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Seagate Momentus 750gb SSD hybrid ???

D

dapitts08

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 1, 2009
155
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dapitts08 said:
anyone have any experience with this drive?

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-7200RPM-Hybrid-ST750LX003/dp/B00691WMJG

i purchased it and the oyen mini pro enclosure

i plan to use this as my main external drive which will hold project files (illustrator, indesign, photoshop and fireworks)

curious about folks thoughts on hybrid drives and whether this is a good one
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I have 4 of these.

These are only good if you want a bootable drive faster than a standard 2.5" platter mechanical drive. It won't be as fast as a SSD.

If you are using it as an external drive, it won't offer you any advantage over a regular 2.5" drive. The reason I say this is because the hybrid SSD is a cache accelerator that "learns" and tiers your data. This is useful for boot OS because all those small files will be tiered to the small 8GB ssd. This is where the benefit comes in - being used as an internal bootable system drive.

Using it as an external drive, you don't get any of the benefits of that 8GB SSD unless you are storing 8GB worth of text files that you use on a regular basis.

I've benched that drive at 105 MB/sec read write. There are other 2.5 7200 drives that bench faster than that.
 
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fortysomegeek said:
I have 4 of these.

Using it as an external drive, you don't get any of the benefits of that 8GB SSD unless you are storing 8GB worth of text files that you use on a regular basis.
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THANK YOU!!!! this is exactly what I was wondering as well. I haven't opened it yet as the enclosure hasn't arrived yet but I will be sending it back.

Do you have any suggestions for a 2.5" 7200rpm internal that I can grab instead for the enclosure?
 
dapitts08 said:
THANK YOU!!!! this is exactly what I was wondering as well. I haven't opened it yet as the enclosure hasn't arrived yet but I will be sending it back.

Do you have any suggestions for a 2.5" 7200rpm internal that I can grab instead for the enclosure?
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There are a few 1TB 7200rpm drives that are cheaper. HGST (Hitachi) and Seagate. They are often on sale for $80 on amazon, newegg, frys.

The HGST 1TB 5400 rpm is actually very fast because of the larger cache and SATA III 6Gbps interface vs SATA II 3.5Gbps.
 
fortysomegeek said:
The HGST 1TB 5400 rpm is actually very fast because of the larger cache and SATA III 6Gbps interface vs SATA II 3.5Gbps.
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so does this outperform the 7200rpm version?

there is only about a $10 price difference betwwen the two so cost wouldn't be a factor.
 
dapitts08 said:
so does this outperform the 7200rpm version?

there is only about a $10 price difference betwwen the two so cost wouldn't be a factor.
Click to expand...

I've seen some reviews that indicated this was the case in certain situations. However you should do the research to confirm.
 
You want the 1TB HGST Travelstar 7K1000. This is 7200RPM.

I have it as the boot drive in my MBP, and I must say I'm quite happy about it, even if I am used to both generations of Momentus XT.
 
dapitts08 said:
so does this outperform the 7200rpm version?
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That's an impossible question to answer unless you know your expected usage patterns. But it's entirely possible.

IMO, 3GB SATA vs 6 GB SATA with *ROTATING* media is largely just marketing hype. You just won't spin the platter fast enough to saturate a 3GB SATA interface with data, even on sustained sequential reads or writes.

As a result, the "extra speed" (assuming you have little or no latency from any bridge chips you pass through as you reach across the interface) you get is only the initial burst as the interface can fill the data cache on the hard drive (for writes) or the hard drive fills the cache with (hopefully accurate) guesses about what you're going to request next (for reads).

If you start doing random reads and writes (which you likely will, unless your requirements deal with huge streaming files like video), then performance suffers further as the heads have to move around on the media, adding extra latency.

Really, if you're at all serious about external drive performance, go with an external 3.5" drive, hopefully 7200 or 10K RPM, and attach it via Thunderbolt (or eSATA, but I don't believe that's probably available for you). If you're really serious about speed (and willing to spend more money), then look into external RAID boxes, perhaps with SAS drives.

But an external 2.5" USBx enclosure with any rotating hard drive just isn't going to have great speed (compared to SSD or high performance 3.5" drives) for any non-trivial task.
 
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I had a different 1TB 5400 RPM system drive in my MBP. Absolutely horrible. Worst experience ever.
 
I had that drive for a few days and I loved it! The hybrid drive is no gimmick, its really a showstopper.

That being said, I returned it because the platters sounded a bit off balance. there with this creepy mmmMMMMMMmmmmm.....mmmmMMMMMmmmmm sound reverberating through my desk, and since I leave my mini on all the time, that got old fast. I bought a corsair neutron GTX and the performance feels about equal, even though the benchmarks on the neutron absolutely slaughter that hybrid.

Maybe I had a defective one, but I was shocked how agile it was.
 
cube said:
You want the 1TB HGST Travelstar 7K1000. This is 7200RPM.

I have it as the boot drive in my MBP, and I must say I'm quite happy about it, even if I am used to both generations of Momentus XT.
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I have the hgst 1TB 7200 in my fusion. Very happy. Just make sure you get the 32mb cache version as 16 is available. Although I have heard this could be a labelling mistake.
 
after5cst said:
That's an impossible question to answer unless you know your expected usage patterns. But it's entirely possible.

IMO, 3GB SATA vs 6 GB SATA with *ROTATING* media is largely just marketing hype. You just won't spin the platter fast enough to saturate a 3GB SATA interface with data, even on sustained sequential reads or writes.
Click to expand...

SATA 6GBit/s brought native command queuing, which is intended to speed up hard drives. It's not about the bandwidth limitations.
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