Two laptop drives compared: Momemtus 5400 vs. Momentus XT hybrid

[Hayabusa Rider]

I wouldn't call this a much of a review, but it is interesting when one changes a drive for another and sees such a dramatic difference between them.

The laptop is a Compaq Presario CQ-60 with an AMD QL-62 @ 2.0 GHz

OS is Vista Home Premium SP2, with 4 gigs RAM installed.


Is an inexpensive laptop which does what I need. The load times have been awful though and the 250 gig drive was almost full.

I was on vacation and took the Momemtus hybrid drive with me and cloned the old drive onto it.

Well it's faster. Not a little, but a lot. I mean a whole lot. That's always subjective though so I ran a test and here are the results:

Momemtus 5400 250 gig

Momentus XT 7200 hybrid 500 gig

One thing you might notice is the temperature differences between these drives, however the XT is rated to 70C so it wasn't a problem. That however is not what you should expect. I was in a cabin which was around 100F at the time. I'm using it now at home in more typical temps and it's a full 16 degrees cooler.

You can see that the new drive has twice the average transfer rate and it certainly feels that way. That however does not take into account the adaptive learning algorithm which anticipates how you will use your computer and stores files in 4 gigs of memory. Knowing that past hybrids were more of a gimmick than a solution I was doubtful, but after looking at reviews (Anand has one) I decided to bite. Well the bloody thing really does make a difference. Loading Photoshop CS3 takes a fraction of the time, and the system boots much faster.

I admit to being confused by the results of the tests for a moment. In the first graph you can see dots from the scatter plot reflecting a 30.3 ms access time. In the second I didn't see them and I thought I had somehow omitted the test. Looking at the right sidebar I saw that I hadn't. It was 0.3 ms, and the yellow dots are there, but just all resting on the bottom of the graph.

Anyway, while this is mini-review isn't rigorous, what I did and how I did it is a real world case. We don't always start with clean installs and do tests with multiple drives to reference.

FWIW.

 

[FishAk]

That's impressive.



The hybrid starts out better than twice as fast, but by the time it gets to 250GB- the end of the test for your old drive- it's going 4 times as fast. The worst the hybrid does- 50MB/s- at 500GB, is just a little less than the best your old drive could do.


I'm very very tempted.

 

[Zap]

In this particular comparison the Hybrid has probably four things going for it. The Hybrid part, of course, plus higher rotational speed, more cache memory (likely) and higher platter density (likely). You can get three of the four with just upgrading HDDs to a Seagate Momentus 7200.4. Of course the Hybrid part is the potential game changer.

 

[allthatisman]

In order to get the hybrid to yield those results, you have to run the test a second time. This tech definitely has promise, but this drive is only good for apps that are loaded and reloaded over and over again... not typical usage, at least that was my impression when I had mine. It never performed consistently...

 

[corkyg]

I have a Momentus XT 320GB ordered and will replace a WD Scorpio Black 7200 320GB in my laptop. Both drives will be identical in content and process. They will be compared first by stop watching actual boot and complete OS load time. I don't expect a huge difference, but for me, that is where the rubber meets the road. The time click will be from fingerprint acceptance to fully booted and loaded. Should be fun.

 

[FishAk]

In order to get the hybrid to yield those results, you have to run the test a second time. This tech definitely has promise, but this drive is only good for apps that are loaded and reloaded over and over again... not typical usage, at least that was my impression when I had mine. It never performed consistently...

from this comment:

That however does not take into account the adaptive learning algorithm which anticipates how you will use your computer and stores files in 4 gigs of memory.

I assumed the test was run just once.

 

[jjmIII]

I'm glad to see more talk about these drives!

 

[Voo]

The Momentus has only 4gb (!) of flash, therefore that test is a worst case szenario, unimportant if you run the test once, twice or ten times. You'll always get the 4gb speedup (since we can surely assume that we'll have initialized the flash with valid data already at bootup).

