My computer takes too long to boot up. Around a minute and 18 seconds, to be precise. Which is why I want a solid state drive. But I don’t want to pay ~$US400 for 256GB of storage. Enter Seagate’s Momentus X Hybrid drives, which promise near-SSD speeds, but with giant HDD storage — and not-so-giant prices.
What Is It?
The second generation of Seagate’s Momentus XT solid state hybrid drives, which combine a good-sized chunk of flash storage (4GB in the 500GB model; 8GB in the 750GB model) with a traditional 7200rpm spinny hard drive. The idea is that Momentus learns your most used applications and basically runs them off the flash storage, so you get SSD-like performance and boot times.
Who’s it For?
People who want SSD speeds, but HDD prices and storage.
Design
It’s a hard drive. You’ll never see it beyond installation.
Using It
Installation is either easy, if you’ve got the right machine, or it isn’t. And then it’s just like a hard drive.
The Best Part
It works. My five-month-old, Core i7 MacBook Pro’s boot times went from an average 45 second boot time with the original 500GB 5400rpm Hitachi hard drive to 29.8 seconds. Brian Barrett’s 2009 MacBook Pro’s boot times plummeted from 1:34 minutes to 30 seconds. Start times for database-driven apps were cut in half, or better, like Aperture (12.3 to 5.8 seconds), iPhoto (14.6 to 5.2 seconds), iTunes (9.2 seconds to 1.9 seconds). Even Photoshop start times dropped, from 21.2 seconds to just 3.8 seconds.
It’s extra performance you can definitely feel day-to-day, if only slightly.
Tragic Flaw
Still fragile like a hard drive. Also, it has to learn which programs you use the most before you see the most benefit. (So it doesn’t exactly kill benchmarks, with 81MB/s write speeds with 100MB/s read speeds.) And obviously it doesn’t boost everything to SSD speeds.
This Is Weird…
Shut-down times tripled, from five seconds to roughly 15.
Should You Buy It?
Yes. If you want a taste of SSD speeds but can’t afford one, or simply need more storage and don’t feel like Frankenstein-ing your rig with a combo SSD/HDD setup. It’s not a bad deal at all for $US180, when an SSD for with a third of the storage costs twice as much. But definitely get the 750GB model — not only do you get more storage, you get double the flash cache and interface speed.
Seagate Momentus XT Specs
• Storage: 500GB (4GB flash) or 750GB (8GB flash)
• Interface: SATA 3Gb/s (500GB) SATA 6Gb/s (750GB)
• Spin speed: 7200rpm
• Size: 2.5-inch
• Price: $US130 for 500GB; 180 for 750GB
• Giz Rank: Four stars
You really don't need a 256GB SSD to get your machine up and running very quickly. 60GB is more than adequate, and if you find you need more room, just add a HDD, 60 GB SSD's are very cheap now. That's how I started out, Now I have a much faster and only slightly more expensive 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 and a very fast HDD. Here's a trick, move your desktop, download folder and any other less memory intensive folders to the HDD, for much more room on the SSD.
You're missing the point - this is a drive for a notebook, not a desktop. Unless you have one of those gaming notebooks with two drives, this is one of the best upgrades you can ever make to your notebook. It dropped my boot times considerably, gave my 4.5 year old computer a new lease of life.
Mmm, I see your point, I didn't take into account that this a small form factor HDD, but you don't need to use it at all if you want proper SSD speeds without a second hard drive. Otherwise it would make an excellent second HDD. Having said that, if you are using a PC, my first comment will do the job. Oh, and that first 60GB SSD I was talking about, went straight into my netbook. :)
G'Day Boz,
Well I am too confused in SSD or Momentus XT. I have a macbook pro 2008 it came with MAC OS X Leopard installed so will the SG Momentus XT 750GB will work as SSD/HDD or just an HDD coz up in the article it says if not supported it will work as HDD. Waiting for your reply
ive had one of these in my MBP for a while and love it. i was the same. didnt want to hand over a fortune for almost no storage. these puppies are an awesome alternative.
Hi Brad,
What MBP have you got Mine is 2008 with MAC OS X installed although I have upgraded it to OSX Lion but it is the Duo core processor one (got my point) so does this Momentus XT work with it will it boost it.
Thanks
I'm definitely looking at getting one of these. I would love a ssd but really can't afford one with the capacity I need.
Man, reviews of these drives have been done to death, and in the real world they're not much quicker than a stock standard 7200rpm SATAII drive...
Whats worse, Seagate have had a Momentus FAIL with the reliability of these drives. Head over to the Seagate forums, and just take a look..
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/bd-p/Momentus
Speaking from experience with these Momentus XT drives (I've had 5 hit RMA over the last 12 months), if you want SSD speeds but can't afford them, save your pennies and buy an SSD when you can afford it. Hybrid drives are for the birds. A little bit quicker yes, but a total waste of tiime....
$400 for 256GB is where exactly? diskcompare and Amazon say you can get a top of the line 240/256GB SSD for well under $300...
I had one of these. It failed after 3 months. Seems they have a lot of reliability issues if you read the interwebs.
You can get a Crucial M4 128GB from Amazon for about $165 delivered.
That's enough for a lot of people for their laptop, and it will provide real SSD speeds. Just keep anything extra on an external HDD.
I have had two of these in my Asus G73 laptop for over 13 months now and they are uber fast. Very happy and 1TB of storage.
I can vouch for the load times, they drop to 1/5th of the old times when cached.
Can someone suggest me a good drive for my MBP (macBook pro) dont have budget for 256GB SSD for $450.