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I just put a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB in it

LeandrodaFL

LeandrodaFL

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 6, 2011
973
1
I recenlty installed a seagate hybrid in my Macmini 2010. For those out there thinking of upgrading to this drive. My advice is....dont. If you have the money, get an SSD. Here are more details

First of, the MacMini is a tottally silent machine and uses a 5400RPM drive. With this drive, wich is 7200RPM, it starts making some noise. I dont know if is the fan running louder or if it is the drive itself. Nevertheless, you will be able to hear a small humming. Having said that, is an insanelly low humming, close to nothing, and people without an ear for it may not even hear it.

Now, I upgraded my notebook to an SSD instead of a hybrid, cause I did not needed the space, but wanted the speed. And man, SSDs are awsome, they run fast, silently and cool.

So, if you are going over the trouble of changing your HDD, go for a SSD. I had no choice, as I needed more than 500GB, and 1Tb drives would be insanely expensive. Had I own the 2 hard drive current macmin model, I would get a 500GB SSD now, and later add on another. Im currently using 430GB

I would like to add, that this drive would be perfect in a PC. My PC naturally makes some louder humming noise, and this drive would the least of my acoustics worries. I actually may get another one to install on my gaming PC
 
I had an original XT drive in my 2010 MBP and I also couldn't stand the noise and vibration even though it was very slight. A 50GB Vertex 2 now sits inside and a Synology NAS hosts the big files, media and backup.
 
In addition, the mini gets really hot, to the point where you can't put your hand on it.

Ok, edit: I notice my fan is not spinning, so heat is due to fan being broken.
 
Last edited:
LeandrodaFL said:
I recenlty installed a seagate hybrid in my Macmini 2010. For those out there thinking of upgrading to this drive. My advice is....dont. If you have the money, get an SSD. Here are more details

First of, the MacMini is a tottally silent machine and uses a 5400RPM drive. With this drive, wich is 7200RPM, it starts making some noise. I dont know if is the fan running louder or if it is the drive itself. Nevertheless, you will be able to hear a small humming. Having said that, is an insanelly low humming, close to nothing, and people without an ear for it may not even hear it.

Now, I upgraded my notebook to an SSD instead of a hybrid, cause I did not needed the space, but wanted the speed. And man, SSDs are awsome, they run fast, silently and cool.

So, if you are going over the trouble of changing your HDD, go for a SSD. I had no choice, as I needed more than 500GB, and 1Tb drives would be insanely expensive. Had I own the 2 hard drive current macmin model, I would get a 500GB SSD now, and later add on another. Im currently using 430GB

I would like to add, that this drive would be perfect in a PC. My PC naturally makes some louder humming noise, and this drive would the least of my acoustics worries. I actually may get another one to install on my gaming PC
Click to expand...

My experience is quite the opposite of yours.

I have an OLD Mac mini (2007 - Core 2 Duo) which was born with a 120 GB disk.

I exchanged that with a 500 GB, 7200 rpm Seagate Hybrid.

Boot time went down from 31 to 18 seconds (Lion).
And to my ears the noise or rather - lack of - is the same.


For me it was def. worth it.
YMMV.


Regards,

Brian
 
Perhaps the first generation is less noisy, or perhaps your model of the macmini has a better acoustics shielding. also, my macmini stays 20cm away from me, I dont know how far yours is located.

I tottally recomend this drive for a MacPro or a PC or an iMac, wich stays more distant from the user. But would not recomend for a macbook

Nevertheless we all have to agree that simply puting a 500GB SSD would bring speed, less heat and more silence.
 
LeandrodaFL said:
Perhaps the first generation is less noisy, or perhaps your model of the macmini has a better acoustics shielding. also, my macmini stays 20cm away from me, I dont know how far yours is located.

I tottally recomend this drive for a MacPro or a PC or an iMac, wich stays more distant from the user. But would not recomend for a macbook

Nevertheless we all have to agree that simply puting a 500GB SSD would bring speed, less heat and more silence.
Click to expand...

