Mac Mini :: Seagate Momentous XT Or Kingston V Series SSD?
Jul 22, 2010
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 [URL] 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?
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Jun 14, 2010
They are outright lying on their website. They tell us that their SSD requires less power than regular HDDs and this is completely not true. After putting their 512 GB model into my MBP, I lost ~10-15% battery power.
Kingston has been unhelpful and just tells me that "the SSD consumes less power than a regular harddisk and this has been confirmed by our technicians". Hell I had even a 7.2k drive in my MBP before which consumes MORE than a regular HDD and here I am losing 10-15% of battery life to their SSD. They are just lying through their teeth and they should not be trusted. It really really sucks. I've been at 10 emails so far but only robots reply as it seems. I just hope they would pull a firmware update out of their sleeves but I think it's very unlikely.
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Dec 6, 2010
I am looking at getting the Segate Momentus XT for my MacBook, its the first model to come out with aluminum body. I have seen people online praising it and saying it is broken. So now they have been out for a while and people may have some amount of experience with the drive, what are the facts.
References:
Discussion on [URL]
Discussion on [URL]
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Dec 2, 2010
Just curious as to whether or not there is a consensus on a recommended hard drive other than an SSD or the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid? I received my new 2010 13" MBP yesterday and installed a new 500GB Seagate Momentus XT into the unit. Off of a clean install of OS X, the system worked fine. I did the obligatory software update to 10.6.5 as well as four other updates and it never got past the grey boot up screen. Couldn't get past that no matter what I tried.
So unfortunately, this has soured by tastebuds on the Seagate. There have been numerous posts about issues with this HDD on Newegg.com and I knew that going in, so I'm not looking to particularly rehash it. I tried, it didn't work, time to move on. It will go back. I'm not interested in paying the steep price for performance that an SSD involves. I would prefer to have the additional capacity (320GB+). That said, are there any particular recommendations for a reliable, fast 500GB HDD for my new MBP? Or is it more of a situation where they're all with 1-2% of each other? The unit with most/best reviews seems to be the Seagate Momentus 7200.4. I'm still a little bit bitter about Seagate at the moment, but I'm willing to keep an open mind.
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Jan 10, 2010
Last week I bought a new 13" 2.53GHz MBP. I also bought a Kingston 128 GB SSDNow V Series from a local computer store (Canada Computers) and installed it myself. It was fast as hell (startup time, restart time, sleep time, application launch time, etc.) and I thoroughly enjoyed it while it lasted. Last night, I restarted my MBP and got the white screen of death with a question mark on a folder. After several calls with Apple and the local computer store, it seems my SSD is dead and I lost all my data. I installed the original/stock 250 GB HD that came with my MBP and that's what I'm using now. During business hours on Monday, I will phone Kingston for help.
My questions for you guys:Has anyone else had a problem with the Kingston SSDNow dying on them? Or any other SSDs? Apple Care said it could be completely Kingston's fault (ie faulty SSD) or the MBP could simply not be compatible with this SSD (although it worked great for a week). The local computer store said it could be my EFI, but I'm running the latest EFI. What do you think? Should I get a refund on the Kingston SSD and stick with the stock 250 GB HD, or should I get a replacement SSD and hope it doesn't happen again? I'm worried about the reliability now
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Jun 10, 2010
ive read many threads on this but havent received any conclusion to the battery life. and mixed opinions on the noise....anyone have both stock 5400rpm along with this one and done a comparison? is the speed worth it? is it still faster than the average 7200rpm once the 4gb SDD flash has been used up? my biggest concern is noise and battery life.
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Sep 25, 2010
- Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz
- 4GB RAM
- 320 GB 5.400 RPM
I needed to upgrade this unit in order to increase performance with VMWARE Fusion as I needed to use a few Windows 7 features and Applications... and although Mac OS is OK... I have to recognize that some features of Windows 7 are better and I need some only windows applications.
So I researched online the option of upgrading memory and HD. I read mixed opinions and experiences with non Apple Memory. But took the chance and during a recent trip to the US I purchased the Kingston upgrade kit... installed it... and so far no problems. I got a very noticeable increase in startup and working performance with Windows 7 and Fusion. Unfortunately I lost my notes regarding performance readings... sorry.
I was very intrigued with the Hybrid Seagate 500GB Momentus XT. Also read a lot of mixed experiences. I also picked up a unit during my trip to the US but waited to install it when I got back to Spain. I just installed it and made some simple timings to check the performance......................
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Aug 24, 2010
I installed a Kingston SSD drive in my 2010 mac mini. If I put the OSX install DVD (grey disc 1), the SSD is not visible in either the installer or disk utility.
