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Seagate Momentus XT

trondah said:
I'm curious as to why they think cloning would degrade performance. I don't see a big difference between that and starting with a clean slate.

In my opinion it would be an advantage to clone your existing drive. From my understanding this drive will learn the most used reads, in a cloning process you will just write a lot of data to the drive, nothing will be learned at that point. Once you boot up it will start learning as you will read from the drive.

Will get mine in a couple of days, I will definitely clone my old one.
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Something to do with SSD/HD alignment, I think. Cloning might transfer a misalignment while a straight install will have the alignment properly set, or something like that. And that misalignment will cause performance issues. Google it if you're really interested, as I'm not too sure on the specifics myself. I'm getting an SSD for my Mac soon and I'll be breaking from my tradition of cloning.
 
LedCop said:
Something to do with SSD/HD alignment, I think. Cloning might transfer a misalignment while a straight install will have the alignment properly set, or something like that. And that misalignment will cause performance issues. Google it if you're really interested, as I'm not too sure on the specifics myself. I'm getting an SSD for my Mac soon and I'll be breaking from my tradition of cloning.
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I think what you are referring to is the problem of aligning partitions on a drive with 4k sectors. This drive is not affected by that.
 
overall great alternative but I am going to wait til the new generation of Intel SSDs and also when the price come down. I just purchased a 2.5k 15" MBP i7 and Ipod Touch so I got my tech fix taken care of lol...I will probably say if you do not "need" one than wait for cheaper SSD prices and if you have the money for this than go for it. My $.02 is wait tell SSDs are cheaper, faster, and more stable(meaning less frequent firmware updates).
 
hey Mike, i know its and old post, but i just got to know about this drive, after all this time of use of the seagate xt ? what do you think of the drive after all? please tell me about speed, noise, vibrance, battery life, etc? compared to a regular 5400rpm drive?
 
Momentus XT $500 for $109 on Amazon.com

Hi there everyone. For those of you who have been waiting to pull the trigger on the Momentus XT, the 500GB version is currently $109.99 on Amazon. (see screen shot). I know the price will drop as newer models come out, but I just wanted to put it out there.

Cheers
Traci
 

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I just cloned the XT500 with Disk Utility/Restore and installed on my Macbook Pro 13". LedCop & rmcwhae have a point... I did have an issue with grey screen for 40 seconds on start up and slow loading of applications until I booted from the OSX install disk and repaired permissions. Now, it's working as expected! When Lion is released, i'll clean install.

The drive does have a higher vibration and runs a bit hotter than the stock Hitachi but I havent used it long enough to test out the battery use. There does seem to be a lag after the disks spin down but not sure yet.

So far, I think its fast and worth it! 129.00 on Amazon.
 
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Increased battery-usage is my major concern with this drive in a MBP. Can anyone chime in with some info on battery-usage compared to the stock drive?
 
UncleMac said:
Increased battery-usage is my major concern with this drive in a MBP. Can anyone chime in with some info on battery-usage compared to the stock drive?
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don't get this drive if you are worried about your battery honestly. this drive has issues with power savings, it's an issue I knew and accepted and have no problems with personally.

If you get the newer/optional 23 firmware you will be putting a hard drive that never spins down into your macbook. I don't have hard numbers but that will eat the battery faster.
 
i did some battery testing and i lost 45-60min with this drive comparing to stock 5400 rpm drive. dunno how much is lost with normal 7200 rpm drive..
 
I have tried this drive using hdapm to change the power savings between min, max and default. At min, the drive wakes up and sleeps too often, so you really notice the sound of the spin-down and spin-up. But, unlike regular drives, your applications don't seem to hang as hard during that spinup (as some data is cached on the Flash). That's my gut feel anyhow.

I didn't really measure the battery performance, I can't give you a good feel for it there.

Boot times are ~great~, even though I don't boot that often. The applications I use most often load much more quickly. It's a great upgrade, for me.
 
New Seagate XT is coming before the end of the year:

While still mad over losing the top spot in the hard drive market to Western Digital, Seagate has managed to find a reason to celebrate as its Momentus XT solid state hybrid drives have reached the 1 million mark in terms of shipments.

Introduced in late May 2010, the Momentus XT 2.5-inch drives bring together the best of both regular hard drives and solid state drives, speedy NAND and spacious platters. As so, these storage solutions feature platters summing up to 500GB (they go at 7200 RPM) and 4GB of SLC (single-level cell) NAND Flash memory. This combination allows for faster boot and applications loading times, while keeping density pretty high and prices relatively low.

Currenty Momentus XT drives are selling as standalone products and are available in laptops like Asus' ROG G73JH, Sony's VAIO VPCSC1AFM/S, Toshiba's Satellite E305-S1990X, and Alienware's M17X and M18X.

Hybrid drives are predicted to be adopted by 25% of all new PCs shipped in 2015 (that's IDC's estimate) so Seagate is planning to push ahead with its line and will actually release next-gen Momentus XT models before the end of this year.
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Seagate hybrid drive shipments pass 1 million units, new generation incoming

Press release: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=07481600a0ba1310VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD

"We're delighted that the Momentus® XT drive has been enthusiastically received in the marketplace and look forward to introducing the next generation of the product, which will give consumers an even better, faster computing experience, before the year is out."
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