[updated]Seagate-500GB 2.5" Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drives $139+Bonus HP Notebook Sleeve

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• bigosmallo on 30/11/2010 - 12:33 Comment score below threshold.
  • 

    Pizza The Hut on 30/11/2010 - 12:35

    +5

    I was going to say the same but this is a hybrid drive

  • 

    Dan_ on 30/11/2010 - 12:35

    +3

    Its a solid state hybrid, not a regular notebook hdd.

    • freddy on 30/11/2010 - 12:39 Comment score below threshold.
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        issh on 30/11/2010 - 12:41

        not sure…, it a HDD but acts like a SSD

      • 

        skinny on 30/11/2010 - 12:41

        +6

        All drives have a cache in MB (16-64MB), this has a 4GB SSD in addition to absorbe peak write and provide SSD hits on read.

        6 Months ago it was $190 - and it has come down in price

      • 

        Evil-Elmo on 30/11/2010 - 12:44

        +1

        I read a review a while back on these, and they seemed to get like 80% of the performance of a SSD without sacrificing too much cost or space.

        If I were upgrading I think I'd just go pure SSD, but this is sort of a middle ground (particularly if you need more space).

      • 

        timhn on 30/11/2010 - 12:48

        +6

        @freddy :
        That's volatile memory you thinking about. This is a hybrid included the SSD (about 4GB) portion. The SSD only for read only. The drive controller will decide to move regular access files to the SSD - hence read-only.

        May be you can do a quick read here
        http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-revi…

  • 

    thewinchester on 30/11/2010 - 13:24

    +15

    Here's a quick suggestion, before you open your mouth and blurt out rubbish like that - know your product.

    • 

      kar200 on 30/11/2010 - 15:24

      +1

      +10000

  • 

    [Deactivated] on 30/11/2010 - 14:06

    +3

    This drive has a 4GB NAND in addition to the 500GB spinning platter and DRAM cache. Can match performance of SSD in some cases at a fraction of the price. Anandtech has a very positive review of this drive.

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  Syndicate on 30/11/2010 - 12:47

  It has 4gb's of solid state cache, its about 50% faster than a stock 500gb 7200rpm drive according to reviews.

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  Jabba the Hutt on 30/11/2010 - 12:48

  I remember reading the AnandTech and Tech Report reviews of this drive. One review pretty much said it was a must have, the other found it was a mixed bag, and those discussing the articles could not agree which did a better job testing the drive.

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  Pobman on 30/11/2010 - 12:56

  +1

  When the HD in my Dell went the way of the Dodo (and despite the HD having a 3 year warranty the laptop only had a 1 so Dell refused to fix it…. Grrrr) I bought one of these drives to replace it. I cant say that I have noticed '50%' increases, BUT it is certainly a speedy drive. Applications like Photoshop and Firefox which I reguarly open are much quicker, Photoshop in particular.

  If you want to get an idea of how it works open a large program on a normal computer. Then close it. Open it again and it loads much faster, as its coming from cache. Well thats kind of how this drive behaves on your most common progams all the time, but without the need to open them the first time to get the boost of course.

  Note however that each time your defrag the drive is loses all this data and takes a little while to learn everything again… I changed my windows 7 defrag schedule to much less frequent for this reason.

  • 

    StewBalls on 30/11/2010 - 13:05

    +2

    When the HD in my Dell went the way of the Dodo (and despite the HD having a 3 year warranty the laptop only had a 1 so Dell refused to fix it

    I've been through this, pull out your HDD & send it back to the manufacturer, they'll do the right thing! ;)

    • 

      Pobman on 30/11/2010 - 17:49

      Well I tried, the online RTA will not let me as it comes up as OEM. Telephone support were not helpful either, again said it should be replaced by Dell.

      End of the day I can't be bothered wasting my time on it… and I just will not buy a Dell again in Australia. Very shameful for such a big company.

  • 

    stumo on 30/11/2010 - 14:05

    Thanks for the mini review.

    Yeah, I'm a bit sceptical about it only having 4GB of SSD onboard. If it were even 8GB it would cover most setups, but I reckon 4Gb is just too small to have the desired effect. I have 2x standard 7200rpm Mentus'in one of my laptops, and they are fast for a physical 2.5" drive anyway, and this XT should be faster most of the time. But it comes at about a $30 premium.

