Seagate Momentus Questions

[RobertPters77]

I have a 250gb boot drive in my PC. I wan't to use an SSD as my boot drive. I don't want to spend 400$ on a 256gb sdd. Especially when I'll be reading and writing files on a regular basis thereby shortening the life of the drive. I was looking at the seagate momentus for 50$ because it has onboard SSD.

1. How big is the SSD space on the momentus? Enough to install Win 7?

2. Will the drive automatically allocate windows 7 files into the SSD space?

3. Any other options or drives like the momentus?

Or would it be a better idea to get a dedicated SSD just for the win 7 install and use my 250gb as a spare storage drive?

 

[greenhawk]

1. How big is the SSD space on the momentus? Enough to install Win 7?

2. Will the drive automatically allocate windows 7 files into the SSD space?

3. Any other options or drives like the momentus?

Or would it be a better idea to get a dedicated SSD just for the win 7 install and use my 250gb as a spare storage drive?

The size of the SSD on the monentus is 4GB. It is more of a cache for the drive than a actual usable SSD partition.

It allocates what ever is accessed regularly, just like any form of caching.

As to other similar drives, there is none that I know of.

Personally, in a desktop, I would take a v'raptor over a momentus nearly anyday.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

1. How big is the SSD space on the momentus? Enough to install Win 7?

2. Will the drive automatically allocate windows 7 files into the SSD space?

3. Any other options or drives like the momentus?

Or would it be a better idea to get a dedicated SSD just for the win 7 install and use my 250gb as a spare storage drive?

Nowhere near close.

If all you do is boot up and shut down, then sure. The point, though, is that it caches the files that you most regularly use, so if you don't, then it won't. But in that case, it's probably not that big a deal and the SSD part is caching files you actually do use and providing you with an actual speedup.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/maxiq-ssd-cache,2511.html
And Z67 will have SSD caching, though I'm not sure whether it will actually work that way or whether it's just a name for something else.

It's better to get an SSD just for OS and have everything else on an HDD. I doubt that you have 250GB worth of data that would benefit greatly from having an SSD. Apart from the OS itself, I'd say maybe 10-20GB max?

 

[SickBeast]

OP you could accomplist the same thing by getting a 60GB SSD and creating a 4gb partition on it for use with ReadyBoost. In fact, you could make it even bigger and get a nicer boost.

Your last sentence in your OP makes the most sense to me.

 

[sgrinavi]

I had a 500 GB momentus XT in my laptop. There was not any appreciable difference in performance for me. I run mostly CAD type apps.

Save your money and get the SSD, it is, by far, the best single upgrade I have ever done.

 

[nanaki333]

it takes time for those drives to "learn" what to cache too. so the difference may not happen for like a week, and by then it's been so gradual, it'll feel like the same machine. as others have said, just get an SSD. you can get a 64GB SF based drive from microcenter for $99. they have a sale on said drive for $79 quite often too.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I'm with the others, get a small boot ssd and a fast hd for your programs. That is what I did, 120gb ssd for boot and a few key programs and a raptor 600gb for the majority of my programs. I keep wd blacks, seagate 7200.12's and hitachi 1tb's for storage and I run a total of 6 drives.

 

[nanaki333]

I'm with the others, get a small boot ssd and a fast hd for your programs. That is what I did, 120gb ssd for boot and a few key programs and a raptor 600gb for the majority of my programs. I keep wd blacks, seagate 7200.12's and hitachi 1tb's for storage and I run a total of 6 drives.

i had a 64GB intel x25-E i put in my wife's computer with 2x 300GB raptors and a 1TB samsung for an internal backup drive. talk about a snappy setup

 

[jiffylube1024]

I have a 250gb boot drive in my PC. I wan't to use an SSD as my boot drive. I don't want to spend 400$ on a 256gb sdd. Especially when I'll be reading and writing files on a regular basis thereby shortening the life of the drive. I was looking at the seagate momentus for 50$ because it has onboard SSD.

