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

[orixa99]

1.laptop

2.HP Elitebook 8440 P, 6 GB memory

3.Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit, with Momentus XT 500 GB

4.Performance issues with SQL Server 2008 R2 dev.ed. 64-bit

After installataion, and patched all patches and fixes from Microsoft the harddrives seems to perform well. At least as good as the original drive. However after a couple of reboots, and 2 day's later even the smallest/easiest sql-statement takes 2-4 times longer than on the original harddrive.

I have tried to reinstall, and moved drive to another pc, but the issues arises again...

[deroby]

Similar situation here :

1. Laptop
2. Dell Latitude D830, 4Gb memory

3. Windows 7 Enterprise, 64 bit with Momentus XT 500 GB

Yet, no issues noticed with SQL2008 at all...

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP1) - 10.0.2531.0 (X64)   Mar 29 2009 10:11:52   Copyright (c) 1988-2008 Microsoft Corporation  Developer Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 <X64> (Build 7600: )

I simply imaged the 'old' drive to this one (leaving the partition the same size, but I doubt that would make much of a difference.

=> most databases sit on the 'data-partition', master etc (and temp sadly too, I probably should move that one) are still on the first partition.

[glnz]

deroby - how did you image, and what exactly did you do regarding partitions?  (Is there any need to specify partitions when imaging your old HD onto the new Seagate Momentus XT?)

Thanks.

[deroby]

To be entirely honest, I can't quite remember what exact tool I used. (CloneZilla ? Ghost ?) It's been a while =)

What I (probably) did was

* unplugged my old 2"5 from my lapop

* removed the harddisk from my desktop machine

* changed the BIOS setting of my desktop so it would never boot from the harddisks

* put my old 2"5 hard-disk in the desktop

* put the new Seagate in the desktop

* start the imaging software from CD-ROM

* Copied the partition from the old disk to the new one (scary if it's not quite clear which disk is which ... lucky for me the old one was 80Gb and the new 500Gb so it was easy to see)

=> this takes a while !!!!!

* plugged the seagate into my laptop machine and it booted without any problem.

I then used Disk Management to create a new partition to use the remaining (ca 4Z0Gb) of the disk

There's probably different ways to either

* make the destination partition on the new disk use the 100% directly

* make the copied partition grow (GPartEd comes to mind, although Win7 supports it too via disk-mgmt I believe)

I simply assumed it would work... and if not, I always had my old disk as a backup... But in my case things went fine right from the bat.

PS: Now I think about it, I copied the BDE partition etc too, so I probably rather did a DISK clone than a PARTITION close !!!!

[glnz]

deroby - Thanks for response. Unfortunately, I am not as knowledgeable as you. (I don't know what "BDE partition" means.)

I was hoping that if I bought the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB as a replacement HD for my wife's Dell Latitude D830 laptop (WinXPPro SP3 with 4GB RAM), it wouldn't be so hard to clone the existing hard drive over to the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB. I was hoping I would NOT have to worry about partitions at all.

I might buy the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB through a company (CMS Products - see www.cmsproducts.com ) that also supplies a temporary external casing and some type of application that would permit me to attach the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB as an external drive to the D830 via USB and then clone the existing HD over. I was hoping the hidden Dell partition would be copied over without fuss. What do you think?

One of my initial questions was whether -- if the cloning were 100% successful -- the D830 would still think it had only the original 80GB capacity, since the clone is ... well, a clone. If the answer is "Yes", then I suppose I could use EaseUS Partition Master to expand the C:\ partition to the entire Seagate Momentus XT 500GB (less the hidden dell partition). What do you think? (Neither I nor my wife sets up separate partitions for data, etc.)

Also - I had these other questions to you in the other forum:

"1) Are you still happy with your Momentus XT? ...

"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?"

THANKS!

[deroby]

Hey ginz,

Well, I'm not familiar with CMS but browsing through their website seems to indicate their cloning software (bounceback) does indeed handle the entire disk. There seems to be some problems with Dell's Media Direct v1 & v2, but I doubt your D830 came with that so you're probably safe.

Sorry about not reacting to those other forum threads, I've only browsed around here briefly but apparently only get emails for this thread.