    In my case I went pure SSD on another one of my laptops (via the 100GB OCZ Vertex LE $199 deal a while ago), and programs just open instantly, every single time. Forget about a perceived 50% speed increase, with a good SSD, you blink and you miss it.

    So if you don't need the space, go SSD and it will own. It will give your laptop a new lease of life.

    If you do need the space, this XT drive is probably your next best option, but significantly slower than a pure SSD.

    If you don't care then get the standard 7200rpm drive, it is still pretty fast as far as 2.5" drives go.

    • 

      Pobman on 30/11/2010 - 17:51

      I have an SSD in another laptop, not top of the range but not a cheapo cheap either. You get the SSD boost on this drive on things you do a lot, while on an SSD you get it on everything.

      If I was buying again I would get another combo drive for sure, its not a huge amount more than a normal HD (but a hell of a lot cheaper than a 500gb SSD!) and to me worth the premium.

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  thewinchester on 30/11/2010 - 13:23

  +2

  I've recently purchased one of these drives to upgrade my Macbook Pro Late 08, after also perusing a ton of reviews on it. I've had it for nearly a week now, and it's significantly quieter then the stock Hitachi, and comes into it's own during boot and frequent application load.

  I'd personally recommend this drive, and at the price BudgetPC are offering it's a steal.

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  chylld on 30/11/2010 - 13:32

  I just installed one of these in my Revo R3610 HTPC and it makes a HUGE difference! Got it for $159 at PC Case Gear so this is a pretty good deal.

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  kevst on 30/11/2010 - 13:49

  Not sure about testing methodology but this HDD ranks 402nd on the test benchmark the poster links to. May be the test doesn't take advantage of the SSD capability - but thats a pretty low rank.

  • 

    urandack on 30/11/2010 - 14:13

    +2

    2.5" HDDs are always going to be slower than their 3.5" counterparts and SSDs, hence the low rank. You need to compare apples to apples. Also, benchmarking a hybrid drive is rather irrelevant, because it's not an accurate representation of how it will perform in real life scenarios.

  • 

    xgt-666 on 30/11/2010 - 14:22

    i found a review here:http://www.myce.com/review/seagate-momentus-xt-500gb-hybrid-hdd-review-36205/Real-World-tests-6/
    they did a Real world copy tests, look pretty good

    • 

      stumo on 30/11/2010 - 14:28

      That review just confirms my skepticisym…

      Why didn't they include the non XT 7200rpm Momentus, which is basically the same drive without the SSD part? That would have given us the most telling results. Therefore, do they have something to hide?

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  slowmo on 30/11/2010 - 16:21

  despite the scepticisms, this drive works faster than my 5400rpm drive and probably cooler than 7200rpm ones.

  having a large cache is useful for drives ever since the 1980s where people actually paid a bit more to get that 2mb more cache in their harddisks.

  i have one excellent real life scenario here, which is as a data drive to store mp3s and videos that you listen to frequently, I reckon that the mechanical bit of the drives will hardly spin up because all those mp3s and videos will be entirely run off the 4GB cache.

  i'll hope that one day, hdd manufacturers will put in APIs for people to select which files to keep in the cache… it will be excellent to choose just read-only OS files.

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  Cap N on 30/11/2010 - 17:20

  Knew this was going to happen! Just ordered it from MacSales yesterday… :(

  • 

    xgt-666 on 30/11/2010 - 18:13

    +4

    poor guy…

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  pencilman on 01/12/2010 - 10:58

  Was really keen to get this for a Macbook pro - but a quick google search on momentus xt macbook problems shows a few issues with the drive.
  Apparently works really well initially, then later can get brief pauses in hard drive access, low battery life.
  Scared me off this deal.
  Nice price though.

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  raydragon on 01/12/2010 - 17:41

  +1

  This would make a good option for use in a laptop that has only the ability to hold the one HDD (ie most of them) Some bigger laptops allow for 2 HDD's and for them a Pure SSD as a boot drive along with a Larger Standard one is possibly the better option. Thats the way i went with mine and really happy with it. When you have only the one HDD bay, a Pure SSD becomes a pain due to the lack of storage space.

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  happykamper on 01/12/2010 - 17:56

  -1

  Seagate used to be a good brand years ago, but now their drives have a high fail rate (which I have experienced myself). I would just go a decent WD 7200, or splash out on a full SSD drive.

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  casmxl on 01/12/2010 - 21:37

  I have this one in my notebook. It works much better than I expected.
  Highly recommended for any notebook if you can afford it.