Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
To be fair, I haven't let the laptop run all the way from a full charge down to the automatic sleep, so I'm only reporting my battery run time based upon how quickly the laptop now goes from (say) 100% down to 50%. It could well be that I need to calibrate the battery now that I've changed some hardware...
 
I've been running the XT for a couple weeks now, I got it with the SD23 Firmware installed then upgraded to SD24 a few days ago.

It does drain a little more battery life, but overall the speed of the drive over compensates for that.

My 2010 MacBook Pro i5 now boots up in 30 secs average, sometimes 20-25.

Applications load faster, when i do a restart i can click on firefox or outlook and will be open within a few bounces.

I have noticed though, last night my Mac started acting weird... like things where taking some time too load, for instance i opened up my app folder seemed to be taking longer than usual... usually that would open right away.

The MacBook just went all slow on me for a while, and I am not sure if it was the drives fault or not?

Either way, it seems to of sorted itself out now after a reboot. I'll be keeping my eye on it though.
 
I have noticed though, last night my Mac started acting weird... like things where taking some time too load, for instance i opened up my app folder seemed to be taking longer than usual... usually that would open right away.

The MacBook just went all slow on me for a while, and I am not sure if it was the drives fault or not?

Either way, it seems to of sorted itself out now after a reboot. I'll be keeping my eye on it though.

I've had the same issue - I usually just sleep my 2010 MBP; after a few days things seem to slow way down; with spinning beachballs and non-responding programs. A reboot fixes i; I am also not sure what the issue is.
 
wow, this drive seems so iffy, hmmm. Why doesnt wd or someone legit make this drive instead of seagate.
 
wow, this drive seems so iffy, hmmm. Why doesnt wd or someone legit make this drive instead of seagate.

Basing all your opinion on a few posts on a forum is silly, the most vocal people are the ones who've had issues... I've had no issues at all, I do experience the spin down issue about once a day, but it causes a freeze for about 2-3 seconds, that's it.
 
If you have a MBP, stay away from this drive. Period. They are extremely temperamental with OSX.

How so? I have 2 and everything has been running fine for the past few weeks? At what point should I be seeing the temperamental state? Did you see the post about the firmware update to correct the "spindown" issue?
 
wow, this drive seems so iffy, hmmm. Why doesnt wd or someone legit make this drive instead of seagate.
That is a pretty ignorant statement. Seagate is one of the oldest and most well respected hard drive manufacturers. They have dominated the server industry until only very recently. Though to be fair they have had a spate of drive issues lately. I think this has less to do with their techs reliability and more to do with the kind of demands we put on our drives these days.
 
i wouldnt say ignorant, but from my standpoint, ive had two drives from them and both failed on me. So for me, they might be legit in other things, but ive had nothing but problems with them. All im saying is, why doesnt someone who I, PERSONALLY, trust more like WD make a hybrid drive, thats all im saying.


Also, this drive just seems to be really hit and miss, some love, some hate. I cant decide between this or a WD 500 7200 Scropio or whatever its called but im still weighing both.
 
I'm sure one of the other manufacturers will clock on soon and start producing hybrid drives, I would not be surprised if you start seeing soem crop up next year.

ALL in all... I think the XT is a great drive despite the minor problems it may have.

Mine seems to be running ok right now. :D
 
I have just installed the XT and it seems to be working very well. It´s firmware 23, so I´m not sure if I should get the 24.

Compared to my previous, WD 640gb scorpio Blue, it seems to co-operater much better with my MBP. I had so many "spinning Beachball" issues with the WD. I ran the hack PDAM or whatever to stop the spinning up and down issues.
But my MBP felt sluggish most of the time, now it really feels snappy. So I´m happy so far.
 
Last edited:
I got one (SD23) just after getting my i7 MBP. Seemed pretty quick, but I noticed I'd sometimes get big lags on opening things and it would lock for a few seconds/beachball.

I use my Macbook for music production (Ableton Live) and noticed sometimes it would be a bit glitchy and I'd get audio dropouts. I thought maybe I was pushing it too hard, although my old hackintosh which should have been slower never seemed to have the same problems. In the end this came to a head when I found running a really simple long set in Ableton would glitch every 5 or so minutes. There's NO WAY this should happen with pro audio software on a machine of this standard. Whittled it down to being the drive 2 days before a gig, bought a new WD scorpio black, installed it, and ran a 4 hour set without a single audio glitch the next day. It's been LOADS better.