As for the disk itself, it now has 901 hours on the counter according to CrystalDiskInfo and still is going strong. Sadly, one of the things about fast(er) components is that you get used to it quickly, so I can't really tell if it still performs as 'miraculously' as it did when I first had it, but things like copying files still goes amazingly fast. Admittedly, my previous disk was rather slow I think =)

The only downside to this disk is that it 'frizles' at times (sorry, don't know a good word for it, sometimes it makes a repetitive buzzing/mechanical noise now and then,rather silent and probably only audible when you're in a silent room, but still strange to have this now and the (not always!)). Apart from that I've never had any of the problems some people seem to be experiencing/reporting. (**)

Anyway, when asked I do recommend this disk. The hybrid part makes it slightly more expensive, but I do think it helps...

Good luck ! (and happy holidays =)

Ps: no hardware changes since October, it's fine as is =)

(**: it MIGHT be useful to know that I have Acoustic Management disabled in the BIOS, seems some of the stuttering reported has to do with AAM jumping in too harsh... APM is on tough)

[glnz]

deroby  - thanks again - great info!

One remaining question that I think is generic for any replacement HD that is larger than the original:  If I clone the original HD successfully onto the larger replacement and then plug the replacement into the laptop, won't the laptop think the replacement is the same as the original at the original size?  How does the laptop know that the HD is now bigger?

Does the laptop figure this out by itself, or does the human have to go in and adjust something?

Thanks!

[deroby]

From how I understand it, the size of the disk is "read" by the BIOS. The size of the partitions (and their locations) is managed by the OS and is "free" to use as long as you stay within the limits of the hardware (as told by the BIOS).

Hence, when the OS finds out the disk has x amount of unused space, it can use these to expand the neighbouring paritions, or allow you to create a new partition next to the already existing ones.

I honestly don't think this would be a problem, I've done this kind of operations many times before and can only tell that there's quite a bit of software available now that allows you to "play" with this. The Windows XP Disk Management will allow you to create a new partition in the newly found free space only, Win7 would allow you to expand it.

However, you mentioned some software that would allow you to expand the partion, so I guess you already know how to do that.

If needed, look for GParted, it's a linux distro that allows you to boot from cdrom and modify all kinds of things with the partitioning on your disks.

(eg. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/resize/resizing.htm )

[Softlover]

Gpart is a great partition tool. But I also recommend partition master server in this case.

For safety's sake, I recommend server administators bet on third-party software in those cases.

I personally have gone through such things with my server. And I messed up everything in the last after several trials by myself.

You know, the advantage of buying a software is not only they are more stable, but also you can get a good support team to help you all the time.

[deroby]

In the meantime I found out about RedoBackup => http://redobackup.org/

It's a live cd that allows you to backup your disk to an image on an external disk (eg connected via USB). It's practically foolproof and it avoids the need for a machine where you can put both the old and the new disk in at the same time (eg. my laptop does not allow for this).

It's not very fast IMHO as it tries to compress everything before it writes it to disk (which in a way is good, that way backups take far less space; but my cpu is rather slow) but it gets the job done without making it look like rocket-science.

Mind that it's a so-called bare-metal backup tool meaning it will copy EVERYTHING on the disk. This also implies that you only can go from a disk of size x to a disk of size y where x <= y regardless of the fact whether you're only effectively using 10% of x !

Instructions:

* download & burn to CDROM (there is a way to do this from USB-stick too, see website)

* boot from CDROM with external drive attached (NTFS _is_ supported, mind that it can take a while as it scans the hardware during startup)

* select BACKUP, select where to put the disk-image on the external disk (make sure you have enough space !!!)

* <wait> =)

* power down

* remove old disk, insert new disk

* boot from CDROM with external drive attached

* select RESTORE, select disk-image file from supra

* <wait> (much faster than backup btw)

* powerdown, remove external drive

* boot from harddisk

et voila !

(it might be that windows asks to reboot once again after you finish as it found the new harddrive, but that's only once)

ps: the nice thing about RedoBackup is that it's foolproof : there are virtually NO options/preferences to set. This is also it's biggest flaw imho, but I guess you have to compromise somewhere =) Additionally, AFAIK there is no way to 'read' the backup files otherwise than restoring them to a disk. Maybe one could restore them to a virtual disk somehow, but I have no experience with this. Otherwise it's a nice point & forget backup tool and by experience I can confirm it works as advertised. Worst case you can always put the old disk back in as it never was 'touched' in the process.