Momentus XT vs Ordinary harddrive

[sampahnetgua]

I saw 2 reviews of Momentus XT. One is from Anand & the other is from Tom's.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-review-finally-a-good-hybrid-hdd/2

and

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seagate-momentus-xt-hybrid-hard-drive-ssd,2638-12.html

The 2 are telling quite a different story in term of boot time.
I realize the testbed are different. Anand used 5400 rpm & Tom's used 7200 rpm, but still the difference in boot time compared to Momentus XT are too radical in the 2 reviews.

Anand shows XT has a tremendous lead over 5400 rpm, 15.3 vs 49.5 secs.
While Tom's using 7200rpm shows 26 vs 26 secs on the 3rd run for both drives. How could this be?

From Tom's review, it doesn't seem XT has a tremendous lead over 7200 rpm harddrive. Just a couple of seconds faster than ordinary 7200rpm drive at most. (1st picture)
From Tom's story, it seems Superfetch in Win7 does a very good job, and it looks Momentus XT is just a useless investment considering the price.

In Vista (Tom's 2nd picture) , the story is completely different though, where XT shows 3x faster in boot times than 7200 rpm drive. Is this all because of the lack of Superfetch ?

Can someone shed me some light ?

 

[RyanGreener]

I believe the XT is supposed to learn your habits so it can cache it. The difference between the times might have been caused by this fact (if it was benchmarked right away vs if it was used multiple times then benchmarked)

 

[sgrinavi]

I have one in my laptop; In all honesty the difference between this and the drive that it replaced was not staggering. There some improvement, but it's not an SSD by any stretch of the imagination.

IMO, if you can get one for slightly more than a "regular" drive it's worthwhile, but don't pay a big premium for it.

As to your question - I have no idea why the reviews were wonky.....

 

[corkyg]

In a laptop, after about 3 boots over about 3-4 days, it does perform that operation better than a Scorpio Black by a few seconds. Not anything big, but nevertheless better.

I have 4 XT drives in two laptops. I would not put them in a desktop as adapted 2.5-in devices.

The XT's do have a self-learning curve. They improve with use, so a single benchmark doesn't mean a whole lot.

 

[jjmIII]

I just replaced a 250gb XT in my Wifes lappy with one of Kingston's 96gb SSDs. After seeing the difference between the two, I now give the XT more credit. It is what it says it is: the sweet spot in speed and capacity. I'd have no problem recommending an XT to someone. PM me an offer if you want, I still have the 250gb XT.

http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_momentus_xt_review

 

[kmmatney]

I have one in my laptop; In all honesty the difference between this and the drive that it replaced was not staggering. There some improvement, but it's not an SSD by any stretch of the imagination.

IMO, if you can get one for slightly more than a "regular" drive it's worthwhile, but don't pay a big premium for it.

As to your question - I have no idea why the reviews were wonky.....

I also have one in my laptop and agree - the difference is not huge, but my system does feel SSD-like at times. Here's a quick compare, from NewEgg:

Momentus XT - $102 Shipped
32MB of cache
4 GB SSD cache
5-year warranty

7200 rpm Momentus 500 GB - $70 shipped
16MB cache
3-year warranty


So you are paying about $30 extra for twice the cache, and a 4 GB SSD cache, and 2 more years of warranty.

 

[Blain]

I'm using a 500GB XT in a desktop application.

If you're thinking about it for a laptop, save your $$ and go with a WD Scorpio Black.
If you're considering it for a desktop, go with a 1TB Samsung F3R.

 

[sampahnetgua]

Well, shaving several secs is not worthy a new investment for me, esp when it has a slow learning curve. That gives me a hard choice.
I'd rather go SSD with 80-90GB capacity as my boot drive, and use my current 500GB 7k drive as my data drive. The only problem with SSD for me is compatibility with my notebook, Asus N61JQ. At this moment, I read lots of detection problem with Sandforce controller in many OEM notebooks. It's really hit & miss situation. In fact, in Corsair forum, someone with N61JQ also has cold-boot detection problem with F120 drive. That's a bad news for me.
I can't afford spending $150 just to see if it works with my laptop.

