Comparing the Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive, SSDs, and HDDs


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The primary drive in question here is the Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive.  Basically this is a 2.5" 500 GB 7200rpm with an integrated 4 GB SSD.  I expect the total usable capacity is still 500 GB (actually 465 GB).  The drive will automatically store your most often accessed data on the SSD portion for faster retrieval...so the more you use the drive, the faster it gets (in theory, at least).  The drive is intended to strike a balance between SSD speeds and large, affordable capacity.

 

As I know WeeboTech has experience with these drives, I direct the following to him:

 

In a desktop environment what do you think about the XT as the boot drive and primary storage drive vs a small (60 GB) SDD and a 7200 rpm storage drive (say 500 GBs or so).  I'm not as concerned with the capacity as much as the speed, since 500 GB is definitely big enough for my desktop (since I've got unRAID for my serious storage).

 

I also download and seed torrents from my desktop (though most of the seeds are network paths to the unRAID server), so I'm curious if having all these different files constantly active will mess with the XT's ability to prioritize your data for 'SSD-like speeds'.  Is there any way to tell the XT to ignore certain activity (like torrents) and only focus on the important stuff (like high-end apps)?

 

I'm currently employing the second scenario, with all my most-used programs installed on the SSD (and the OS, obviously).  However, even 60 GBs is too small to hold all my programs, as some high level applications and games can use up 15 GBs or more.  So lately I've found myself uninstalling certain programs and games from the SSD to make room for others, which is annoying.  With the prices of SSDs, I don't really want to go past 60 GBs.  The 500 GB XT for roughly the same price as a 60 GB SSD is definitely a tempting proposition.

 

In my classical level of thinking, it seems best to have a separate drive for the OS and most used apps (especially for video and audio editing, as the scratch space can be on the secondary drive), whether it be an SSD or not.  I'm wondering if the XT changes this...

 

My primary laptop also runs a 60 GB SSD, but I'm happy with that as my storage and app needs on that laptop are very small (mainly used to surf the net).  However, I'm also considering an XT for my secondary laptop, which is beefier and is primarily used for my digital DJ endeavors.  In that case I expect the XT would be perfect, as it offers speed and capacity.  That laptop is currently running a 320 GB 7200 rpm drive.  An affordable SSD just wouldn't be big enough to store all the music and apps I need on the secondary laptop.

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In a desktop environment what do you think about the XT as the boot drive and primary storage drive vs a small (60 GB) SDD and a 7200 rpm storage drive (say 500 GBs or so).  I'm not as concerned with the capacity as much as the speed, since 500 GB is definitely big enough for my desktop (since I've got unRAID for my serious storage).

 

I like the dual drive approach. If done correctly, you can backup the SSD to a partition of the same size on the data drive for an emergency. If speed and storage needs are higher then a single drive, I would do raid0 as long as I could backup the raid0 to the data drive. The 120GB SSD's are pretty affordable these days too.

 

If speed is the highest priority, OS=SSD and if need be multiple SSD's in RAID.

 

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I also download and seed torrents from my desktop (though most of the seeds are network paths to the unRAID server), so I'm curious if having all these different files constantly active will mess with the XT's ability to prioritize your data for 'SSD-like speeds'.  Is there any way to tell the XT to ignore certain activity (like torrents) and only focus on the important stuff (like high-end apps)?

 

The reading of the torrents will definitely alter the 4GB Solid state cache. It's all based on LBA's that are used most often.

There is no way to tell the XT to ignore activity.

 

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I'm currently employing the second scenario, with all my most-used programs installed on the SSD (and the OS, obviously).  However, even 60 GBs is too small to hold all my programs, as some high level applications and games can use up 15 GBs or more.  So lately I've found myself uninstalling certain programs and games from the SSD to make room for others, which is annoying.  With the prices of SSDs, I don't really want to go past 60 GBs.  The 500 GB XT for roughly the same price as a 60 GB SSD is definitely a tempting proposition.

 

Since many motherboards have multiple SATA ports, many of them also offer chipset raid functionality. This will increase your space and speed when using multiple SSDs.

If speed is your concern use the SSD's.

if you are doing some kind of video or audio editing, then the 500GB XT may be a good choice as writes are to the magnetic media and multiple reads will be cached.

 

Using the 500GB XT for a data drive will boost performance when needed.

 

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In my classical level of thinking, it seems best to have a separate drive for the OS and most used apps (especially for video and audio editing, as the scratch space can be on the secondary drive), whether it be an SSD or not.  I'm wondering if the XT changes this...

This is how I set up my windows machines all the time.

I still prefer the SSD and magnetic media data drive unless everything fits in one or you have confined space.

 

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I'm also considering an XT for my secondary laptop, which is beefier and is primarily used for my digital DJ endeavors.  In that case I expect the XT would be perfect, as it offers speed and capacity.  That laptop is currently running a 320 GB 7200 rpm drive.  An affordable SSD just wouldn't be big enough to store all the music and apps I need on the secondary laptop.

 

This fits into the confined space, high performance wanted scenario and is a perfect candidate for the XT.

