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
Power Consumption and Drive Behavior
Our power consumption tests are really worst case scenario for the Momentus XT since the cache is hardly given time to work here. In these tests the Momentus XT looks to be in-line with other, similar drives. In normal use however you may see even better behavior from the drive. If data is being requested out of the drive's NAND cache, the rest of the Momentus XT can actually spin down to save power. In practice I did notice the Momentus XT spinning up and down much more aggressively than a traditional hard drive. I know this was a problem with the original drive where it was a bit too aggressive in the power management department. My advice to Seagate would be to be more conservative here, particularly while only caching reads. The Momentus XT has the ability to deliver great performance, I'd leave the power savings for a version of the drive with a bigger cache and the ability to cache reads and writes. Otherwise I feel that the Momentus XT will do a lot of spinning up and spinning down for little gain.
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kyuu - Thursday, December 15, 2011 - link
Yes, I saw this directly stated by a Seagate rep somewhere. I'm much too lazy at the moment to go hunting for it or another confirmation.Rest assured, if the SLC fails before the platter portion for some reason, the drive will work just fine as a regular drive minus the NAND caching.
Blaze-Senpai - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
I'd be more worried about the platter-portion of the drive failing first, to be honest.axisofevil35 - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Ok so it's 750GB 7200RPM Momentus XT.... when can we BUY a 1TB 7200RPM Momentus XT model?kyuu - Thursday, December 15, 2011 - link
Whenever they release the next model. Hopefully they will come out with new XT models on a more regular basis (there was a pretty long hiatus between the previous XT and this one), but who knows.We'll likely see a 1GB+ Barracuda XT hybrid before then, though.
Arbie - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
I strongly considered a Momentus when they came out, probably based on Anandtech's remarks, but user reports on various forums killed that idea. Sorry to spread FUD, which it is at this point since I don't have any links, but at the time there was no end of bad news. If you're considering one of these, find out what you can on reliability first.
golob - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
I'd be really curious how the Momentus XT drives compare to a z68-based SSD-cache--just to get a sense of the performance of the caching algorithms from Seagate and Intel respectively.Toughbook - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
I picked up the 1st gen while trying to decide on a SSD to buy. At the time I had a main stream Hitachi 320GB running in my laptop. I could not notice a difference at all between the two. It was very loud and produced more heat as well. Obviously users of this drive are looking for more performance than a regular HDD. If one were to shop around and spend roughly $100.00 more you can get a Samsung 470 256GB. It will blow this drive away of course, plus the reliability is ten fold. Seagate better watch there pricing as SSD's are going down in cost almost weekly.adamantinepiggy - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Since a striped array is spreading out the read/swrites, the data from/to each drive is smaller and probably fit in the small NAND cache better. Just guessing..Revdarian - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Just wanted to cheer Anandtech as this is still the best site for real storage reviews.You guys have no problem in finding the proper target for your reviews, be it professional or casual use and all inbetween, and after doing so you produce a proper review for the specific target.
CHEERS!
Proph3T08 - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
When you recommend desktop users get a SSD and an HDD are you recommending that people set up the SSD for caching the HDD or leave the two drive completely separate?If we are to set up SSD caching which SSD size would be best for that?