Overall the machine isn't as fast as with the XT during peak access/boot/etc, but I can get a continuous data throughput for long periods without glitches ruining the music in front of an audience! I still have the Momentus XT, and will try putting SD24 on it and giving it another try. Currently not keen to back it all up, rip the MBP to bits and change the HDD over, try to update the firmware, and if it's no better change it all back again.

If anyone has experience using this in their macbook pro with SD24 for music production I'd be grateful for feedback. Often people may not notice access glitches in normal use when they're not running lots of mission-critical low latency audio in front of hundreds of carefully listening people!!!
 
Went for it with Seagate XT Hybrid 500GB

Has anyone got any experiences with hybrid drives. As in Seagate Momentus XT 7200.1 500GB SATA 2.5" 32MB HYBRID 4GB SSD. I have read a couple of reviews and they come out well but would be interested in user experiences.

Any advice gratefully received

Ok finally bit the bullet and installed Seagate Momentus XT. Used Carbon Copy cloner which was straightforward for a non-technical person like me.

Results so far are outstanding, very quick to load Aperture Library and RAW files, much better than before. So far no additional noise from drive as reported elsewhere. Overall very impressed.
 
can't boot from bootable CD

I want to update the firmware on my hard drive (Seagate Momentus XT) with a provided "bootable" disc (I think this is DOS based). I'm updating from version SD22 to SD24.

I have an early 2008 Macbook Pro 2.5Ghz Penryn, never used bootcamp, never installed Windows, only one partition. I ghosted all files from the factory HD to this new one. As far as I can tell, everything works fine. OSX 10.6.6 boots normally. Machine is quite snappy. Here is where the problem starts.

After restarting and holding down "option, then selecting the CD icon", or "C", I hear the CD drive spin up, then spin down. All I see is a blank screen, with a single blinking cursor at the upper left hand side. I've waited for up to 15 minutes with no activity.

I have tried searching for help on this topic, but this problem usually persist when people are dual booting into a Windows partition. My CD drive seems to work fine as I can open, read, and write to/from CDs while I'm in OSX. I have booted into single user mode and performed the fsck command, and the HD seems to be in good condition. I have also reset my PRAM. I seem to have exhausted my troubleshooting options. Please advise. Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you.
 
*edit: I realize this is the macbook form now. I was just doing a general search, hopefully this question is still answerable*

Sorry to raise a somewhat old thread, but I was thinking of getting either a 7200 drive or one of these drives for a Mac Mini that I will more then likely be getting today. Getting it off CL and its 400 bucks from an older couple that doesn't use it much at all and needs the money.

I will be using this for photography and it comes with 2gigs or ram which I will upgrade to 8 gigs. I am not sure however if I want to upgrade the HD.

I was initally looking at getting some 39 dollar 7200rpm 160gig HD from Newegg (i think it was 160gig, maybe more) since I will be storing all of my pictures on externals for the most part. I came across this harddrive while looking at a website showing me how to remove a mac mini hard drive and thought "sounds promising!" but then of course i've seen the bad reviews, though the power isn't really bothering to me because its not a laptop.

I just want to know though, will this really give me much of an increase that I will care for? Like I said im upgrading the ram to 8gigs. Should I save my money and go for a cheaper regular 7200 hd or pay 60 more to get the 250gig XT drive. Yes I make enough to afford the price difference but money is tight so I am trying to save and if its not going to offer much of a noticable boost for me then I would rather not.

TL;DR: Wondering about upgrade for Mac mini. Putting in 8gigs of ram and wanting to upgrade hd.

Need to know if 8gigs + this XT beats the pants off of 8gig + this 7200rpm set up and justifies me paying more when I am trying to save and get the most bang for my buck.
 
i wouldnt say ignorant, but from my standpoint, ive had two drives from them and both failed on me. So for me, they might be legit in other things, but ive had nothing but problems with them. All im saying is, why doesnt someone who I, PERSONALLY, trust more like WD make a hybrid drive, thats all im saying.


Also, this drive just seems to be really hit and miss, some love, some hate. I cant decide between this or a WD 500 7200 Scropio or whatever its called but im still weighing both.

Well, Its probably a matter of time before W. Digital makes a hybrid drive, But its a market for now that seagate beat everyone to, So they get the worm so to speak. Its all about personal opinion, I for one HATE W.D. because a few years back I bought a retail drive to find out a year later it was a refurb APPLE drive with only 1yr warranty, and when I sent them the pictures to prove it (apple logo on drive label itself) they straight up cut communication with me. Seagate from then on, Not one failure across 6 drives yet. (oldest drive is 3 years and counting with constant use.)

EDIT: Just noticed that this was a necro thread XD yay for necro posts bringing it to the top of the forum!
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.