Dear Seagate,
When I first read about the Seagate Momentus XT drive, I was ecstatic; finally, a drive I can install in my MBP without having to sacrifice performance (well, relatively speaking when compared to traditional HDDs) for storage capacity.
However, the honeymoon is longer over and I am no longer happy with my relationship with Seagate or its problem daughter, the Seagate Momentus XT drive.
Running a 2010 MBP with a stock 7200 RPM hard disk (Apple OEM Hitachi GST rebrand), I would get anywhere from 6.5-7.5 hours of battery life for normal usage (browsing, word processing, excel, etc.).
After installing the Momentus XT (SD23 firmware), that dropped down to 5.5-6.5 hours, a significant drop, but bearable nonetheless (from various reviews online, I knew the Momentus XT was a power hog). However, I started to notice certain issues that I never had before... the spinning wheel, the drive continuing to spin up/down randomly/continuously, and random stops during video playback (all documented in other users' posts). At first, I didn't know what to make of this, just figured I was an isolated case, but as I continued to do research, I came across post after post, forum after forum dedicated to the various issues this hard drive had (even made the front page of Engadget!).
SD24 was supposed to be cure-all, a magical witch potion, a hodgepodge of trickery and engineering wizardry to fix all such issues. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Though many problems were cured, a few new ones arose: the random chirping (perhaps SD24 conjured up a magical flying animal within the internals of the drive) but most importantly, my battery life now dropped from 5.5 hours to 4.5 hours, perhaps to provide energy to the aforementioned bird, I'm not sure (not to mention the video playback issue still persisted).
However, I put my faith in engineers and other employees of Seagate (STX_NB) to fix these issues and low and behold, a few weeks later they released SD25.
Now, I'm not sure if they decided to remove the bird or not, or just silenced it, but that issue now seemed fixed (I think I've heard it, but again, not sure... it became such a regular occurrence that I tuned it out; now when I think I hear the chirp, I'm not sure if it's a real chirp or a phantom chirp that my brain is just expecting to hear).
I haven't had a chance to test video playback because I don't have enough battery power to actually run a test. On a safe boot into safe mode (no background processes, no extensions) with a 100% battery charge, I now only show 2 hours 37 minutes of battery life remaining (again, doing nothing, no background process within activity monitor, no random program hogging up CPU cycles, nothing).
This is unacceptable. Granted, this number changes based upon the whims of my Momentus XT drive deciding to spin up/down, but on average, I am now only getting 3 hours of battery life before having to plug in my MBP to the power adapter.
I've tried using HDAPM to modify the APM settings of the drive and have been able to coax another 20-30 minutes from the Momentus, but going from 7.0 hours of usable battery life to 3.5 hours of battery life (not to be repetitive) is UNACCEPTABLE (and I'm aware of the downgrade EFI option, but I'm sorry... I'm not willing to do that. I'm not sure if downgrading would fix this problem, only to cause more/other OS X / MBP related issues).
Apple laptops are no longer on the fringe of the notebook products. I'm not running some off-brand hardware with my own custom Linux kernel; I'm using an Apple unibody MBP (2010) with OS X (10.6.7). I do not and cannot understand why rigorous quality testing would not include Apple products.
Prior to my experience with the Seagate Momentus XT, I have, (maybe) twice to three times previously upgraded a hard drive's firmware (I’m not saying other manufacturers do not release firmware updates, I’m saying that I’ve never been in a situation where I needed to update even if a firmware update existed (if it’s not broke, don’t fix it rule)).
I'm tired of having to do this much work to make my hard drive work. I shouldn't have to troll forums, download third party power management utilities and "hack" my hard drive to work, I simply shouldn't have to.
I am way past my 30-day return date and do not wish to "troubleshoot" this drive any longer. Could a mod or a Seagate employee please contact me and let me know how I may go about getting a refund from Seagate.
In turn, I'll be happy to secure-wipe my drive and send it back to you (magical, chirping bird included).
Sincerely,
-Jaspreet Sidhu
