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Seagate Momentus XT Problems

I

idrawdoodles

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 5, 2010
2
0
Hi all!

I finally got my 500gb seagate Momentus XT I've been drooling over only to find out it's a complete nightmare. Upon searching through forums I have yet to find conclusive or consistent problems, I read about some I had but I had many others.

I installed the drive in my macbook pro with the hopes of getting it to run faster, which it did but only in certain instances. The pros were fast boot times, applications start fast but many problems persisted. Please follow up if you've had any of these problems.

1) Clean installation of Snow Leopard got stuck at the 10 minute mark 2 times. Each install attempt took much much longer then it has in the past.

2) Disc based installation of Final Cut Studio 3 took about 6 hours. At first I thought this might be my internal drive so I bought an external DVD drive with no difference.

3) Software installations in general took much longer then they had on my hitachi 120GB 5400rpm drive, or any other mac I've used for that matter,

4) Downloads seemed to take longer

5) Upon restarts the system would half gong 2 times then boot.

6) I OS would randomly not respond. (I've heard this is a problem due to spin up/down times)

7) Firefox would crash and Safari would not let me install the web plus thing for attachments, it would just stall and never install.

8) Using compressor I had many lag problems and issues with compressor needing to "reading project" that would stall my workflow till it's done. I tried doing this task in compressor by booting externally from my old drive, this problem did not happen.

9) Launching color crashed the system in a way I've never seen (but no damage was done).

That's the jist of it, I only had my drive for 3 days before returning it and now I have a 500gb western digital scorpio black on its way. For standard use of a computer the XT seems perfect but when you get into editing, pro apps and such, it causes many problems.

Please share any details of problems like.
 
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with the XT. I've been wanting to get it too, but the newegg reviews and all the posts in the seagate forums have dissuaded my buying it. It's too bad as it seems to have so much potential to be a great drive. I hope they release a version 2 or WD/Hitachi/others make competitors.
 
Unfortunately, I've read about a lot of issues with the XT. For some it's perfect, for others like yourself, not so much.

You'll be extremely happy with the Scorpio Black. Very quick and very quiet. Not as fast as a SSD, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at its speed.
 
I just bought Momentus XT. it is terrible. I cloned the harddrive at first. It booted externally but once i installed in the mac it started giving me problem.

I would get the gray screen with the "no" sign and question mark. sometimes it would give some weird errors. Finally i erased it and did a clean install and the install stopped after 10 min saying there might be errors on the disc.

I am wondering . is there any point in continuing with this or should i just get a 500 gb 7200 rpm drive.

any thoughts.
 
I have an XT that ive been using for 5 months now with no problems...multiple installations of snow leopard. Use it as time machine currently.
 
I got my Momentus XT in DEC and i haven't had a single problem. I used a hardware cloner to do my disk clone and the XT is just perfect
 
oplix said:
These drives are notorious for SMART failures and data corruption. stay the **** away.
Click to expand...

Here we go...like every thing electronic you will have failures, sorry that yours failed but move on with your life. I have one and have put it through hell and I have no problems at all, no clicking, no failure, no noise.
 
I've got the XT with the latest firmware. From the first day that I installed it, I have had the infamous chirping noise when I leave my MBP idle for awhile. I am assuming it is the sound of the heads parking. Do any of you experience this? Thanks!
 
I have been running the drive for about 2 months so far with the SD23 firmware with no problems. I would like to update to SD24 but my super drive is dead:( It won't read any burned cd's, not sure if it might need cleaned?
 
sjfwhite said:
I've got the XT with the latest firmware. From the first day that I installed it, I have had the infamous chirping noise when I leave my MBP idle for awhile. I am assuming it is the sound of the heads parking. Do any of you experience this? Thanks!
Click to expand...

Nope, I don't hear any noise from mine ever. So far best 2.5" drive I've used, and a very pleasant upgrade! It's quite amazing just how much faster this is to my stock drive that was in here...
 
Had one for a week - lockups, beachballs, and corrupt data - returned it and installed a 7200 RPM Hitachi. 1/2 the price and reliable.

I think this drives goes in the 'great idea, not fully baked' category.
 
lhotka said:
Had one for a week - lockups, beachballs, and corrupt data - returned it and installed a 7200 RPM Hitachi. 1/2 the price and reliable.

I think this drives goes in the 'great idea, not fully baked' category.
Click to expand...

So because hundreds of people come here and complain about problems with the MBP it should be considered "great idea, not fully baked" also?
 
tjb1 said:
So because hundreds of people come here and complain about problems with the MBP it should be considered "great idea, not fully baked" also?
Click to expand...

+1

I know of a few people with XT's and none have ANY problems. My MBP is cruising along, no beach balls, lockups and anything else being described here...
 
I didn't have any problems wither until I started using my MBP more. Movies hang, songs freeze and even surfing the web I'll get the beachball intermittently. I do have the SD24 firmware installed as well. This Momentus XT is overrated.
 
I couldn't handle the amount of vibration the XT kicks out and have swapped it with a Scorpio Black 750gb and am happy with both the speed and the fact the vibration has gone and the noise is virtually nil.

I'll probably go for the 2nd gen of these Hybrid drives. I just don't think they got it right this time.
 
Its a shame people have had so many problems with this drive. It looks great on paper and I was ready to pop one in my 13" but all these horror stories have kept me from doing so just yet.
 
My MomentusXT is upstairs sitting in an external enclosure. I tried using it in my 15'' Macbook Pro but couldn't deal with the noise and vibrations. Also, it seemed to beachball quite a bit. I'm running on the stock, 7200 Seagate that came with my laptop and honestly, I didn't notice a huge slow down when I switched back. The last time I installed it I upgraded to SD24 hoping it would fix the issues. It didn't.

Overall, I'm bummed that I spent $130 on the drive and its sitting around, unused. It simply wasn't worth it.
 
Celeron said:
My MomentusXT is upstairs sitting in an external enclosure. I tried using it in my 15'' Macbook Pro but couldn't deal with the noise and vibrations. Also, it seemed to beachball quite a bit. I'm running on the stock, 7200 Seagate that came with my laptop and honestly, I didn't notice a huge slow down when I switched back. The last time I installed it I upgraded to SD24 hoping it would fix the issues. It didn't.

Overall, I'm bummed that I spent $130 on the drive and its sitting around, unused. It simply wasn't worth it.
Click to expand...

Its not a SSD, it doesn't load everything from flash...it loads the most used items and that takes a while to establish with the drive. Instead of complaining about it maybe you should have talked to Seagate to get it replaced.
 
Have any of you managed to get Seatools for DOS to run from its' boot cd? The MBP keyboard and trackpad are not recognized. Googling this problem has not resulted in any solution. Thanks!
 
I haven't had any problems with my 500GB momentus drive in my 13" MBP however my battery life does suffer, I can watch it drop almost a percent a minute when I am on battery and I have heard its because the Momentus drives use so much power.

AM
 
ashman70 said:
I haven't had any problems with my 500GB momentus drive in my 13" MBP however my battery life does suffer, I can watch it drop almost a percent a minute when I am on battery and I have heard its because the Momentus drives use so much power.

AM
Click to expand...

Momentus or Momentus XT? The Momentus is not a hybrid.
 
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