Seagate Momentus is Seagate's regular 2.5" series of hard drives. You're talking about the Seagate Momentus XT, which has the 4GB SSD as a cache.

1. How big is the SSD space on the momentus? Enough to install Win 7?

The drive has a 4GB 'smart' cache. It's not visible to the user. The hard drive automatically puts your most frequently used files in there, which includes things like boot files, etc.

2. Will the drive automatically allocate windows 7 files into the SSD space?

Yes, it will. However, even when you do nothing but reboot Windows 7, so the windows boot files become your frequently used files, boot times aren't quite the same as an SSD. Still much faster than platter based drives, but not SSD level.

3. Any other options or drives like the momentus?

Or would it be a better idea to get a dedicated SSD just for the win 7 install and use my 250gb as a spare storage drive?

There's currently no comparable options to the Seagate Momentus XT.


I've owned a 500GB Momentus XT and currently own the 320GB version. I've also had a 120GB Vertex and 60GB Agility 2 in the same laptop.

Basically, what you're looking at is - on a 5400rpm laptop hard drive, my laptop booted in about 2 1/2 minutes, from power press to Windows with everything loaded (gadgets, etc). With a 7200rpm hard drive, it was like 1 minute 50 seconds or so.

The Momentus XT drives boot up in about 55-70 seconds. Both SSD's booted in about 30-35 seconds.
-----------

The Momentus XT drives definitely launch frequently used programs (firefox, word, etc) much faster than conventional hard drives, so if you need 300+GB of space, they're an excellent choice. However, if boot speed and instant program launches are your thing, then nothing beats an SSD. Every time you put on a new program to the Momentus XT it's like a regular hard drive for the first couple of times you run it.

If you defrag your hard drive, apparently the cache on the Momentus XT resets itself and it has to basically re-learn your frequently used programs.

------

I'm currently happy with my 320GB Momentus XT in my laptop, but I'm probably going to switch to a 120GB SSD once I can get a good one for $100-150, or if I upgrade my desktop, which currently has an Intel X25-M 160GB.

 

[corkyg]

Laptop, si! Desktop, no!

 

[sgrinavi]

A week? After three repetitive tasks the incremental increase in performance is negligible. I've run bench after bench trying to convince myself that there's more to it. Sure, it helps, but it is not worth the money; if you can get one on sale for bit more than a decent 7200 rpm lappy drive then, by all means, go for it - otherwise save your money.

it takes time for those drives to "learn" what to cache too. so the difference may not happen for like a week, and by then it's been so gradual, it'll feel like the same machine. as others have said, just get an SSD. you can get a 64GB SF based drive from microcenter for $99. they have a sale on said drive for $79 quite often too.

 

[beginner99]

I have a 250gb boot drive in my PC. I wan't to use an SSD as my boot drive. I don't want to spend 400$ on a 256gb sdd. Especially when I'll be reading and writing files on a regular basis thereby shortening the life of the drive. I was looking at the seagate momentus for 50$ because it has onboard SSD.

1. How big is the SSD space on the momentus? Enough to install Win 7?

2. Will the drive automatically allocate windows 7 files into the SSD space?

3. Any other options or drives like the momentus?

Or would it be a better idea to get a dedicated SSD just for the win 7 install and use my 250gb as a spare storage drive?

Only install OS + most frequently used apps (browser,..) on ssd. Install any other apps and games on normal HDD + move your "My documents" folder to HDD.

Then a 64 or 80 gb drive should be more than enough.

 

[Emulex]

you want intel z68 chipset with a 64gb or less ssd and a hard drive. then it is on..

 

[mpx999]

Alternative to Momentus: you can have a large, conventional HDD plus a small SSD (eg. 32GB or 40GB) for cache. For caching you have to buy software like eBoostr

http://www.eboostr.com/

http://dotnet.agilekiwi.com/blog/2008/10/how-eboostr-works.html

or Nvelo Dataplex (difficult do get)

http://nvelo.com/products.html

For Linux the appropriate product is called Flash Cache:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=388112370932

it's new, so it's difficult to install.