Seagate Momentus XT or Kingston V Series SSD?

[redmac]

I want to speed up my early 2010 Mini with a faster drive and with a budget under $150. Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB hybrid drive ($130 at Amazon) and Kingston 64GB SSDNow V Series ($98 at Buy.com after $35 mail in rebate) are my choices.

I am having a hard time deciding which is the best fit for my needs since I have no prior experience with any of these drives. If I get the SSD, I will need to keep all my files in an external drive, possibly the 5400 rpm 2.5" HDD that is currently in the Mini, in a cheap USB enclosure that comes with the SSD bundle. Momentus XT will allow me to have a tidier setup in an already cluttered TV cabinet.

If this specific Kingston SSD is much faster than the Seagate hybrid drive, I will consider getting the SSD. But will it make it slower to open picture and video files stored in the USB drive? Since I primarily use the Mini as an HTPC with Plex, this will defeat the purpose of upgrading. Which one of these two solutions would you choose?

My other question is about read/write/transfer speeds. Generally speaking, is a 3.5" 7200 rpm external USB HDD with 32 MB cash, faster than an 2.5" 5400 rpm internal HDD for watching HD videos?

Thanks

 

[mrfoof82]

I want to speed up my early 2010 Mini with a faster drive and with a budget under $150. Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB hybrid drive ($130 at Amazon) and Kingston 64GB SSDNow V Series ($98 at Buy.com after $35 mail in rebate) are my choices.

I am having a hard time deciding which is the best fit for my needs since I have no prior experience with any of these drives. If I get the SSD, I will need to keep all my files in an external drive, possibly the 5400 rpm 2.5" HDD that is currently in the Mini, in a cheap USB enclosure that comes with the SSD bundle. Momentus XT will allow me to have a tidier setup in an already cluttered TV cabinet.

If this specific Kingston SSD is much faster than the Seagate hybrid drive, I will consider getting the SSD. But will it make it slower to open picture and video files stored in the USB drive? Since I primarily use the Mini as an HTPC with Plex, this will defeat the purpose of upgrading. Which one of these two solutions would you choose?

My other question is about read/write/transfer speeds. Generally speaking, is a 3.5" 7200 rpm external USB HDD with 32 MB cash, faster than an 2.5" 5400 rpm internal HDD for watching HD videos?

Thanks

Since you're only using that SSD to store the OS and apps, you will not see a major performance difference over the Seagate Momentus XT. 30% at best for boot times and launching apps.

If you were, say... running a database server, or moving tons of large files around, the SSD would usually win. But you're not doing that with a 64GB volume.

See this post for the Momentus XT versus MLC SSD breakdown:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/10625058/

The folks that really need the SSD benefit are going to have to fork over since they need the storage AND the speed. 99% of users will be happy with the Momentus XT. The other 1% don't care what it costs to get an SSD in the size they need ($700ish for 256GB).

 

[redmac]

I guess I will get the Momentus XT. Thanks for the reply.