My mini sits about half a meter from me.
My wife has *very* sensitive ears and she will shut down anything that makes sounds when i am not home. She has pulled the power cord once from the mini once..
We had an argument over it. When i asked her why she did it she simply said: I could see it was running and it use power, power is expensive, not good for the environment .. etc etc. Of course she has a point.

Since that day I've put a sticker over the LED. Now she can't see when the mini is running :D

I totally agree, SSD is way better. But give it another year or two before they really are affordable. Until then my hybrid will do just fine.
 
LeandrodaFL said:
I had no choice, as I needed more than 500GB, and 1Tb drives would be insanely expensive.
Click to expand...

I needed the space as well but I am not willing to to spend more for a SSD than the Mini itself, lol. For insane speed and killer graphics I am planning a build that should relegate a MacPro to I-bought-my-computer-at-Best-Buy status. At any rate I encourage you to install a large ssd if that's what you want. It would make a killer Mini for sure. Some people scoff at such mods but the fact remains you'd have smoking Mini; undoubtedly one of the fastest machines in that form factor.

As for the heat, noise and vibration, I also have had the opposite experience from you. My Mini's fan is louder than the 500GB XT and there is no perceptible vibration. It does warm up when I push the graphics but it is well below OEM shutdown levels.To be fair, I am using a fan software that bottoms the fan speed at 1900 that ramps steeply rather than a steady 1700 so it may be drowning hdd noise a little if any.

I would check your fan outside the machine. If it's working fine then perhaps the sensor was not quite re-installed correctly.
 
I had the opposite experience of the OP. I put the 750 Gb XT Hybrid in my mid-2011 mini, and after a couple of days use, I have much faster speeds on my everyday programs and have noticed no difference in sound.

It did exactly what it is advertised to do; speed up what I use most, and got an extra 250Gb of HDD space.
 
Has anyone tried the 750 gig Hybrid disk while using Bootcamp? If so, how does it respond compared to using just Mac OS? I'm using a 2011 Macbook pro

I'm thinking of ditching my current optibay solution (I'm getting heartily sick of taking my laptop apart to reinstall windows when Microsoft's latest patch kills it, and I don't want to give up the 300 gigs worth of games I've bought in the last few years) and going with a 750 gig Hybrid disk.
 
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kgallag1 said:
Has anyone tried the 750 gig Hybrid disk while using Bootcamp? If so, how does it respond compared to using just Mac OS? I'm using a 2011 Macbook pro

I'm thinking of ditching my current optibay solution (I'm getting heartily sick of taking my laptop apart to reinstall windows when Microsoft's latest patch kills it, and I don't want to give up the 300 gigs worth of games I've bought in the last few years) and going with a 750 gig Hybrid disk.
Click to expand...

Disable automatic update. I never use internet under windows anyway, its just for games. Besides, the updates take precious SSD space.
 
I installed a seagate momentus 5400rpm 500gb hybrid ssd and have only noticed that the mini seems to run hotter, but no other major sound than the fan. The SSD seems to work great, world of warcraft is running somewhat faster, copy speed are very noticeably faster and starting up the OS is much quicker. Im pretty satisfied with mine.
 
Interesting, I've had a 500GB Momentus XT in my 2010 MacBook Pro almost from the day I got the laptop in November 2010 (Why the hell didn't I wait until February, arrgghhh). :) I have to say that it's pretty much perfect for me. My first install beachballed and damn-near gave me a heart attack since I was not used to paying so much money for a laptop, but a second install went fine. It's been 14 months since and not one hiccup.

It's a 7200RPM hard drive with 32MB of cache and that's not even considering the 4GB hybrid SSD component. That's a nice hard drive even today, much less 14 months ago.

