Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives

[superk]

Well 4 BSOD's and back to newegg it goes, i bit the bullet and bought an ssd drive and not from s.......

Was very happy at first but cannot live with that period. I bet a new firmware update would fix issue but I think this drive was shipped out too fast before they had the firmware correct. Hey I tried, just isn't going to work for me.

[superk]

Really kind of a shame this drive was just starting to hit it's stride and performing well. If they fix the firmware I would re-consider it in the future.

[Joy]

pls join us,bro...

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/If-you-have-problems-with-Momentus-XT-please-c...

[netmajor]

Hey!

How You used CrystalDiskInfo to disable spindown in Momentus xt?

[fqr1973]

go to "function" > "advanced feature" > "aam/apm control" and set apm to max performance. but im not sure whether this helps to prevent all spindowns, but afaik it reduces it. can't test as i never had problems with spind downs...

[deroby]

Mid September I replaced my "old" Hitachi 7200 RPM 80Gb disk with the 500 GB Momentus XT and absolutely love it.

My machine is a Dell Latitude D830 and apart from the obvious extra space, things DO start much faster (Win7 Pro) and also for things not related to the flash-cache, this drive performs very well, eg. copying large files like making a backup of a 2GB  .vhd happens at ca 80Mb/s !!.

I'm sure people will say a true SSD is much faster, but I doubt I could afford a 500Gb version any time soon !

As for complaints, yes, the drive DOES make funny noises now and then... Personally I blame them on the shock protection that's being triggered by either me typing on the laptop, or some internal vibration ?! (**). It's not 'loud' at all, in fact in a room full of people you're bound not to hear it; nor 'regular', but when you 'catch' it, it doesn't feel "right" as the drive makes strange noises but the HDD light does not light up and you simply know there is no IO going on ... This indeed can be annoying in a silent environment! It seemed to be worse during the first weeks, but maybe I'm just getting used to it...

Apart from that sound thingy I'm extremely pleased with it and feel bad for those that seem to be having so much problems with it... I haven't (yet?) experienced any of the 'locking' effects, let alone a BSOD.. 

For those interested, my main use for the laptop is office work (outlook, excel, ...) & programming (Visual Studio, MSSQL, ...) Lately I've been working quite a bit in Virtual Machines too which clearly (& quickly!) showed improvement on the I/O front too .. not sure what algorithm is in the disk-bios, but it surely adapts !

I only wished there was a way to make it ignore certain parts of the disk for caching, or better, make the cache look only at the first 75Gb or so...  that way I could partition the disk and put all programs on the first partition and all the temp-stuff / paging stuff / data on the remainder of the disk... Then again, like I said, it does a very decent job at adapting.

I'll be upgrading my dad's desktop soon (very old! =) and I'm likely to put another 500Gb XT in there...

(**: I can actually trigger the sound by gently moving the notebook up and down in the air ... )

[Krisdk]

When putting this drive in your Mac the following happens (firmware SD23)

• Battery life drops from 7-8 hours to 2 hours
• The Mac pauses all the time (very annoying when you are trying to edit a field in excel and the computer does not respond. You then start clicking all over and when the computer unfreezes you have ruined your spreadsheet. Apply this to whatever program you are using to do actual work.
• the harddrive NEVER spins down. This means the drive spins and spins and spins and spins (result see above regarding battery life).
• Sudden motion detection also seams to be disabled. High risk of data loss!

I say RETURN OR DONT BUY THE DRIVE IF YOU CAN!!!!

[admindns]

Hello all,

First - it takes time and effort to post about issues, I'm frustrated enough to bother to register and post - Seagate please note.

Macbook Pro, i5 2.53ghz 4GB - OS X 10.6.4

I Purchased the ST95005620AS Momentus XT as an upgrade hoping for a snappier computing experience.  I'm very disappointed to find that video playback is greatly affected.  I have tried the suggestion of a previous poster - don't waste your time with hdapm.  After setting the drive to max the pauses in playback continued.  I just popped the drive out and slapped a jumper on to limit the speed to 1.5 and it's much improved - but there's still an occasional pause.

I work in advertising and video playback is crucial - I'd think for most people that smooth video playback is something that we take for granted these days.

I'm going to remove the drive this evening and put back my 7200rpm Hitachi.

My advice - skip buying this drive - snappier load times are not worth giving up smooth playback of video for.

[glnz]

deroby -

1)  Are you still happy with your Momentus XT?  I ask because we also have a Dell Latitude D830 with original 80GB HD, and I'm thinking about installing the very same 500 GB Momentus XT.

2)  HOW DID YOU CLONE THE OLD HD ONTO THE NEW 500 GB Momentus XT?  Please give as much detail as possible, with any links.

3)  Have you made any adjustments/upgrades since your post in October?

4)  Does the 500 GB Momentus XT still feel faster than the old HD?

(We have WinXPPro SP3 and 4GB RAM on our D830.)

THANKS!