MacBook Air :: Will The Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid SSD Work?
Dec 2, 2010
I just purchased a new MBA. I thought that the 256GB SSD would work for me, but, it doesn't. Now I'm attempting to find the least expensive way in which to upgrade the internal drive.
As I was about to purchase a new 512GB SSD, the reseller informed me that I should try the Seagate drive referenced above. He said that it would work in the MBA with no problem. The price difference is huge. Axiom SSD = $1500, Momentus Hybrid SSD = $120. I'm not concerned about speed. I'm just tired of carrying my itunes library on an external USB drive.
I love the new MBA. I just need more disk space in the unit. Here's a link to the drive in question: [URL]
Will I notice much difference if I upgrade to the seagate m xt 500 gb with 32cache?
Baring in mind I havnt got my 17" i7 2.8 in the post yet..
I'm thinking I can install the new drive as soon as I get the Mbp and do a fresh install as I'm assuming I'll get the iLife disks with the laptop so I can install it? Aswell as the OS cd's too?
I received my 500GB Seagate Momentus XT yesterday and ran some quick and crude benchmarks that I thought I'd share with you guys in case anyone else was thinking of upgrading. Here are my observations.
With Factory Seagate 7200rpm 500GB Drive: ------------------------------------------- Time to boot measured from hitting the power button to when the finder toolbar appeared at the top averaged approximately 40s to 45s.
Running Photoshop CS5 immedately after reboot took approximately 10s.
The above two tests were repeated about 4 or 5 times and were fairly consistent.
With new Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid Drive: -------------------------------------------- Time to boot measured from hitting the power button to when the finder toolbar appeared at the top averaged approximately 30s.
Running Photoshop CS5 immedately after reboot took approximately 3s to 5s.
The above two tests were repeated 4 times (sorry I ran out of time to run more) and as expected the first attempt was a little slower than subsequent tests. The times listed above represent the times I was getting after the first reboot.
All in all i'm happy with the improvement, especially when i consider the fact that I still get my 500GB capacity. I wanted an SSD but couldn't bring myself to fork out the money to get a drive with enough capacity to meet my needs.
If you have any questions or want me to run specific tests let me know. Not sure about running battery life tests since my battery-o-meter is all over the place telling me i have anywhere between 2 hours and 8 hours of battery life depending on what i'm doing at any given moment
Does anyone use one of these? I thinking of replacing my Bootcamp HD with a 500gb one of these. An SSD is too pricey for me in larger sizes, so I'm thinking this would be a nice stop-gap until prices are sub �1=1gb. What's it like for noise/speed?
Just got a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB to install in a white MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz. The MacBook can read, write, and format the drive (connected as a USB external) with no problem. It can't seem to boot from it or install OS X to the drive.
I've tried:
1) cloning the current drive using disk utility's restore option while booted from a 10.5 install disk--Seagate drive will not boot after clone even though the MacBook sees it as a boot device when looking at the startup disk options while booted from the 10.5 disk.
2) Time Machine restore to the Seagate drive--fails every time with a long error log.
3) Clean install to the Seagate drive with a retail 10.5 install disk--install fails every time.
The drive could just be defective but I've seen a lot of defective drives and it doesn't feel like that's the case. I haven't run any hardware tests on the drive. (Anyone know if an Intel Mac will boot Seatools?)
Anyone else have any experience with the Seagate Momentus in an older Core 2 MacBook? I seem to vaguely recall reading on Apple's store page around the time I bought the MacBook that the max HDD supported was a 320GB (a size that at the time was larger than anything available to consumers). Not sure if that is the case or not.
After I got my MBP, I upgraded to the Seagate Momentus XT, and everything was fantastic.I know this may sound crazy, but today I upgraded my RAM to 8GB, and ever since, the XT is SO much louder and I can really feel the vibration. Do you think I may have shifted it while replacing the RAM? Is there something I can do to make it quieter again?
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.
Does anyone know what the deal is this this drive? Amazon shows "not yet released"; Newegg keeps pushing their ETA date out day by day, and others don't even list it. Newegg has 5 reviews for the drive, though.Has anyone got the inside scoop on when these things will truly become available? I'm trying to hold off bootcamping my new MBP until I can upgrade the HD; the process of cloning a drive with OS X and Win 7 on it looks to be a 2 step process I was hoping to avoid.
first of all I would like to say that I am new to macrumors but not new to macs. I'm currently using a 15" MacBook Pro i7 with HR-AG. I have owned a 15" uMBP 2.8ghz (mid-2009), a 13" uMB 2.0ghz (late-2008) and a 13" Blackbook (late 2006).
i know it's alot of macs in a small timeframe but i love macs and always want to upgrade...which brings me to my next question..
Has anyone tried the Seagate Hybrid XT SSD, 7200RPM?
I want the performance of an ssd but not the high price tag. If someone is running this drive, I would like to hear about your experience with it.
I don't use my computer for editing, just browsing, notes and e-mail. However i am very curious about boot times. I love how fast an ssd boots up, and since i don't run any data intensive apps at all, i think a hybrid drive may be all that I need.
