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

[Panzer]

Hi everyone,

I use 2 Momentus XT drive on a G73sw (seven 64) since 6 month bu last week, just after a big defrag, i began to feel some lag pike, and freeze when using FireFox or the internet explorer, or even when typing message on the web.

After some research, i decide too update the firmware of the 2 disk with the SD28, but the lags are still here...

Then i decided to ask by mail the Seagate technical support, describing the defrag and the lag spike, and there is the (strange) answer i just received :

" Thank you for your inquiry to Seagate Technical Support. You used defragmentation on drives with partial SSD memory on them.  SSD memory isn't made to be defragmented.  Therefore,  the memory functionality  is unable to properly work now. The drive will therefore have to be replaced.

If you have any additional question, please let us know."

What do you think ? Do i really "kill" the Momentus ??? Thx in advance !

[xjrguy]

Total nonsense.

The SSD portion of the hard drive is non user accessible.

That means that you, your operating system, disk utils, etc have no way to access that SSD portion of the drive.

Defragmenting the hard drive will not damage it at all.

[Panzer]

That what i thought thx you !

But the lags are still here... at least, i don't have to buy (sic !!) another disk...

[WiseDrive]

Two issues  likely here:

A) the flash cache portion probably had no clue that you are defragging, so it loaded that data into it to select what to cache --- entirely erronous.

B) now, when it fetches data, rather than getting it from the optimized cache.. it is getting it from the platter --- much slower and you see it as a lag.

What is needed is a funciton to tell the flash cache to clear itself --- and restart optimizing as if you had a fresh drive.

Seagate... are you listening? 

We need a firmware / software way to clear the cache and start over!

[wade7575]

Also what defragger are you using,I have used Perfect Disk for many years and there software has always performed the best for me. 

[Panzer]

Hi, and thx for the answer !

I use Tuneup Utility for defrag (used OO defrag before), version 2012 now (but this version was installd after the first visible pike lag, so no link possible), and since 1 year, it's seems ok for this work. Maybe i can try another defrag tool and check again, but someone in an othe rpost say that after a defrag, the SSD table can take up to 2 weeks to re-learn anything, so for now, i'm trying to just use my comp and see if the situation improve in the next days... but it's seem very odd. I just received another mail from Seagat confirming the fisrst one, that a "SSD disk" (sic) cannot be defragmented"... I'm wondering : is this a really serious (and true) mail, or just a very bad answer again ???

"B) now, when it fetches data, rather than getting it from the optimized cache.. it is getting it from the platter --- much slower and you see it as a lag." = to be honest, even with the worst 5200rpm disk, no lag like mine can appear   2 or 3 seconds to access a data !

That why i think your theory about the SSD cache messing is interesting ! If the SSD table ask to read something, and it's not what the program ask for, try, doesn't find the right data (lag appear) then switch to the physical disk, maybe that' why the lag happen...

I was asking myself about a way to "reset" the drive cache in some way, but i can't find the answer anywhere... maybe another firmware on the way ?

[KrypteX]

Hi Panzer,

I might be mistaking, but here it goes:

The SSD cache contains data, pulled from the hard disk, which is often used. I suppose that the drive has a kind of list, with the most often accessed (read) LBAs and the number of such reads. An LBA with high acceesses will be on the top of the list. Of course, this list changes over time...

Now, here is the nice part. When you OVERWRITE a given LBA on the hard disk (suppose that its content was already pulled on the SSD for fast read), that LBA address is deleted from the "access list"; meaning that by zero-filling the hard disk, all pulled data in the SSD has to be discarded...

So... just perform a zero-fill with HDTune and see what happens. The drive should revert to its original state.

As a sidenote, what do you think is the lifetime of the 4 GB SSD in this Momentus XT ? I mean... in terms of wear level...

Regards.

[Panzer]

Hi,

"So... just perform a zero-fill with HDTune and see what happens. The drive should revert to its original state."

Hum... i have HDTune, but i'm not sure to know how about doing that.. will check on the net !

And for my opinion about the SSD lifetime of the Momentus, to be honest, i don't know, except that it worked well for almost 8 month until begining to slow down and lag last week...

[KrypteX]

In HDTune, choose your drive, go to the Erase and "Start".

If you used the drive for 8 months, it is probably more than 1000 power-on-hours... Mine is still around 400 (not used much, since I didn't bought it long ago).

[lemon]

I would stop trying to figure out why what the seagate guys tell you is not true. Naturally they know what they talk about. Don't defrag or get used to the lags.

However I remember that someone here posted about this issue almost a year or so ago. He said that after the defrag you will have a slower disc but only for about 3 to 4 weeks. After that period the defraged disc would be faster than the fraged one. Well you have the means to find it out!...

As fow me I use a Mac and according to Apple a mac does not need to be defraged.

Wish you luck and just believe the seagate guys!