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

[qvazzler]

I knew they weren't giving up on anything.

Joni I have a suggestion for you. If you are certain that this is indeed something that can be fixed entirely through firmware updates, why not make an official thread that's locked which means only you can post in it, and you post in it whenever you have made progress on the new firmware update.

It's very tedious having to search this huge complaint-threads after all. Perhaps this could be a good way to settle the people who are just spewing out complaints (myself included)?

I would also very much like to know right now if you have made any breakthroughs with the SD26.

[incognito]

I own an early 2011 Macbook Pro (17'' 2.3Ghz i7, 8GB RAM, Thunderbolt) and just purchased the Momentum XT 500GB from Canada Computers (http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_215_217&item_id=031555) on Apr 25, 2011.

The Momentum XT came with SD24 preinstalled and I upgraded to SD25 after installing the drive (fresh OSX install and transferred my files from the factory HDD using Migration Assistant). I've only used the drive for 2 days at this point and (fortunately) have encountered NO issues at all. The drive is super fast and my Macbook pro behaves normally, just like it did with the factory HDD. I have been looking out for any of the issues that have been mentioned here (and on message boards all over the web) and no issues. A friend of mine, who is a PC user (Dell laptop) purchased the same drive with me and his has been working fine as well. I'm a video editor so I mainly use FCP and AE with large HD material, besides the usual email, word processing, etc. 

Not sure if this info helps at all, but I figured I'd chime in as one of the very few on this board who is actually happy with this drive. I'll post an update a week or 2 from now. Hopefully my experience with the Momentum XT remains positive.

[bburns36]

Hey guys, 

I was having issues running my 500GB drive at 3Gbps on a MacbookPro5,4. Apparently it was some incompatibility between the 5,4 and the XT, or a bum SATA cable, because the same drive screams along flawlessly with the jumper removed in my new MacbookPro8,2. Completely different chipset, thought y'all might consider it noteworthy. 

[qvazzler]

bburn36, could you provide more information on the chipsets?

I have notified one of the Seagate employees of the exact same thing, but I have yet to see the difference in a chipset that makes the Momentux XT work and one that does the opposite.

Please get in touch!

[bburns36]

The newer machine that the drive functions properly in has the Intel HM65 chipset (Sandy Bridge) and an i7-2720QM processor. 

The older one has an nForce 730i chipset by nVidia, and a Core 2 Duo. 

[qvazzler]

Could you try going to the nForce settings of the computer that's not yet working, go to the sata configuration page, and disable something known as "Enable common queueing"?

Apparently this worked for a user with nForce installed.

Read his thread here!

[bburns36]

Well... if I felt like removing the XT from my new Macbook, formatting it, reinstalling OS X, adding a boot camp partition, and installing Windows, I could; there's no way that I know of to turn NCQ on or off in OS X. 

Even if there is, I'm not terribly keen on doing the above, as I'd still have to format the drive and move it back to the other machine. Maybe when I've got a few spare hours (fat chance these days!) and can backup and restore all my data. Restoring via Time Machine seems to take overnight, essentially. The kernel and kexts for the Sandy Bridge machines apparently won't even boot on older nForce machines and vice versa, almost as I'd expect, so you end up pretty much having to reinstall, or spend hours dinking around with things. 

If Seagate or whomever was to send me a drive for testing purposes, it'd make things on my end way easier, by essentially cutting my time investment in half. 

[Paul C]

Had a perfectly working drive, was wonderful, wish I had noted the firmware but it was pre-SD24. Took the SD25 upgdate and the drive was dead within 24 hours. Sent the drive back and in return received a refurb with SD24. Same computer, used the Acronis (Seagate) to copy from the IDE drive to the refurb. On boot, it is slow, I mean VERY slow. Drive also displays the 'chirp' now after login. Had to run chkdsk due to errors reported by Windows, which in turn showed a lot of corrected errors. All in all, SD24 is not working well.

Giga-Byte MB (P35C-DS3R series)

Intel Dual Core

IHC9 NB

Drive is going back if the performance doesn't pick up.

[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.