I have change the hard drive in my macbook aluminium 2009, the new drive is Seagate (Momentus XT ST750LX003) hybrid drive.Each time osx turn off the drive all the applications are killed except osx. I have tested 2 different drives and i have the same problem with both. Seagate do not have anything about this problem.
I even turn off the power saving of the computer and the hard drive... but after an hour of inactivity all the apps are killed ( except osx).
Info: MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.3), HDD seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003
Newegg has a deal for the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB 7200 Hybrid SSD drive for $99.00 The reviews on their site are kind of mix on this drive, but all other sources I have found are positive I did order it, and wanted to pass it along to the group
Any advice on the below ExpressCard 34 SSD card for an OSX boot drive on a unibody 2010 MBP? [URL]
I'll be running Snow Leopard and would plan to create a partition on my internal to clone the OS and apps on the card just in case something goes wrong.
I've heard (and seen) really good things when people have successfully used these FileMates for boot drives. On the other hand, I've also read about people having issues with sleep/wake functions when booting from ExpressCard SSDs. If it's likely to perfect aside from sleep / wake, considering the speedy load times, I may be willing to take the leap and give the sleep function a miss.
Too good to be true?
If so, my plan b is the SeaGate Momentus XT Hybrid Drive, 320-500gb with a 4gb flash:[URL]
Both options look good, just not sure if one would turn out better in reality than the other.
I have a 2010 unibody 15" 2.4ghz core i5 with 4gb ram and a 320gb hdd at present. I use it predominantly for video editing, using FCP, Motion, Nuke and Shake mainly.
As such, I'm interested to improve the setup of my machine by adding an SSD (in express 34 form) or increasing the rpm of the internal to a 7200 (as per the SeaGate). Any ideas which would benefit more?
In my head it makes more sense to go for the SSD as it will relieve the internal hdd from having to deal with running the OS and apps, it can just be used for footage, audio and other media. Not sure if that'll work out in reality though
Quite confused, sorry for the ramblings, if you're still reading - "well done, and thank you!".
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.
does anyone have any experience with this drive?i have the momentus xt which i love . but i just got as a gift , the intel x25-v and i would like to put it on my macbook pro and also throw another hard drive only for storage .is the momentus lp a good hdd ? or what do you guys think is the best ? buying a new hard drive (5400rpm ) or keep the momentus xt (7200rpm) just for storage ?
I have had a seagate hybrid for a semester of school. I recently open disk utility to realize there's a big chunk of the hard drive allocated as "free space." I never partitioned the drive yet in utility it show's the drive as 2 partitions. Is this normal?
Been on these forums browsing around snooping info for a while now. I'm in the market for a 2010 MBP and i am really looking into the SSD's. The downside is there price and the relative small storage space.But now i read some post on a tech website about the seagate momentus XTWhich is a 500Gb HDD @ 7200 RPM with a 4GB flash memory. Now i'm intrested to see what you guys think of this concept would it be a good deal to get this into a MBP or just stick with the 500Gb apple HDD till the price on SSD's drop.
The new hybrid went on sale today, I ordered a 500GB. Figured I would let you guys know how it works out.Here's some numbers with my traditional Seagate 500GB 5400RPM in my 13" Macbook ProLaunch Photoshop CS4 (following reboot): 18 Seconds Transfering a 1.4GB file from a Sandisk Cruzer (Flash Drive): 58 Seconds* I will update as soon as the XT arrives. The reviews make it seem like a great alternative to an SSD.
As above i need to know if this hard drive the seagate momentus xt 750 gb will work with my macbook pro the mac is a 2010 model 2.66 i7,8gb ram,500 gb 7200 drive someone told me that it wont as my mac is sata 2 and the momentus drive is sata 3 just need to find out before i go a buy one of these drives.
Just ordered a Momentus XT 500 GB to install in my current model 17 inch MBP. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this drive, and if there were any special tips along the way as far as installation/data migration goes?I generally format my drives as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), is this drive OK with that as well? Do I need to do anything special in partitioning for the 4GB SSD portion?
I'm aware that there are probably a dozen of these threads around in the forums, but if you have the time to tell me to search it up, then you have the time to answer my question. I am fully aware that this may void my MBP's warranty. I've decided to go with either the 500gb 5400rpm WD or Seagate. I'm just wondering which drive is more reliable and faster. Also, when installing the hard drive, is it ok to use a magnetic screw driver. Someone told me that there's an application called Superduper. It clones the original hard drive to make the upgrade easier. Is this a good application, or are there better options?
I have a MacBook 13" with a 1.83capsule GHz Intel Core Duo and the internal hard drive quit on me. I can't even get disk utilities to see the disk, much less mount it. Fortunately for me, I have a Time Machine on an external HD, and another external HD that I was able to install OS X 10.6.8 (using updates) so I can use the computer. I am looking at a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 250GB 2.5 Hard Drive-SATA 3GB, 8MB Can I do this? As the original HD was 60GB, will there be any problem using the 250GB drive? Also, I need to know how to install it (Actually, because my hands shake, I am going to ask a friend to do the actual work).