But I might agree with the OP on not installing it in a Mac Mini; though for different reasons. I think the Momentus XT line is more appropriate for a laptop than it is for a Mac Mini because you only get one hard drive slot on a MacBook (Pro). Yes, you can remove the optical drive, but what percentage of people actually do that? If you move to an SSD, you better have some serious coin if you want a large SSD. It's really cost prohibitive past 256GB IMO. So the Momentus XT gives you a nice speed bump, preserves (or improves) your existing capacity and doesn't set you back nearly as much as an equivalent SSD. I've found it to be a very good compromise.

On a Mac Mini, it's different. If you install a small 64GB or 128GB SSD, you can easily supplement that with an external HDD with all of your content. If speed is an issue, focus on getting an external HDD that uses FW800 or better yet, just get your own external enclosure and drop a monster HDD in it. Then you've got the best of both worlds.

Those new Momentus XT 750GB units with 8GB SSD and SATA 6GB interfaces look nice indeed. Pricey, but nice. If I had a new MBP, I would go with one of those, but that's just me. My next stop is probably a 13" MBA anyway.
 
LeandrodaFL said:
I recenlty installed a seagate hybrid in my Macmini 2010. For those out there thinking of upgrading to this drive. My advice is....dont. If you have the money, get an SSD. Here are more details

First of, the MacMini is a tottally silent machine and uses a 5400RPM drive. With this drive, wich is 7200RPM, it starts making some noise. I dont know if is the fan running louder or if it is the drive itself. Nevertheless, you will be able to hear a small humming. Having said that, is an insanelly low humming, close to nothing, and people without an ear for it may not even hear it.

Now, I upgraded my notebook to an SSD instead of a hybrid, cause I did not needed the space, but wanted the speed. And man, SSDs are awsome, they run fast, silently and cool.

So, if you are going over the trouble of changing your HDD, go for a SSD. I had no choice, as I needed more than 500GB, and 1Tb drives would be insanely expensive. Had I own the 2 hard drive current macmin model, I would get a 500GB SSD now, and later add on another. Im currently using 430GB

I would like to add, that this drive would be perfect in a PC. My PC naturally makes some louder humming noise, and this drive would the least of my acoustics worries. I actually may get another one to install on my gaming PC
Click to expand...


Some folks like myself can not use anything smaller than 500GB since we have a lot of files etc. I priced the Intel 320 600GB SSD and it is way too expensive for 600GB, so I went with the XT 750GB and let's say this is really fast in a 2.3 i5 2011 Base mini with 8GB of ram. I now have enough space, get the boot and apps speed performance from the 8GB NAND and 750 GB for storage, so fit my needs. If I could get the Intel 320 600GB for like $350 that would be a value to me, since the intel drive is fairly well priced and has fewer issues or bugs that some other name brand ssd's.

If you do not need a lot of space and SSD will work well, but once you are 500GB or more, the XT 750 Hybrid fits the pocket well per performance, for most. I can afford to buy the Intel 320 600GB but why bother, it only sits in my Mini as a server for Music, Videos, etc.

I bought a Kingston 120GB SSD for $109 from newegg for my uMB which works well since I do not need space.
 
I've now got the 750Gb XT 2 and it's excellent in my 2010 MBP i5. Quiet, much improved over the first gen XT and boots quicker in both Lion and Windows 7 though I do recommend a totally clean install of both OS's instead of cloning which didn't go right in terms of performance. I needed more than 500Gb and couldn't justify spending a fortune on a pure SSD - this does the job for a fraction of the price.
 
QuantumLo0p said:
Hmmm, mine always runs in the low 40's until I do some heavy video work or gaming. Other than that my idle temps are always normal.
Click to expand...


It's possible its due to the fact I left the original hardrive in the HD bay as a backup drive inside. It runs a little warmer, but all seems fine.

As for 2nd Gen. I almost wish I had waited. =\
 
I am glad I found this thread! It answered my question mostly, however I want to know if using an SSD substantially reduces heat in a MBP?
 
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