The SSD is a Kingston 64 GB SATA 2.5-inch SSDNow V Series Solid State Drive. Cheap drive.
The funny thing is that before i started all this I restored a SuperDuper image of 10.6.4 from my old mini to the SSD using a usb to SATA adapter. Installed and it worked! The SSD booted OS X but the ethernet jack was not working.
Does anyone know of a workaround for installing OSX onto a drive that is not being recognized in disk utility?
I'd like to find a way to reinstall OSX using the grey DVD without having to remove the SSD drive.
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Mar 7, 2009
My Mac Mini cannot recognize the Seagate 80GB Momentus that is inside it. It saw it for a little, and I went through the whole Leopard installation and then it said at the very end that it couldn't complete the installation and now when I try it can't see the drive at all. I tried reseating it - how come no one's talking about how there are four more pins on the seagate than there are ports on the mini.
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Sep 23, 2009
I am interested in getting a 7200 RPM hard drive for a Mac Mini. Which brand is preferred by other users here - Western Digital or Seagate?
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Aug 7, 2010
I think I have a slight issue with my 7200rpm 500gb seagate drive. Once or twice every hour it seems to stop and start up again. Kinda klicks. It causes my computer to freeze for about 3 seconds. Whats causing it? Is it faulty? I should also mention that it didn't do this when i first got it. This is the model without the SMS.
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Dec 7, 2010
I just upgraded my 13" Macbook Pro 2.53GHz Mid 2009 to the Momentus XT 500Gb and its pretty quiet, but not practically silent like the original Hitachi 250Gb drive. It sounds like a little fan is going pretty much all the time. I also tried the Western Digital Scorpio Black and it wasn't much quieter. Are there any almost silent (fast would be nice) drives other with 320Gb+ other than SSD? Might there be a hard drive controller or something Apple loads onto their factory drives that makes them quieter?
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Sep 20, 2009
Kingston SSDnow V+ 256 GB just installed on my 2.8 Ghz MBP... Hollar! Wicked fast. Made in Korea with Samsung controller.
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Aug 1, 2009
I'm looking to replace my old '06 imac with a new 13" mbp. I'm getting the low end model (can't justify the extra $300aud for the next model), and want a ram upgrade. Can I use just a normal kingston ddr3 sodimm? i can save a boatload of money if i don't need specific mac memory.
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Apr 23, 2010
I just bought a new Kingston snvp325-s2 and its really fast, but only after startup. It takes just under two minutes for the thing to startup and shutdown is about 45 seconds. Now my stock 5400 mac HD was faster... But I have to say the Read/Write times are fine and apps open in a second.
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Jul 16, 2010
xbench disk test result:250GB Toshiba HDD from Apple score 39.49 vs Kingston V+ SSD scores 236.39
Sequential 102.88 vs 157.61
Random 24.44 vs 472.67
I can feel the speed. It is on sale at [URL] at CAD$ 269.99.
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Aug 22, 2010
from work, I can select either a Kingston 64GB SSDNow drive or an external HDD with similar value. Currently, I use 7200rpm in two unibody MBPs and I have a pair or eMacs with their original drives. Here are my options:
1. SSD in 13" MBP with Windows running on Parallels. I worry that by allocating half of the storage for both OS, I wouldn't have enough space for anything in terms of working with files. Removing the optical drive is not an option here. Also, I need to switch off a few options in Windows, like the disc fragmentation and so on. What are they? Can TRIM support under Parallels be taken advantage of? I'm still not sure about using SSDs. I don't mind waiting for applications to launch or to boot up.
2. SSD in external HDD enclosure with USB, so I can boot from it on both MBPs. In this scenario, it would only run Snow Leopard. But wouldn't a USB2 port impose a bottleneck, almost defeating the point of using an SSD?....................
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Jun 18, 2012
I have this SD card and it is showing up as read only. Disk Utility does not give me the permission to reformat or change it from read only. As you can see from the screenshot, everything is greyed out and it will not let me modify it in any way.
Info:
MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Sep 4, 2009
I am using a Kensington Slim Blade mouse with my MacBook and recently the track ball has stopped working (in any application). I tested the batteries and they are ok. The left and right buttons work ok, just not the track ball (it is similar to the one on the Mighty Mouse). I recently upgraded to 10.5.8, but it started just before that.
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Nov 30, 2014
USB recognition problems ... Macbook will not recognise my Kingston USB. Just comes up with "DTVP quit unexpectedly"...