I want to upgrade the HDD in my Macbook Pro 2010 that currently has the stock 5400 250Gb drive in it. I am torn between the Momentus XT 500GB version, which is on sale at newegg right now for like 69, or going with the Scorpio Black. The differences that have me stuck is the 32 vs 16 cache, as well has the added speed of the seagate compared to the laundry list of problems people have reported with the XT. This will be my first HDD upgrade, and was looking for a little direction.
I finally got my 500gb seagate Momentus XT I've been drooling over only to find out it's a complete nightmare. Upon searching through forums I have yet to find conclusive or consistent problems, I read about some I had but I had many others. I installed the drive in my macbook pro with the hopes of getting it to run faster, which it did but only in certain instances. The pros were fast boot times, applications start fast but many problems persisted. Please follow up if you've had any of these problems. 1) Clean installation of Snow Leopard got stuck at the 10 minute mark 2 times. Each install attempt took much much longer then it has in the past.
My MacBook Pro (mid 2009, 15", 2.53GHz, 4GB RAM) with original Hitachi 250GB HDD (Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02) does hibernate when I close the lid and hibernatemode is set to 1.
When I replace the HHD with a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500 GB (ST9500420AS), the MacBook does only sleep but not hibernate (hibernatemode is still set to 1).
Even if battery runs out of power, the macbook does not hibernate and after getting back to power it has to boot.
I backuped from the new HDD, switched back to the original HDD, restored the backup and hibernate does work again!
So, why does my macbook not hibernate with the Seagate Momentus 7200.4? Does the drive need to much power? does the macbook need to know how much power a drive will need?
I just replaced a 5400 rpm 320 Gb Western Digital (not the stock drive) with a Momentus XT in my late 2007 MBP, and I couldn't be more impressed. The eternal beach balls are gone. Granted, I've never had an SSD, but the speed boost from this thing is unbelievable. I didn't even do a clean install, just a restore from Time Machine. I didn't do formal benchmarks, but I did time my boot sequence before and after:
Old Drive Chime to Login Screen: 46 seconds Chime to launch Safari and open web page: 2:58
Momentus XT Chime to Login Screen: 22 seconds Chime to launch Safari and open web page: 38 seconds
So, the new drive can boot and open a web page faster than the old drive could get to the login screen. Altogether 2 minutes and 20 seconds faster. Not that I reboot very often, but it gives you some idea of how much faster everything is. I was so fed up with how slow my MBP was that I almost bought a new MBP for $2000, then I almost bought a 200 Gb SSD that wouldn't have had enough space for $340 (would have had to also buy an optibay and worry about losing hibernation or shock protection). So glad I just spent $130 and got a huge performance boost for very little money or hassle.
15" i7 macbook pro to arrive, and I'm looking at which 7200 rpm hard drive to buy to replace the 5400 rpm one with.I've narrowed it down to the Seagate momentus xt and the Hitachi Travelstar 7k500.Not only speed is important, because from what I've read the Seagate is a bit faster. But what i'm more worried about is noise, vibrations, heat and battery life.
I have a 2011 macbook pro (8,1) and in january 2012 I replaced the OEM drive with a momentus XT. I can report that the drive makes a BIG difference in performance. However, the drive failed with bad sectors within a week of installation. I got a warranty replacement, and that drive also failed within a couple weeks.
I got a second warranty replacement, and that drive failed after about a month.
I am currently awaiting my third warranty replacement drive!
All of the failures were the same mode - bad blocks after a fairly short period of use.
I used SMART Utility to detect the problem - typically the disk itself did not flag a SMART error (so does not show up in Disk Utility) but my utility detected the problem and the SMART self tests fail. In all cases these drives were eligible for replacement via SeaTools test. These drives also caused IO errors which showed up in the system log, and the evil pinwheel cursor of impending doom.
So my question to the community is: if anyone out there is using these drives, have you had these problems?
If you have one of these drives I recommend using SMART Utility or other SMART monitoring software to check your drive.
I know seagate is not known for reliability these days, but three drive failures in a row is a little ridiculous! ... so I'm concerned that there is some bad interaction with the mac. The only other thing I can think of is bad yields related to the thailand floods - all of these drives were dated around Oct 2011.
I've searched around a bit but I haven't seen anyone reporting problems.
I installed a Momentus XT 750 (ST750LX003-1AC154 firmware SM12) into my MacBook Pro (late 2009). I then did a full clean install of OSX 10.7 and updated to 10.7.3. Lately I have been getting odd hangs of applications and eventually the OS, finally I have to hard-power it down and reboot.
No SMART errors reported, PRAM and SMC have been reset. I am on the latest firmware and EFI for this particular MacBook Pro. I do not think that this drive is spinning down if idle.
As far as I know there is not a firmware update for the XT 750 drive and I am on SM12.
What else can I try to get this machine stable? This is a 750GB hybrid SSD drive and I read about lots of issues with SSD and hybrid-SSD drives in previous generation MacBook Pros, particularly with Lion.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), seagate momentus XT 750GB