Therefore you get 496gb of unbuffered and 4gb of buffered reads in that benchmark - which is, I'd think, negligible.
That means, the whole speedup comes mostly from the higher rotational speed as well as the higher density (cachesize has the same problem as the NAND, we're reading sequentially everything exactly once - we fill the cache with a read request, but we never read that address again [ignoring the possibility that the request may be smaller than one cacheline.. though the first problem is I've got no idea what kind of caches HDDs are using - I assume standard set associative, but how many ways and so on?])

 

[Spikesoldier]

i would attribute some of the performance difference to a higher density platter inside the drive itself for the 500gb vs the 250gb but good to see good results from the newer hybrid drives. though i still wouldnt trust a seagate drive today anyway.

 

[Hacp]

In this particular comparison the Hybrid has probably four things going for it. The Hybrid part, of course, plus higher rotational speed, more cache memory (likely) and higher platter density (likely). You can get three of the four with just upgrading HDDs to a Seagate Momentus 7200.4. Of course the Hybrid part is the potential game changer.

Well only the momentus has 32mb of cache. I think a large write cache is essential for good performance. I still think the XT is a gimmick. If windows allowed for more configuration with readyboost, you wouldn't even need the hybrid drive. Microsoft can really solve a lot of the hdd slowdowns with simple software.

 

[FishAk]

The way I understand ready boost, it works off USB. Until it works with a faster transfer rate, it will remain useless for anyone with more than a few GB RAM.


The hybrid essentially has a 4GB cache, which is far bigger than any other drive that I know of. I think it's a great idea, and when they get the cache size to 20 or 30GB, as long as the price is reasonable, I'll definitely be buying.

 

[allthatisman]

Perhaps this is why I was getting such inconsistant results...

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/Momentus-XT-Auto-spin-down/m-p/55294

Seems that the internal APM will cause the drive to auto spin down, which results in the pauses and lack of "snappy-ness" that I randomly experienced. With Crystal Disk Info, you can disable the APM, and supposedly all is well. I bought another one and am returning the two 7200.12's I have raid'd (my new case only allows 2 drives, and I currently have 3).

I will report back once I get everything installed!

 

[Hacp]

The way I understand ready boost, it works off USB. Until it works with a faster transfer rate, it will remain useless for anyone with more than a few GB RAM.


The hybrid essentially has a 4GB cache, which is far bigger than any other drive that I know of. I think it's a great idea, and when they get the cache size to 20 or 30GB, as long as the price is reasonable, I'll definitely be buying.

Readyboost basically caches 4k files. Traditional hard drives are weak in small reads. If Microsoft allowed more configuration so you can store files that are larger than 4k, say up to 32k, then alot of the complaints about traditional HDDs would be solved.

 

[BlueWeasel]

I've been on the fence with the 500GB XT hybrid versus a 60GB SSD.

I like the storage of the XT, even if I have to sacrifice some speed compared to a true SSD. With a 60GB SSD, I'd have to drag around a portable USB drive or large SD card.

After reading this thread, I'm leaning toward the hybrid.

 

[Voo]

After reading this thread, I'm leaning toward the hybrid.

As I already said: You wouldn't see any difference between the hybrid drive and another 7200rpm drive with similar density. The hybrid may still be a good choice, but that benchmark just shows the difference between an old 5400rpm and a new 7200rpm drive.

 

[BlueWeasel]

As I already said: You wouldn't see any difference between the hybrid drive and another 7200rpm drive with similar density. The hybrid may still be a good choice, but that benchmark just shows the difference between an old 5400rpm and a new 7200rpm drive.

I understand that. Excluding the 4GB of flash, I expect the XT to be about equal to the fastest 7200rpm laptop hard drive.

But for what I use my laptop for, I think the hybrid is a good choice. I only run a few programs on it repeatedly, and would certainly benefit from the 4gb flash in that respect.

 

[kalrith]

How full was the 250GB drive? I wonder what the performance difference would've been if the 250GB drive were only 50% full.

 

[Voo]

But for what I use my laptop for, I think the hybrid is a good choice. I only run a few programs on it repeatedly, and would certainly benefit from the 4gb flash in that respect.

I'd be really interested in how much you do notice the flash in a normal usage scenario, since I think it's really hard to come up with a useful test for that drive. So if you buy one and use it for some time, it'd be really interesting to hear what you think about it.