The 2nd bad news is the infamous SSD low performance problem with HM55/PM55 chipset. I read how some registry tweaks might improve the performance, but my experiment with the tweaks increases my idle CPU temp to 72-73C (& my GPU to 75C) , AND disables TurboBoost in my i7. That is certainly not a solution for me either.
It's always a bad option everywhere I look.

 

[fuzzymath10]

The XT is a nice one-drive solution for a laptop. Helps noticeably for booting and common tasks in particular, and when you need a lot of storage without resorting to external drives.

If you're concerned about SSD compatibility, why not get an 80 or 120GB Intel G2/320 series?

 

[jjmIII]

Try the 96gb Kingston. It should work fine, and a very fair price.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4010/kingston-ssdnow-v-plus-100-review

 

[Mir96TA]

I believe the XT is supposed to learn your habits so it can cache it. The difference between the times might have been caused by this fact (if it was benchmarked right away vs if it was used multiple times then benchmarked)

True

In a laptop, after about 3 boots over about 3-4 days, it does perform that operation better than a Scorpio Black by a few seconds. Not anything big, but nevertheless better.

..
....
The XT's do have a self-learning curve. They improve with use, so a single benchmark doesn't mean a whole lot.

I just replaced a 250gb XT in my Wifes lappy with one of Kingston's 96gb SSDs. After seeing the difference between the two, I now give the XT more credit. It is what it says it is: the sweet spot in speed and capacity. I'd have no problem recommending an XT to someone. PM me an offer if you want, I still have the 250gb XT.

True........
However going back WD scorpio was drag.........
I use to have 320 WD scorpio Black...........
I didn't notice perfomance at the swap......
However when I put it back the orig HDD to my laptop
it was drag..........
SSD was way too expensive for the storage I need...........
SO XT was just a sweet spot!

 

[jiffylube1024]

I've used and owned both a 320GB and 500GB Momentus XT, and used them in several laptops. The 320GB XT currently lives in a relative's laptop, which gives her speedy boot times.

I too researched long and hard before buying these drives - some reviews showed it having almost SSD-like boot speeds, while others (like the Tom's review) showed it performing almost exactly like a 7200rpm non hybrid drive.


In my own experience, the Momentus XT is really in between an SSD and platter drive in terms of performance. When I used the Momentus XT in my own laptop, a Dell 1747, boot times were something like this:

(from the disappearance of the BIOS logo to Windows boot screen and all icons/gadgets loaded)

Seagate 5400.5 250GB - about 1 min 45 seconds!
7200.4 500GB (2010 version) - about 60 seconds
Momentus XT 500GB - about 40 seconds
OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD - about 22-25 seconds

There's definitely a tangible improvement to the Momentus XT. It really does cache your most recent/commonly used apps. Launch times for Firefox/Word/Excel/Windows Live Mail/etc. were SSD-esque. The launch time for Photoshop was about half of the platter drive, but less than an SSD.

If you've only got space for one hard drive in your laptop, and you want 300-500GB at a low price, the Momentus XT is a fine investment IMO. Make sure you get the latest firmware from Seagate's website, as they have been updating it regularly.

Now, if you do have two HDD slots (like many 17" notebooks), a real SSD will give you faster, more consistent performance. The Momentus XT gives your laptop a nice zip and upgrade from a 7200rpm regular drive, but an SSD gives you lightning fast boot and application launch times.

-----

I find a good way to show the benefit of the Momentus XT is to set one up with Windows, use it for a bit, then swap your old drive back in. If you can't notice a difference with the old drive, something is wrong with your Momentus XT. I found the problem to be particularly exaggerated as your install more and more applications on the HDD. On a platter based HDD, the Windows boot time gets slower and slower. On the Momentus XT, the boot time decay is there, but much less. On an SSD, it's pretty much unnoticeable from a fresh install.