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Momentous XT 500GB Hybrid Drive Rating

mrsir2009

mrsir2009

macrumors 604
Original poster
Sep 17, 2009
7,505
156
Melbourne, Australia
I know lots of people are considering this hard drive at the moment, so I thought I'd rate it on speed, noise and power consumption.

For speed, it is pretty good. I noticed the difference on startup, as my 13" MacBook Pro starts up in 15-17 seconds instead of 25-30 seconds. Opening applications was slightly faster, but not considerably. However once you have opened it once, then closed it again it opens in under 2 seconds until you restart. My old hard drive certainly didn't do that :D

As its a 7200 RPM drive, its a bit louder than my old 5200 hard drive. There is a tiny bit more vibration when its on desks too. Personally I don't mind the noise. I actually like it a bit, it makes you feel like the hard drive is faster and more powerful :p

For a 7200 RPM drive it is very good with power. In fact, so far my battery life has improved a noticeable amount :D I am very pleased, as I was expecting to see my battery life suffer :)
 
I have the 7200 RPM 500GB drive that Apple provides. Would I see much improvement with this hybrid? Do they make anything larger than 500GB?
 
Thanks for that! I'm another one considering getting this to replace my stock drive. How hard is it to swap them around by the way?
 
croooow said:
I have the 7200 RPM 500GB drive that Apple provides. Would I see much improvement with this hybrid? Do they make anything larger than 500GB?
Click to expand...

I have found with this hard drive that the speed of the computer increases if you never turn it off :p Weird I know, but its pretty good. I may never turn off my MacBook Pro again...

The Hybrid also makes startup a lot quicker and reduces power consumption. Nice touches...
 
Reddmanz said:
Thanks for that! I'm another one considering getting this to replace my stock drive. How hard is it to swap them around by the way?
Click to expand...

It take 5-10 minutes tops assuming you have a 2009 or 2010 MBP. Easiest upgrade you'll probably ever have. It takes much longer to Format and restore the software but most of that time you can watch TV or read a book. It takes about 1 week for the drive to settle down and fully learn, I've had one in my MBP for about 2 months and noticed it vibrated quite a bit on initial turn on and longer than normal to load however once it learned the startup is super fast (less than 20 seconds) and vibration settled down to next to nothing.
 
Reddmanz said:
Thanks for that! I'm another one considering getting this to replace my stock drive. How hard is it to swap them around by the way?
Click to expand...

Well this cool guy I know came round and we put it in. He's very experienced with that sort of stuff and I was a bit scared of screwing up... :eek: It wasn't that hard. However you'll need some instruction if you've never done it before ;)
 
croooow said:
I have the 7200 RPM 500GB drive that Apple provides. Would I see much improvement with this hybrid? Do they make anything larger than 500GB?
Click to expand...

In your case the upgrade would be nominal in day to day use. You would see dramatic increases in speed on startup and application loading though.
 
rkaufmann87 said:
It take 5-10 minutes tops assuming you have a 2009 or 2010 MBP. Easiest upgrade you'll probably ever have. It takes much longer to Format and restore the software but most of that time you can watch TV or read a book. It takes about 1 week for the drive to settle down and fully learn, I've had one in my MBP for about 2 months and noticed it vibrated quite a bit on initial turn on and longer than normal to load however once it learned the startup is super fast (less than 20 seconds) and vibration settled down to next to nothing.
Click to expand...

For the first couple of hours mine throbbed, but it seems a bit quieter now. Plus my bootup time is 15-17 secs.

Oh, and the hard drive stops spinning when its not in use too :D
 
rkaufmann87 said:
It take 5-10 minutes tops assuming you have a 2009 or 2010 MBP. Easiest upgrade you'll probably ever have. It takes much longer to Format and restore the software but most of that time you can watch TV or read a book. It takes about 1 week for the drive to settle down and fully learn, I've had one in my MBP for about 2 months and noticed it vibrated quite a bit on initial turn on and longer than normal to load however once it learned the startup is super fast (less than 20 seconds) and vibration settled down to next to nothing.
Click to expand...

That doesn't sound too hard. Id just hate to pay a stupid price for something I could do myself. Are there any videos posted on how do this? I reckon I'll pick one up as a Christmas present for myself now haha.
 
mrsir2009 said:
I have found with this hard drive that the speed of the computer increases if you never turn it off :p Weird I know, but its pretty good. I may never turn off my MacBook Pro again...

The Hybrid also makes startup a lot quicker and reduces power consumption. Nice touches...
Click to expand...

Sounds good! Thank you.
 
Reddmanz said:
That doesn't sound too hard. Id just hate to pay a stupid price for something I could do myself. Are there any videos posted on how do this? I reckon I'll pick one up as a Christmas present for myself now haha.
Click to expand...

There's probably a ton about replacing hard drives on MacBook Pros :)
 
Reddmanz said:
That doesn't sound too hard. Id just hate to pay a stupid price for something I could do myself. Are there any videos posted on how do this? I reckon I'll pick one up as a Christmas present for myself now haha.
Click to expand...

If you own a 2009-2010 MBP you don't have to look any further than the owners manual that came with the machine. It's right in there!

If you don't own one of those machine check out iFixit and Youtube, in Youtube I'd be willing to bet there are over 100!
 
It seems like an awesome drive.

I got the WD Scorpio Black, though, because I figured I'll be getting an SSD soon enough.

Does anyone have any info on this compared directly to an SSD?
 
JKK photography said:
It seems like an awesome drive.

I got the WD Scorpio Black, though, because I figured I'll be getting an SSD soon enough.

Does anyone have any info on this compared directly to an SSD?
Click to expand...

The extra revs are great for the speed, as is the 4GB of SSD. But it still won't be as fast as a full SSD. The great part about the XT is that its cheap, its a lot faster than a normal 5200 RPM and even faster than a 7200 RPM, and you get lots of space (500GB).

One thing I might possibly do in the next couple of years is replace the optical drive with a second 500GB Hybrid :rolleyes: It would be very nice...
 
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