@kalrith: What? How should that make any difference in that benchmark? That's not even interesting in a SSD benchmark since we're only testing sequential read.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Is there a side-by-side comparison of the 7200rpm normal Momentus and the Momentus XT of the same capacity? I went from a 7200.2 to an X25-M in my laptop and moved the 7200.2 to my parents' new HTPC. It's not horribly slow with a clean install but I'm curious if the 4GB of flash will help with the common minutes or two of thrashing you get each time you start up and try to launch say a browser, or if a new 7200.4 alone will do the trick since it's two generations newer.

 

[corkyg]

Is there a side-by-side comparison of the 7200rpm normal Momentus and the Momentus XT of the same capacity? I went from a 7200.2 to an X25-M in my laptop and moved the 7200.2 to my parents' new HTPC. It's not horribly slow with a clean install but I'm curious if the 4GB of flash will help with the common minutes or two of thrashing you get each time you start up and try to launch say a browser, or if a new 7200.4 alone will do the trick since it's two generations newer.

Tomorrow my 320GB XT Hybrid will be delievered by Brown. I will directly compare it to a WDC 320GB Scorpio Black 7200 drive. I plan to run ten tests and average them installed in a Lenovo T60. Should be fun.

 

[allthatisman]

Tomorrow my 320GB XT Hybrid will be delievered by Brown. I will directly compare it to a WDC 320GB Scorpio Black 7200 drive. I plan to run ten tests and average them installed in a Lenovo T60. Should be fun.

What tests do you plan on running? Benchmarks do not seem to favor this drive, so it really comes down to timing application load times and going with that... If you come up with a suite of tests I will do the same (assuming I have access to the program) when I get my 500, which will likely be on Thursday or Friday.

 

[Hacp]

Is there a side-by-side comparison of the 7200rpm normal Momentus and the Momentus XT of the same capacity? I went from a 7200.2 to an X25-M in my laptop and moved the 7200.2 to my parents' new HTPC. It's not horribly slow with a clean install but I'm curious if the 4GB of flash will help with the common minutes or two of thrashing you get each time you start up and try to launch say a browser, or if a new 7200.4 alone will do the trick since it's two generations newer.

I get very little thrashing on my laptop which is using a 4200rpm HD. My secret? I use a program called eboostr which is just like readyboost except it is able to cache files larger than 4k. Another method to improve speed is to turn of flushing in your write cache.

 

[corkyg]

What tests do you plan on running? Benchmarks do not seem to favor this drive, so it really comes down to timing application load times and going with that... If you come up with a suite of tests I will do the same (assuming I have access to the program) when I get my 500, which will likely be on Thursday or Friday.

Basically it will be what I described above in my first response. I am not interested in benchmarks and sucht - I am interested in real world boot process from fingerprint to full loaded and ready to go.

IOW, my test will be for my system and my use. Like I said - that is where the rubber meets the road.

 

[corkyg]

Here are my practical findings. The XT arrived today. My normal laptop HDD has been a WDC Scorpio Black, 7200, 320 GB SATA drive. So, I ordered a 7200, 320 GB Momentus XT Hybrid to replace it. Here's what I did.

1. I cloned the WDC Scorpio to the new Momentus XT. Same size, now, exactly identical OS and content.

2. I replaced the Scorpio with the XT. It booted perfectly, and I set it all up by then running an offline defrag, followed by a normal defrag with PD11. That all went nicely.

3. I then ran some real world comparisons, primarily focusing on boot and OS load time. I ran 5 iterations on each drive and then averaged their times.

4. The Scorpio Black drive averaged 115 seconds from button press to fully loaded and ready to go, all notification area icons present for duty.

5. The XT Hybrid drive averaged 82 seconds to achieve the same status.

6. This was a difference of 33 seconds on average - a 28.6% boost in boot load performance.

7. The cost delta was $46 from same source, free shipping. Is it worth it? For me, yes, but that is subjective. I report - you decide.

This is the Hybrid 320:

 

[BlueWeasel]

Corky:

How does the drive perform when loading frequently used apps?
Is your battery life the same or less with the hybrid drive?
For general usage (when the 4GB flash isn't be used), does it fell faster than your Scorpio drive?