750GB Seagate Momentus XT Review: The Latest and Greatest Hybrid Drive Discussion

There are basically three types of primary storage drives for PCs: hard disk drives, solid state drives, and the far less common "solid state hybrid drives." Solid state drives (SSDs) are often blazingly fast—letting you startup Windows or launch applications in a fraction of the time it takes when using a hard drive—but the average cost of a SSD is much higher than the price of a HDD. This is where hybrid drives really shine.

The Seagate Momentus XT has been the most popular hybrid drive available to consumers for more than a year. The new second generation Seagate Momentus XT promises to deliver faster performance and greater storage capacity at a fraction of the cost of a SSD. We took a look at the new 750GB Momentus XT ($245) to find out if this is the best storage drive for your laptop.

Read the full content of this Article: 750GB Seagate Momentus XT Review: The Latest and Greatest Hybrid Drive

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Nice read but my second question I had which I was looking for in your conclusion was if the drive was worth upgrading to if you already have a 500gb Hybrid Drive, thanks.

Don't mean to hijack your thread but I think these are worth noting as well or adding (All Official Videos from Seagate)

Momentus XT 750GB & the MacBook Pro - YouTube!

Momentus XT 750GB & the Dell 15Z - YouTube

Momentus XT 750GB vs. the 10K SATA Drive - YouTube

 

I just bought the 500GB just a few month ago :/

oh well

 

The 500GB Seagate Momentus XT is still a very good drive. If you already own the 50GB model then I honestly wouldn't run out and buy the new 750GB model unless something went wrong with the old one.

That said, the new 750GB Momentus XT is a logical evolution of hybrid drive tech. It's "evolutionary" and not "revolutionary."

Current 500GB Momentus XT owners shouldn't lose sleep ... but the next time you're in the market to buy a hybrid drive I'd TOTALLY recommend the new 750GB Momentus XT over the old 500GB model if the price difference isn't an issue for you.

 

Its hard to believe to these videos.

Because I have read SEVERAL 500 GB XT reviews and all of them says that there is almost no difference with HDD and 500 GB XT. Several owners of these drivers told me the same thing. So, its very hard to believe 750 GB XT is faster than stock Apple SSD !

 

I agree with Jerry, the upgrade is not really worth it if you already have the 500GB. Unless you need the extra 250GB o course.

You must have been reading the wrong reviews.


Source

Try reading reviews that do real world benchmarks: Anandtech, Cnet and Notebookreview.

Or check this video how the XT launches applications. It smokes any traditional hard drive in that area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8n3fraKjHE

 

The newere ones have doubled the amount of SSD storage, meaning instead of 4 gigs they are now 8 gigs!!! that itself should tell you that the two drives are very different, but they are also very different in costs structures as well. I'm not sure what you all paid for your drives but I only paid $95 dollar for my 500 gb XT.

 

The 8GB cache is interesting for people who use many applications and/or games.

For the average user like I am, 4GB is enough as you can see in the video I posted.

 

After testing a number of systems using the 500GB Momentus XT and now having reviewed the 750GB Momentus XT, the ONLY way I can believe there is "no difference" in the performance of a XT hybrid drive compared to a standard HDD in Windows 7 is if the reviewer didn't let the drive firmware "learn" which files to put into the NAND flash or the reviewer never does any single task multiple times.

You have to put a hybrid drive through several Windows shut downs and start ups before you get a real idea of how fast it is as a boot drive. You also have to run benchmarks multiple times if you want to get accurate results.

A regular high-performance SSD like the Kingston HyperX doesn't need time to "learn" which files to store in flash because all of the storage is flash. A hybrid drive is for people who regularly do the same types of things over and over (you regularly use Photoshop, regularly use the same web browser, use Microsoft Word on a daily basis, etc.).

If you rarely do repetitive tasks on your PC and you almost never shutdown/restart Windows then you won't see the true speed benefits of a hybrid drive. In that case, you want to spend the money on a SSD if you care about speed.

Also, it's worth mentioning that the hard drive industry has mostly transitioned from the old 512-byte sector standard to the new Advanced Format 4K (4096-byte) sector size that helps maintain data integrity at higher storage densities and capacities. Momentus XT takes advantage of this newer Advanced Format 4K standard and is tuned for optimal performance on Windows 7 (and Windows 8).

Translation: The Momentus XT isn't as fast unless you're running Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. That "might" explain why some people aren't seeing the speed boost from the hybrid drive.

Momentus XT customers can reconfigure the drive to work with Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Windows by following the steps outlined on the Seagate web site: Advanced Format and 4K Sector Support

 

Another reason why some reviewer don't see any difference is because they rely on synthetic benchmarks only.

It's only in real world benchmarks, after some running in, that the XT shines.

 

Amen. +rep for you!

 

Techreport has their review up too.



Performance looks very impressive.

Seagate's Momentus XT 750GB hybrid hard drive - The Tech Report - Page 9
Seagate Momentus XT 750GB Hybrid Hard Drive Review - Page 9

The hard drive itself looks very good too.

 

The only thing I don't love about the CrystalDiskMark results from Legit Reviews (shown above) is that they ran that test with the drive setup as a second storage drive and not as a boot drive.

The CrystalDiskMark results from a non-boot drive will always look slightly better than a Windows boot drive ... but most notebook users only use a single drive in their laptop (the boot drive).

