Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive review

primesuspect

Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive review

Ivan

fatcat

Samsung F3R 7200rpm 500GBx2 Raid0



$90 total cost before hard drives went stupid expensive

Once hard drives go back to normal, I would like to see what one of these (hybrids) cost.

But I wouldn't pay $240 for something slower than an easy Raid0

fatcat

I will add this.

If your only option is gaming on a laptop, or you somehow prefer having a gaming laptop over a PC, then this drive is a good option being 2.5" and all

primesuspect

You're comparing apples to oranges; this is a 2.5" hard drive for mobile devices. I mean, yeah, a 15K RPM SAS enterprise server drive is going to be faster than this too.

From the desktop perspective: That RAID 0 is just your storage space. No way in hell are you gonna put your OS on that drive. So really, your cost is $90 + whatever drive you want for your OS, and now you've got three loud, hot mechanical drives instead of one 2.5" mobile drive.

CannonFodder

Wish I'd known about this about 3 weeks ago - the SSD I bought is already forcing me to consider moving applications around.

Storrm

i've liked the idea of this drive for a while but i feel like its not quite there yet. i think the reads are like 120 vs an ssd with say 400-500. id love to know how much a speed different going from 8 to 16GB would be, going from 4 to 8 only upped the reads by 20. it would be nice if thay could work some magic with the next XT 1TB/32GB with 550 reads :3 not going to happen tho. still hdd can still go to about 6TB per plater(using salt crystals) but thats a while down the road. i think SSDs are just evolving faster now becoz of the market. thay been taking there time tho, thay did appear in the 1970s. really theres no good reason that SSHD haven't been around for a long time. imagine a 2gb ssd with a 250gb hhd running xp, that could of took of like a rocket a few years ago and be standard now, there would be no reason to have normal hdd, and ssd wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Tim

Despite the benchmark scores, I still see hybrid drives as an undesireable gimmick. Go pure SSD or stay with a normal hard drive. I'm planning to put a 120 GB Vertex 3 and a pair of 1 TB Seagates in my next gaming PC build.

Hatop

There are several reasons that SSD drives didn't take off previously to the last several years. First off, the actual manufacturing processes didn't really have the capability of producing anything near the storage density of current drives for a reasonable price. It wasn't until the last several years that it became economical to produce a solid state drive that could be purchased in the consumer space. Along with the inability to produce the required transistor density for a solid state drive, we also couldn't produce the drive without also requiring a large amount of power to continue to run the drive. Because of both the density issue and the power issue, it never made sense to use a SSD in place of 1 or more magnetic drives. One way around the density issue is using MLC(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell), but this reduces performance and increases more errors. Hence, most fast SSD drives use single level cells that reduce density and increase cost.

While I agree that this technology has existed in some state for decades, I disagree that there have been remotely economical ways to produce the product until the last 5-8 years. Advances in trace size reduction, power consumption, and controller intelligence have allowed the creation and rise of the SSD as a viable path of storage for near term storage systems, boot drives, and drives that feature large amounts of non-sequential reads/writes. However, they still lose on overall cost per Gigabyte as well as performance per Dollar.

primesuspect

Tim said:

Despite the benchmark scores, I still see hybrid drives as an undesireable gimmick. Go pure SSD or stay with a normal hard drive. I'm planning to put a 120 GB Vertex 3 and a pair of 1 TB Seagates in my next gaming PC build.

This drive is not for massive desktop gaming PCs.

Butters

$239 ouch. My 500GB XT was obtained for $99 a year ago but still can be had for around $140. Its the perfect laptop HD, fast, has plenty of storage and 5-year warranty.

Cliff_Forster

I've been using Seagate drives for the past couple years because their warranty service is the absolute best of any company I've ever had to deal with. I had a drive fail in a friends machine, emailed Seagate, got advance RMA, had the replacement drive to me with a box to return ship the other drive in 48 hours, no questions asked. Best Warranty exchange I have ever dealt with. Fast and easy.

As far as the price of the drive, Mechanical drives are all a little inflated right now due to some recent floods at major manufacturing facility's in Taiwain. Even if the factory's that made these specific drives were not effected, demand is outstripping supply right now. All mechanical drives are a bit inflated, this will improve given a little more time.