I'm using an XT for my Pro-Tools/Sonar audio recording laptop. In fact 2 XT's.

 

If I were building a DJ station, I would use the XT's.

If I were doing video editing, I would use an SSD for OS/apps and an XT for the data/work drive.

if I were gaming and wanted absolute top speed with larger storage, i would choose 2 SSD's in RAID0 and an XT or other data drive divided up where 1 hidden partition is the same size as the 2 SSD's in RAID0 and a visible data drive.

 

I "may" set up a new pro-tools workstation where I use 2 XT's in RAID0/RAID1 safe 33 mode, I have not decided.100% yet.

It's recommended that the system drive be totally isolated from the recording drive. so this may not work as well.

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Thanks Weebo, exactly the type of analysis I was hoping you would write.

 

Some followup questions:

 

Is the 4GB SSD portion for faster reads only, no effect on writes?  If I were using an XT as a scratch drive for video editing, would the SSD portion help me achieve faster writes for files that I was overwriting often?

 

Does the XT's move of often-used files from the HDD to the SSD only happen on reboots?  No way to force certain files to always stay on one side or the other?  It sounds like Seagate designed the XT to be as transparent to the OS as possible, which makes sense.  However, I think that some software that would allow you to customize the XT's behavior could be very useful in certain circumstances.

 

I expect that the HDD portion behaves just like any other 7200 rpm drive.  Seagate's website doesn't list any real world transfer speeds sequential reads/writes, random reads/writes etc.  Do you know these numbers?  I understand they would have to be divided between the SSD and HDD portions.

 

I understand that torrents would screw with the XT's abilities.  However, what if I installed the torrent client onto the XT (boot) drive, but had all the actual files download or seed to/from another drive (or the unRAID server)?  Does just running an app like uTorrent 24/7 read/write to the boot drive enough to affect the XT's caching?

 

For comparison, here's the two 60 GB SSDs I already have (I actually can't remember which one is in my laptop and which is in my desktop):

 

Corsair Reactor Series CSSD-R60GB2-BRKT 2.5" 60GB USB 2.0 & SATAII Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Sequential Access - Read    up to 250MB/s

Sequential Access - Write   up to 110MB/s

 

OCZ Agility Series OCZSSD2-1AGT60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Sequential Access - Read    Up to 230 MB/s

Sequential Access - Write   Up to 135 MB/s

 

Neither are RAIDed or anything fancy.  Both run Win7.

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Some followup questions:

 

Is the 4GB SSD portion for faster reads only, no effect on writes?  If I were using an XT as a scratch drive for video editing, would the SSD portion help me achieve faster writes for files that I was overwriting often?

 

Writes bypass the 4GB SSD read cache.

 

Does the XT's move of often-used files from the HDD to the SSD only happen on reboots?  No way to force certain files to always stay on one side or the other?  It sounds like Seagate designed the XT to be as transparent to the OS as possible, which makes sense.  However, I think that some software that would allow you to customize the XT's behavior could be very useful in certain circumstances.

 

from what I read, it does not move often used files. It "caches" and stores often used "LBA"s (sectors).

There is no way to tweak this at the OS other then accessing the sectors often.

 

I expect that the HDD portion behaves just like any other 7200 rpm drive.  Seagate's website doesn't list any real world transfer speeds sequential reads/writes, random reads/writes etc.  Do you know these numbers?  I understand they would have to be divided between the SSD and HDD portions.

 

I don't have any benchmarks other then basic usage on my laptop.

What felt like laggy experience on a 100GB hitachi, became a pleasurable instantaneous experience on the 500GB XT drive.

I sold all my other 2.5" drives in favor of buying the XT's.

 

I understand that torrents would screw with the XT's abilities.  However, what if I installed the torrent client onto the XT (boot) drive, but had all the actual files download or seed to/from another drive (or the unRAID server)?  Does just running an app like uTorrent 24/7 read/write to the boot drive enough to affect the XT's caching?

 

I would not say it would screw with the XT's ability, it would just cause the cache to be flushed and used for the sectors that are most often used. So if you have something that is continually reading the drive, those sectors are cached for reads.

I would expect the utorrent client to use whatever caching facilities are needed.

Check your utorrent database and see how large it is.

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Thanks again.

 

Hmm, I wonder if I would notice the speed difference going from an SSD to the XT as a boot drive.  While the SSDs I have are pretty good, they definitely aren't top-of-the line, so their speeds aren't really that impressive in day-to-day use.  I'll still probably pick up an XT when I see it on sale.

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huge thread of people whining about this drive on the seagate forums, I've ordered one recently to try in my macbook pro,  since most of the whining comes from mac users it might end up in my w7 laptop instead.  Reviews look pretty good tho and there are plenty of positive reports from users also.

 

Whine thread :-

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/If-you-have-problems-with-Momentus-XT-please-come-in/td-p/59455

Review :-

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seagate-momentus-xt-hybrid-hard-drive-ssd,2638.html 

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Thanks again.