The CrystalDiskMark results from Legit Reviews are only accurate if you're using the Momentus XT as a second drive in your machine.

 

Man with the Tsunami I suppose and this being a fairly new product it seems impossible for me to order one of these through the retailers that I generally shop at. Even amazon is sold out. I don't know where to get these drives.

 

I spoke to Seagate about the impact to their facilities from the Tsunami/floods and they say the impact was minimal. However, since other HDD companies like Western Digital and Toshiba were hit pretty hard we're seeing supply shortages since manufacturers are buying all the drives they can.

As for retailers, Seagate reps say that the 750GB Momentus XT will be available this week from Amazon.com, Canada Computers, CDW.com, Tigerdirect.com, NCIX, Newegg.com and Memory Systems.

--Edit --

Oh, and it's worth mentioning that seven notebook manufacturers have signed on and pre-qualified upcoming notebooks to use the new 750GB Momentus XT ... so it's safe to say there will be several pre-built notebooks that ship with the 750GB Momentus XT in the coming months. Seagate didn't provide details on which manufacturers and which notebook models will include the new drive but I suspect Toshiba and ASUS "might" be among them since both those companies built notebooks that used the current 500GB Momentus XT.

 

Thanks for detailed information.

I personally believe all this. In fact I was ordering a 500 GB Momentus XT but after reading reviews and some chat with owners of this HDD I gave up.

But the test results of Momentus XT 750 GB are very impressive. Especially for a person like me who does repetitive tasks and use same applications every day.

But even if its quite fast because of Tsunami the prices are VERY high. I think it is better to wait for 'normal' prices.

 

Mod/Admin - looks to me that the CrystalDiskMark storage drive performance test: on page 2 of the review ain't showing for the XT

 

Personally I think the drives price is way too high.

If Im going to spend ~$250 for a hard drive on my notebook then it may as well be a ~240GB SSD so I get the full benefits of SSD technology.

But for me Im not concerned about having tons of space on my notebook since I have a media/file server and several desktop computers.

 

$250.... damn lol. Not worth that price tag. Maybe $200 but not $250. I'll pick these up when the price goes down.

 

$250 is a lot of money ... but you're getting SSD-like speeds during many tasks and SIGNIFICANTLY greater storage capacity.

I'd personally rather pay $250 for a 750GB hybrid drive than $270 for a low-end SSD with 240GB of storage. I also suspect the "street price" of the 750GB Momentus XT will drop some in early 2012.

 

Will this fit in the X220 tablet?

 

People with speed problems in the XT should probably get the newest firmware (SD28)


I have a 500gb xt and running SD 25, it's lightning fast. i do feel the SSD effect on apps and boot up

 

I am almost certain that the ThinkPad X220 tablet requires a low-profile hard drive or SSD with a maximum height of 7mm. The Seagate Momentus XT conforms to the standard 2.5-inch hard drive specs with a height of 9.7mm ... so the short answer is no.

That said, you might want to double check in the Lenovo forum here on our site.

 

first of all! there i noticed a big difference in performance from shifting 7200rpm to 500gb xt! so stop being pessimistic about it if you have no clue what you are talking about! now i also feel that 2nd gen xt is more powerful from all the real world benchmarks ive seen, but i wont spend $250 for it, maybe 150 later next year ! i got my 500gb xt for $89 on black friday!

 

Apparently the Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid nears SSD speeds when it has learned you habits.
Check this out: Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid Drive Tested: 750GB at Near-SSD Speeds

 

Does anyone know when Western Digital's and Intel's hybrid drives are going to hit the market?

I read many months ago that they would have hybrid drives out soon.

I'm sure they are going to want to build a faster drive than the Seagate XT, to steal its crown.

 

There's going to be a 500GB model too: ST500LX003.

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/docs/manual/notebook/momentus/XT/100665905d.pdf

 

There is a huge price difference between the 500gb and 750gb Momentus XT drives.

1) $89 for a 500gb XT with 4gb flash
2) $239 for 750gb XT with 8gb flash

The $150 premium is for 4gb flash and 250gb storage? Wow, that's a bit out of line. I can buy a 60gb SSD for the price difference!

 

Oops.... the $89 price for the 500gb Momentus XT is 'pre-Thailand flooding'... that drive currently runs $123.99 for the inflated price during flooding.

Darin

 

I picked up a 2nd Seagate 7200RPM 750GB to go with the one that came with my M18x, but would have sprung for a 750GB hybrid if they had them and they were a decent price.

Really though, it makes perfect sense to just have a 120-256GB SSD for the OS and programs, then use a 2nd high capacity HDD for storage and backup.

 

I agree that the it's ideal to have a SSD and a HDD if your system supports dual drives. However, for notebooks that can only accommodate a single drive, it makes sense to use a Hybrid drive so that you get plenty of storage capacity and SSD-like speeds with common activities.

I always wish I had more storage in my M11x with its single 200GB SSD.

 

****bump****

Anyone know of any updates on this?

 

I was going to say this is overpriced, but the price is now down to $153 w/shipping on Newegg, versus $90 for a regular 750 GB, 7200 RPM drive. For that price difference, it might be worth it. As someone who owns an SSD, my opinion is that for the original price, it would certainly not be worth it, and I'm skeptical even now. In absolute terms, yes, SSDs are faster. But as soon as you access something that isn't cached, it isn't any faster. And the price per GB is way too high to go only-SSD.