Klok wrote:
Here is a review :
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22057
Klok
A typical review with benchmarks that measure things that have a tangential relationship to real world performance.
But then, it is nice to see how a few of the reviewed drives got such good scores, which was achieved by tweaking the firmware to post good results --- knowing exactly what the measuring yardstick is throwing at them.
Significantly, some of the best designed SSDs out there --- the Intels --- do not necessarily get the best scores, but tend to be far more reliable (yes I know of their crashes, including the most recent doozie too).
The only problem is in the real world, those measured "high" speeds may come at the expense of many other things that matter, like real world speed in actual applications, and particularly, in reliability, stability, and.... actual speed with real life applications and real users.
It does look to me that someone from the "pure" SSD crowd that have a horse (or a stable of horses) in the race don't want the world to know how unreliable many of the SSDs that are sold really are, and how they are playing games to get high benchmark scores --- and what tradeoffs are being made, especially in things like testing and validation.
Is that the reason that certain interested parties seem to be so interested in the Momentus XT line?
One can't but notice certain persons taking so much time to comment on many threads and complain about "defects" even as they say they got better price performance elsewhere (and should never buy another XT again)?
Maybe it is their intention to raise enough smoke to distract attention from a competing product that is delivering about 80% of the benefits of a "pure" SSD for the typical consumer user at a fraction of the cost.
The Momentus XT is probably the biggest threat to the low end and consumer grade SSD market out there.
Maybe I am the one in a million that is lucky to have the one good one Seagate put out (that worked well with factory firmware and every upgrade since).
Or is it because I know too much about SSDs?
I am expecting that in the next 6 months, many other vendors will rush into the Hybrid SSD space now that the path is proven by Seagate --- and consumer acceptance of the product is proven.
A few more things need to happen --- like tighter integration of Hybrid drives into the OS and equivalent of the "trim" command for SSDs for Windows 7's successor but for Hybrids.
For the curious... Google "Windows 7 Enhancement for SSDs Powerpoint"
That should happen by the next version of Windows --- assuming that Seagate and other Hybrid drive vendors are doing their job lobbying Microsoft.
Expect to see hybrid drives in mid-market / low-high end gaming machines.... like mine in a year.
