to access the disk, so it appears to be working properly.

Applications are faster to load, at least ones I use often, and boot time has improved greatly.

If you expect pure SSD speeds consistently, you will be disappointed, but it is better than a standard 7200RPM drive, right in the middle of the two.

So far, for the price point, and the performance increase, I'm satisfied.
 
oplix said:
To be honest, going back to the stock hard drive, I don't really notice any difference between it and the XT.
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how can it be that this user posts this and so many others swear by the drive?

what goes on? :confused:
 
RWil85 said:
how can it be that this user posts this and so many others swear by the drive?

what goes on? :confused:
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because noticing a difference is objective. Also depends on usages. Sure I don't know if one would notice a big difference in the XT vs 7200RPM drive when it comes to just using your computer normally or casually. I use it b/c I reboot probably 5x a day between OSX and boot camp. OSX I have my Intel 80gb SSD which just kills it, boots in like 20 seconds or less haven't timed it. But my boot camp is on my XT and it boots up very fast. This is important to me b/c sometimes I get lazy to go into BC for gaming, but this really helps since it doesn't take long at all to go between either OS. And yeah the XT definitely helps my boot times for going into Windows (and loading SC2).
 
davidjacobs21 said:
So how do these compare to the 500Gb Hitachi Travelstar 7200rpm drive that newegg has on sale today
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The hard drive itself is faster than the Hitachi, plus it has a SSD-Cache if you didn't realized that.
drummingcraig said:
Just installed mine this evening (500GB model) and already notice a HUGE difference.

Before:
OS X 10.5.8 2.4GHz Intel C2D (late 2008/early2009 Unibody)
5400rpm 250GB stock drive with only 10GB free
Startup Chime to usable desktop: 90+ seconds :eek:

After:
Startup Chime to usable desktop: ~30 seconds

Haven't had too much time to play with it, but I haven't noticed any noise whatsoever from it. Apps pop open much faster and things are much snappier.

I will post back with more feedback once I've had a chance to really drive it around the block.
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A $29 update to Snow Leopard will cut that even further.
Heilage said:
Since your MacBook has S-ATA, the the drives can be up to Petabytes in size, which is far larger than what you will see in a laptop for many, many years.

You can insert any S-ATA drive you want, just remember that if you buy a really fast SSD, you will saturate the controller.
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PPC Macs with SATA are limited to 2.1TB as well, as APM limits the drive. Intel Macs are fine until 127PB, but this applies to everything starting with UltraATA-100, and is not a SATA-only thing.
andothfc said:
Exactly. No one is expecting this to match SSD performance but a 500gb SSD will cost you around £1500, as opposed to a £100 for an XT.
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If you would buy it from Apple, yes. Else, starting at £910.
andothfc said:
The main component of the XT is the 7200rpm which runs louder and uses more battery than stock 5400rpm drives. So the XT is less efficient than the stock drive.
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That may be true for WD Scorpio Blue 5400RPM drives, but not for the Hitachi/Toshiba ones Apple uses. The Toshiba 320GB 5400RPM drive in my 2010 Mini consumes more power than the XT, and I guess MacBooks use the same hard drives. Older 5400RPM hard drives are even worse.
RWil85 said:
how can it be that this user posts this and so many others swear by the drive?

what goes on? :confused:
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The Momentus XTs performance develops over time as it finds out which data to put on the SSD-Cache. The guy wasn't relaxed enough to wait until the drive develops full performance after ~5 reboots, I guess.
 
Updates...

Any updates from any users of this Momentus XT drive? I'm waiting to see how it performs over a long period of time, not just hearing people saying it's great but only used it for like a day or two.

Many reviews I read say the drive starts glitching out after a good 3 months of use. Like many people here, I'm having a to buy/not to buy relationship with this drive and need more outside input on it's performance.
 
hmm it is interesting to see the mixed emotions on this drive, it makes a legit solid state drive seem so much better, but they are so over priced they are not even a consideration, i have a brand new macbook pro and i can boot to the desktop in 24 seconds, with a stock 500GB 7200 rpm HDD and i would love for that to drop down below 10 seconds =D and yes i do shut my computer off if i am away for more then 1 hours or even a few minutes, i am trying to save electricity. How would this drive affect gaming? i have star craft 2 installed to my hard drive, how would it affect the load times on the game? i find the new 2.66 ghz i7 processor is almost off when running star craft, so that leaves me to believe that my less then happy load times are due to my hard drive? and occasional lag? I feel with my new macbook and all its amazing speed and yes it is very fast that the hard drive is slowing it down HUGE and i cannot get less then a 500 GB hard drive and i am not will to spend over $200 so does this make the seagate XT as close to perfect as i can get?
 
Newegg sale on these, ends 9/12/10

Sooo newegg.com is giving $10 off the 500gb XT drives. Coupon code for this is NBHDSALEWKEN as stated on their site. Sale ends tomorrow on 9/12/10.

I couldn't resist, I pulled the trigger and bought it. I still have my speculations on this thing but am willing to try it at that very very VERY low price. Or I can hold on to it until it seems more stable to use with new updates to the device.


Anyway so for anyone looking to grab this thing for a cheap price and try it out, I suggest do this now.
 
All I can say is WOW. Brand new MBP13. Replaced stock drive with XT500 prior to first boot. Used OSX disks to format drive, then installed Snow Leopard (also dropped 8g ram in at the same time).

No problems whatsoever! The drive did everything correctly... system installed perfectly (aps too)... no vibration or other anomolies reported here...

Last but not least, on a new, clean system as described my boot time is 16 seconds to the dock (I guess that's how it's measured). Smokes my old Dell.

Granted I've only been usinig it for a few days, so I don't have the extended use report yet... but i love it. I got mine at OWC, along with the ram (they offer a $50 rebate on old 4g ram, so the total price was better than Newegg in the end).
 
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