Info:
MacBook Air
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Feb 27, 2010
- download CentOS 5.2 Live CD ISO- burn the ISO with ImgBurn- bootup your Mac from CD called "Windows" (keep pressing Alt on startup)- open Linux console
- type: sudo su- install some needed programs with yum -y install gcc make
- download newest edition of hdparm with: wgethttp://sourceforge.net/projects/hdpa...ar.gz/download- unpack files: tar -xzvf hdparm*- go to hdparm directory cd hdparm*- type: make- then type: make install- type: /sbin/hdparm --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing --dco-restore /dev/sda (if your SSD is a 1st drive, if second sdb, if 3rd sdc, if 4th sdd etc.)
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May 30, 2012
I just received my Kingston 19-in-1 card reader and connected it directly to the back of my iMac (iintel) running on OS X Lion 10.7. It did not show up. I checked Disk Utility and it shows the following:
Info EOS Digital
Name: EOS Digital (my Canon DSLR)
Type: Partition
Mount Point: Not mounted
File System: MS-DOS (FAT 32)
[code]....
I am positive the problem is due to the MS-DOS (FAT 32) file system (my other laptop is a PC running on Windows Vista), but I don't know how to fix this. Since i did not want to lose any files on my CF card, I took a blank formatted card (formatted in camera) and took 2 photos. When connecting the reader to the Mac it did not register.
I have a Sandisk 8-in-1 card reader which worked just fine on the PC, and the Kingston reader also works on the PC (after i tried all the above ). I have read other forum discussions whee people say that the Kingston card reader works on their Mac By the way, I checked on two Apple Stores to try and get tech support and got "voice mail jail" which is most disappointing. I suspect this is Apple company policy forcing me to make an appointment (which I am willing to do, but for heavens sake, don't cut me off on the phone!)
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
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Dec 31, 2010
I purchased a brand new Macbook Pro from Best Buy a few months back, it is the 13" unibody with a 2.26 ghz dual core processor and came with 2gb of memory installed. I just bought the two sticks of memory from [URL] which were Kingston DDR3 1066 204-pins, 4gb each. My friend told me that my Macbook Pro will only support up to 6gb, but my manual says that it supports up to 8gb. He also said that people have been having trouble with their motherboards by installing too much (8gb) of memory. I've done some research and looks like I'm good to go, but just want some reassurance before I install the new memory. One last thing, he also told me that 8gb is only supported on the i7 processors?
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Aug 5, 2009
I want to rip subtitles from some Chinese tv series. There are anywhere from 10-20 episodes on each dvd. I only want the subtitles. Is there mac software that can do this? I have a G4 mac with leopard os.
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Oct 18, 2010
I was wondering what are good programs to use to rip individual episodes off of DVD, and have them in a mpg, avi, etc format?
I am using handbreak, but I am running into trouble with LOST season 6.
I was just wondering if there are any better ones?
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Jan 27, 2009
I did a computing job after being retired for many months, and I got paid in hard drives.However, I also want to plug in my SATA DVD burner to the card at the same time. is that possible? A RAID set and a DVD burner on the same controller?I've never done anything above a RAID-0 before so ANY info would be appreciated, especially having to do with this particular model (others are out of my price range!
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Apr 20, 2012
Can I use my Mac book pro while downloading a long tv series from iTunes? Or will I lose my connection ? And my money?
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Nov 6, 2010
Any info on when Apple will introduce the 6000 series into iMacs - if they ever will ??
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Jan 16, 2008
I just received my first mac today, a macbook. I am having troubles already trying to get my printer that is connected to my other computer to work. My other computer has Linux/Windows and I am trying to get it to work while it is running windows, first. The printer is a Canon Pixma MP470. It works fine in windows, and when I try to print in OS X, I went to "add printer" -> "Windows" button -> "Canon MP470". That's no good though. Oh, first before that, I did put the CD that came with the printer and went through the setup and installed everything on it. What happens now is the printer recognizes there is a job because it moves the nozzles and pulls a piece a paper through whenever I send a job, but with no printing on it.
So I plugged the printer directly into my MB, and it also worked. It recognized my printer and under the "driver" tab, it displayed "Canon MP470 series", but was grayed out. When I try to select the driver for it when it is through my network, I don't have a driver called "Canon MP470 series", the closest I have is "Canon PIXMA MP500 - Gutenprint v5.1.3", which is what I have been using.
Also, is there anything else I need to know about getting it to work when my computer is running linux? I will be using CUPS in linux.
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Nov 15, 2008
In windows I can use the control key+select and shift+select to select items say, 5-15 or select multiple individual files. In OS X shift+select and cmd+select do the same thing. They let me choose multiple individual files but I can't figure out how to choose a series of files like choosing 5-15. I realize I can drag my mouse over it and click a few files I don't want with shift+select but it's just annoying me that I can't find the command for what I want to do. From the search I did I got the impression that shift+select and cmd+select are supposed to do different things but for me the don't. Did I miss something?
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