Seagate 2nd Generation Momentus XT (750GB) Hybrid HDD Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 13, 2011 12:51 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- Seagate
- Momentus XT
- Hybrid Drive
- HDDs
- SSHDs
Final Words
I suppose it's fitting that Seagate didn't change the name of the Momentus XT in its second generation. Although the new drive is larger, faster and better in almost every way than its predecessor, it's still very much an evolution of the original. If you were hoping for a significantly larger cache, the ability to cache writes and a more SSD-like experience, the new Momentus XT is going to feel like a letdown.
If you are looking at the Momentus XT through HDD-colored glasses however, the new one is even more impressive than its predecessor. With an 8GB cache this time around there's more room for data to remain in NAND, which definitely improves the overall experience. In many cases the Momentus XT continues to be the fastest client focused mechanical hard drive on the market. If you only have room for a single drive in your notebook and you can't make do with an SSD, the Momentus XT is the next best thing. As I mentioned last time around, OEMs unwilling or unable to include an SSD in their default configuration should not hesitate to standardize on the Momentus XT as the hard drive of choice. I'd definitely take this drive over pretty much any hard drive. When it gains write caching support next year I do believe the drive will get even better, although by caching both reads and writes I am worried that 8GB of NAND will begin to look even smaller than it already is. I am unhappy with the price increase. Despite the larger capacity, the 750GB Momentus XT should've really topped out at $199 and not seen a price increase to $245.
As many have pointed out, Seagate didn't have the best track record with the original Momentus XT when it came to reliability and compatibility. Although I haven't had any issues with the Momentus XT (old or new) in my testbeds, given the price of the new drive you may want to wait to ensure things are better this time around before pulling the trigger.
If you can manage it, I'd still recommend an SSD above the Momentus XT. For desktop users the standalone SSD + large HDD array for media storage still makes the most sense. Prices of SSDs are finally low enough where the value argument becomes a difficult one to make for the Momentus XT if you've got more than one drive bay. Where an SSD still may not make sense is in a notebook where you can only have a single drive and need local storage. In this situation, the Momentus XT is again better than the traditional hard drive alternative.
Longer term it's unclear to me whether hybrid drives like the Momentus XT will fill the gap left by SSDs or if software based caching technologies combined with NAND on motherboards will be the preferred route.
I still want to see Seagate be more aggressive with its hybrid drive roadmap. Waiting over a year between Momentus XT releases isn't going to cut it going forward if this technology is going to have a chance. Here's hoping the new Barracuda XT and a more revolutionary Momentus XT won't take as long to make it out.
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wagsbags - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Is that even a niche market anymore? Lots of people use laptops for their primary systems now (most?) and not very many sport 2 drive bays (unfortunately) without taking out the optical drive. Looking at the benchmarks these drives are getting close enough to SSDs for casual use that we may soon get to the point where it's simply not worth the effort to set up a SSD+HDD system. $245 is a bummer though.Alien959 - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
You are right, if you have place to put two hard drives, but most notebooks/netbooks have just one HD bay so there is a market for this kind of technology. Also there are media boxes, network appliances granted they can be serviced with regular hard drive but more performance is always good :))).Tetracycloide - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
The price point on the new drive is the big issue I think. If you've only got ONE 2.5" drive and you need 500 GB or more and the budget is under the $700+ that would likely cost for an SSD then what else are you going to buy? Honestly the main reason I think they put the price where the did instead of something that seems more reasonable for a HDD seasoned lightly with NAND is because the gulf between HDD and SSD prices is so huge there's plenty of room for them to expand into.hechacker1 - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
I'm guessing that ultimately the Raptor drives will be more consistent in random read and write performance purely due to the 10K RPM speed?I'm still stuck with a Raptor here as I need the space, my personal files simply cannot fit or be easily partitioned onto my separate RAID array for media storage. That is until SSD prices come down so I can afford a larger SSD to replace the raptor.
How far has 7200RPM compared to the 10K drives? I'm talking about random read/write workloads. I'm guessing that once the XT gets write caching, it may be a contender?
erple2 - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Every performance number I've seen for random read/write on the fastest spindle drives (random, not sequential) shows that the Raptors (and the like ~ 1.5 MB/s) are approximately 2x as fast as a "normal" mechanical drive (at around 0.8 MB/s). Looking at the numbers above, that means you can expect >5x slower performance than an SSD (>80 MB/s), at least in things like random write performance. As a result, you can see that the performance of a 10k drive is "crummy" compared with any modern SSD.Personally, I always thought the performance increase of the Raptor wasn't worth it over the standard (well-designed) 7200 RPM drive. Doubling the cost per gigabyte to buy a 10% improvement in performance just didn't seem to be worthwhile. Is an SSD worth it? I dunno. But I can say that I enjoy using my laptop (with an SSD) over my wifes (without an SSD). Hers has stronger hardware (other than the SSD). It was the best "$50" upgrade I've ever spent...
tipoo - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
The raptor takes the space of a 3.5' drive though, this is a 2.5 inch 9mm high drive. They aren't really direct competitors.SonicIce - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Hi Anand, do you expect hard drive prices to lower after the nearly 3x hike?zanon - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Naturally having it all be together can both decrease cost and, not unimportantly, mean the drive can fit in a single bay. However, even on many notebooks there are often multiple 2.5" bays available (either directly or through an add-on like the OptiBay), which opens the door to software hybrid approaches like what ZFS offers (an SSD can be added to a pool and designated as cache). There are a lot of different approaches racing right now, and it will be interesting to watch how it plays out. Will the cost of SSDs and capacity improve fast enough to simply mostly do away with mechanical before anything else really gets going, or will we see a few different hybrid approaches develop?james.jwb - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Surely the price is affected by to flooding issues, no? I didn't see thismentioned in the review, so just checking.DanNeely - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Maybe. That was my first guess; but the 500GB model is selling for $139/159 on newegg, the 750 is $239. For comparison, 2.5" 7200 RPM 500GB drives are $99-$149, and 750 GB models are listed at $149/159/229.