 

Hmm, I wonder if I would notice the speed difference going from an SSD to the XT as a boot drive.  While the SSDs I have are pretty good, they definitely aren't top-of-the line, so their speeds aren't really that impressive in day-to-day use.  I'll still probably pick up an XT when I see it on sale.

 

I think you will notice the difference, but it will be acceptable.

For example. I have a core 2 2.0ghz convertible tablet. I switched from 80GB fujitsu to 320GB WD scorpio. The difference was very noticeable. I then switched to an OCZ Agility 60GB. The difference was even more noticeable from WD scorpio to the SSD.

 

I bought the 500GB XT to add as a backup and a second drive. It was fast, but not as fast as the SSD.

 

When I installed the 500GB XT into the Core 2 Duo 2.33mhz machine, The speed difference from 100GB 7200 Hitachi to the 500GB XT was very noticeable. After a few reboots, the response was very close to the Agility. Not exact, but very close.

Close enough that I felt very satisfied with my decision to use it. So satisfied I bought a second to install into that laptop for use as a data drive in the recording process.

 

Now as far as the "ssd" and being impressive.

I have the agility  in my convertible tablet, It's only SATA 150 but it's performance is impressive even for a lower end machine.

Where the SSD peaks in performance is in seek time. Lots of lil reads is going to do much better on an SSD.

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Where the SSD peaks in performance is in seek time. Lots of lil reads is going to do much better on an SSD.

 

This is where I have some doubt about the XT's abilities as a boot drive.  Obviously the OS takes up well more than 4GB, but I just don't know how much of that needs to be read during boot and normal operation.  Is 4GBs really enough to facilitate those fast seeks and random reads for an OS and a bunch of programs?  If so, then what's the purpose of the other 11GBs that the OS takes up?

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Where the SSD peaks in performance is in seek time. Lots of lil reads is going to do much better on an SSD.

 

This is where I have some doubt about the XT's abilities as a boot drive.  Obviously the OS takes up well more than 4GB, but I just don't know how much of that needs to be read during boot and normal operation.  Is 4GBs really enough to facilitate those fast seeks and random reads for an OS and a bunch of programs?  If so, then what's the purpose of the other 11GBs that the OS takes up?

 

I don't know about Windows 7. But I've always been able to get a base OS and office running in 4GB.

I've been doing that on a vmware system for a long time.  It's all the extra programs. cookies and patches that end up forcing me to grow the virtual drive.

 

So 4GB SLC read cache as a boot drive, Yeah, I'm sure it helps.  Look at vista turbo boost. Supposedly that helped at some point.

Remember the drive caches the LBA's that are accessed most. So if there is a chunk of disk that is accessed very frequently, it will be in flash.  Consider stuff such as directories and/or filesystem allocation tables/pointers.

 

On my Dell XPS M1710, I noticed the difference very soon after installation.

Reboot, Run and Exit firefox a few times and you will see the difference.

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On my Dell XPS M1710, I noticed the difference very soon after installation.

Reboot, Run and Exit firefox a few times and you will see the difference.

 

So it does move LBAs to the SSD portion on the fly, not just on reboots?

 

Joe: That's one (of the very few) things I miss about MacOS - the ability to uninstall languages, printer drivers, etc. that you don't want.  However, doesn't Win7 install most of those things by update now?  Or maybe they just update the languages and drivers that are still preinstalled, I'm not sure.

 

I've definitely been able to install WinXP in under 4 GBs, but no other OS.  Haven't tried with Linux, except unRAID and XBMC Live of course.

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On my Dell XPS M1710, I noticed the difference very soon after installation.

Reboot, Run and Exit firefox a few times and you will see the difference.

 

So it does move LBAs to the SSD portion on the fly, not just on reboots?

 

It doesn't really move them, it caches the most used ones in the SLC memory.

The only purpose to reboot multiple times is to get the drive to recognize the most used LBA's in a shorter period of time.

 

I've definitely been able to install WinXP in under 4 GBs, but no other OS.  Haven't tried with Linux, except unRAID and XBMC Live of course.

I've gotten linux to install in 4GB, it takes some tweaking from the distros as you install it.

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So it does move LBAs to the SSD portion on the fly, not just on reboots?

 

It doesn't really move them, it caches the most used ones in the SLC memory.

The only purpose to reboot multiple times is to get the drive to recognize the most used LBA's in a shorter period of time.

 

Ah, OK, that makes sense.  So you still only get the standard 465 GBs of usable space from the drive, right?

 

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  • 1 month later...

Raj, Thought I remember you said you were going to get one of these?

I just bought my third one for the pro tools music laptop. It's working well.

Right now I'm only archiving my 4 track tapes, but a few songs I recorded worked really well with this drive.

Even if I'm using the system drive to record the audio data).

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I have one, and it is sitting here...unused...still in the packaging.  My friend lost the power cord to my DJ laptop, so until the replacement arrives (next week sometime) the XT drive is useless.  What agony!

 

Both my desktop and my other laptop use full SSDs, so I expect I would only see a performance decrease by installing the XT into either one of those.

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