I've installed a 500GB XT Hybrid similar to what Butters describes in a laptop for a friend. I think he paid about $129 at the time. It is a huge upgrade from a standard 5400 RPM laptop drive that most OEM's use.

fatcat

Thailand Cliff

primesuspect

Butters, don't forget that ALL drives are more expensive now due to the Thailand situation. The 500gb is now $140.

RyanMM

Criminy guys, most of you are totally missing the point of the article.

If you can only fit a SINGLE hard drive in a system, and you're limited to the 2.5" form factor (which is the case with laptops, some SFF systems, etc), then this drive is a breakthrough and certainly worth the money when your data footprint exceeds what an SSD can provide.

Yes, cost should only be compared to current prices on models, in which case, yes, there's definitely a price premium over the $140 500GB Seagate hybrid, but this does offer an increased SSD cache and the extra 250GB usable space. If you have 501GB of data and need it mobile, this just created a viable option where none existed.

"Oh, that doesn't compare to my RAID5 SSD array in speed or" jesus christ shut up. :P

primesuspect

Don't forget: The 500gb XT is older; SATA 3gb interface instead of 6gb

pigflipper

I am now seriously considering this drive for a SFF media PC I am planning on building after the New Year; only have space for one drive and I want storage size, speed, and small physical size.

ardichoke

Hmm.... this could be a worthy upgrade for my laptop (once prices come back down)

primesuspect

The difference in my own laptop was night and day, man. It sort of feels like I have a 750gb SSD sometimes.

fatcat

600GB SATA3 2.5" Velociraptor for reference

Mt_Goat

RyanMM said:

Criminy guys, most of you are totally missing the point of the article.

If you can only fit a SINGLE hard drive in a system, and you're limited to the 2.5" form factor (which is the case with laptops, some SFF systems, etc), then this drive is a breakthrough and certainly worth the money when your data footprint exceeds what an SSD can provide.

Yes, cost should only be compared to current prices on models, in which case, yes, there's definitely a price premium over the $140 500GB Seagate hybrid, but this does offer an increased SSD cache and the extra 250GB usable space. If you have 501GB of data and need it mobile, this just created a viable option where none existed.

"Oh, that doesn't compare to my RAID5 SSD array in speed or" jesus christ shut up. :P

Ryan hit it squarely on the head. It all boils down to the application. I also feel that there is significant room for improvement in the tech as it matures. This along with the Thailand issue improving in the not too distant future will bring the cost down considerably. The only thing I didn't like was the low end of the ATTO but that may never be felt in real life. But on the low end ATTO the Velociraptor trounced the Momentus XT. Maybe 2 in RAID0 for an HTPC would be a good useage too!

Mt_Goat

fatcat said:

600GB SATA3 2.5" Velociraptor for reference

OUCH!!! I think Greg just made a point. :hair:

shwaip

Eh, the VR will have its own downsides (temps, power usage, increased cost).

fatcat

shwaip said:

Eh, the VR will have its own downsides (temps, power usage, increased cost).

we are still talking about a "gaming laptop" right? :tongue:

primesuspect

Yeah, for $450.

Let's put this another way:

Seagate has found a way to deliver a very damned fast 2.5" hard drive for $240, which is faster than any single drive in its price range.

fatcat

$259 on newegg o.O

But it is not 750GB, and if we're going for the best size/speed award, the seagate has it for now

Gargoyle

If prices were lower right now, I'd consider getting one for my laptop. My 320GB Scorpio Black (atto attached) gets about 80 MB/s. It was a huge, noticeable difference when I upgraded to the Scorpio Black from the 5400 rpm drive that came with it (40-45 MB/s).

While the speeds of the XT would fall under the cap of the SATA 150 controller on my laptop, I still wonder if I'd see the ~110 MB/s that Prime got in his newer laptop. There's a bit on Wikipedia about access to cache benefiting from the faster interface.

Mt_Goat said:

Maybe 2 in RAID0 for an HTPC would be a good useage too!

I wonder if the caching algorithm would work just as well in RAID usage?