Seagate Momentus Hybrid 500GB HDD

[Wicked1]

Has anyone bought these, are they really worth it for a Mini or MacBook?

I see they run for $130 on TigerDirect.

 

[mangrove]

I bought one at OWC with the enclosure/coning software package and cables. Sorry, but have not had time to install yet. There are some decent threads on the Momentus XT.

Also just received an OWC SSD which I plan to install along with the HT some day soon. I am having trouble finding correct cables described in the iFixit on 1TB in a Mini. That's not my case, but 2 drives is what I want to do.

 

[mrfoof82]

Someone should sticky this, because it's a common question.

The Seagate Momentus XT is your best bet if...

• You need more storage than MLC SSDs currently provide
• You can't or won't spring for an MLC SSD in the capacity you desire, which are still ~$3USD/GB for high-end drives.

Anandtech gives a good rundown here, though I'll summarize...

• Boot time decreases to near MLC SSD-like times by the third boot. This includes Boot Camp partitions.
• Most applications open in under a bounce by the third launch. Applications with huge or constantly changing data sets (think Mail.app and iTunes which have GB of stuff) will still take longer to load in all their data or metadata since that stuff won't end up persisting in the 4GB SLC flash cache. However most of your games will start up quicker -- i.e. Civilization IV drops from 15 seconds to about 5.
• Applications that use small, common working sets are dramatically improved in overall performance.
• Random I/O is not any faster than any other 7200rpm 2.5" disk. Generally, if it's not in the SLC cache, IO/sec isn't improved.
• Sustained transfer rate is not any faster than any other 7200rpm 2.5" disk.
• Opening random large files will not be any faster (i.e. if you're using the disk to store video).
• No, you cannot manipulate the cache. The drive does it for you, and probably does a better job than you ever could micro-manage 4GB. If you need the speed, plunk down for an MLC SSD.

In terms of bang for the buck, especially for casual use, the drives are FANTASTIC. However if you want SSD performance, buy a high-end MLC SSD with the understanding that OS X will likely not have TRIM support until 10.7. That means you'll need a utility to perform TRIMs since OS X won't do such maintenance automatically (so performance degrades and plateaus over time).