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

[nohabla]

I have seen a lot of complaints about this drive from Mac owners, but how about people using Windows 7?

- Please include your HW info (chipset, controller, OS) and the drive info (part#, lot#, FW)

What went wrong?  Did FW help?

[gchamby]

Please see case notes below:

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I recently purchased this drive - ST95002560AS - 500GB XT with SD23 as shipped to Best Buy.
Drive is installed in a Dell Latitude E5510 BIOS A09 running Windows 7.
Upon installation, I imaged my old drive using Acronis and restored to the new drive. The first Dell driver update resulted in a Blue Screen saying a required boot device is missing.
Windows startup repair then got it to start and it sort of worked for two weeks. Upon applying Windows 7 SP1 the drive refused to boot - again different Blue Screen and eventually Windows startup repair said there was a corrupt file.
I deleted all paritiions and reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch. Again, upon installing Windows 7 Sp1 the install went fine, system reboots, and goes to a Blue Screen error. Another startup repair sequence culminates in "corrupt file" and it aborts.
I see the hundreds of message threads on the forums, is there ANY best practice or possible config change that will make this drive work at all?
Thanks.

[dericn]

I have an E5510 as well (and love it!). Running Win7Pro/32bit on the A09 BIOS. I purchased a 500GB Momentum XT (SD23) from Amazon 4 months ago. I cloned the original WD Scorpio Blue 160GB drive in the laptop and was extremely happy with the Momentus XT... UNTIL LAST FRIDAY. While Windows was loading, the laptop rebooted, and I got the dreaded "bootmgr is missing" error. I tried all the various different methods (Startup Repair, bootrec, etc) to fix it, with no luck.

Every 50 or so tries, and it WILL boot and operate fine, so I KNOW the bootmgr file is there.

All my data is safely backed up on multiple drives, as well as the cloud, but I have a TON of programs installed on this laptop, so I REALLY don't want to reinstall Windows. I doubt a reinstallation will 'fix' this problem anyway, since I suspect it's the drive. When I pop in my old WD drive, the laptop boots fine.

My next step is to make an image of this drive and (hopefully) restore it to a new WD 320GB drive, so I can relax. Once I'm 'safe' again, I may try updating the firmware on the XT, but this experience has soured my thoughts on these hybrid drives. Will it suddenly crud out again? It's a shame, because I really liked the speed improvement, but I can't afford to have my laptop fail to boot when I arrive at a customer's facility!

[picardsm]

I have an Alienware M17x R1 with (2) Momentus XT 500GB drives. (1) for OS & (1) for data.

First one was purchased Aug 2010 and the Second in Feb 2011.

With firmware SD25 came major problems, chirping on both, then on the 2nd drive (Feb 2011) drive I received a S.M.A.R.T. error = End-to_End error. This was in mid-April.  Seagate replaced the drive.  The replacement chirps more often than before.

This past Friday, the 1st drive (Aug 2010) reported the same  S.M.A.R.T. error = End-to_End error.

Seagate is replacing that one too.  

Very frustrating to say the least. 

These drives apparently are not very reliable.  Good thing I monitor my drives and perform regular backups.

Never again.  These drives are not worthy to be in an Alienware.

I have never had to pay so much to beta test hardware.  After these drives fail again, they and Seagate are out the door.

If I don't get sick of the chirping by then...

[AlanM]

Attention:

I am closing this thread in favor of the UNIFIED THREAD - Momentus XT spreadsheet thread.

Please don't forget to post your information in the spreadsheet if you have not yet done so.

Thank you for your understanding.