Anybody using these new Seagate "Hybrid" SSD drives?
 

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...ops/laptop-hdd


I think Pr Dave mentioned it in a thread not too long ago...


http://www.seagate.com/images/Produc...ic_320x340.png


If u r lmk what u think

Fuck seagate, never had any luck with them, failed more than any other drive for me

Yes, I am right now as we speak. Love it. Blazing fast compared to the old drive I had in here. Highly recommended.

No doubt, but still, it's still far behind a good Western Digital like a Velociraptor :thumbsup

Not as far as you think...

http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_momentus_xt_review

Commonly used apps/files are cached to the SSD memory so related tasks are extremely fast.

Ive used seagate for a few years & have several. Full of content, flicking from one end of the disc to the other with no problems :thumbsup

if you are buying a SSD, go with intel

Get a real SLC SSD
It's worth it if you want to get out of the seventies with PC performance

I don't know about their new stuff.. but I do know I had like 5 of their hard drives DIE randomly - they simply decide to stop working and 99% of the files on them is unretrivable.

I'm not much of a tech guy of any kind, but SEAGATE is the only company I wouldn't recommend, unreliable fucking crap (lost a shitload of data on them).

No doubt that a real SSD drive is much better, but compare the price of a 500gb SSD with the price of a 500GB Momentus XT Hybrid and it's a no brainer. Even for a professional graphics workstation I would buy a couple of these hybrids and put them in a RAID 0 configuration. The speed will be comparable to what you would get with a normal SSD price and for a fraction of the price.

You never tried Maxtor right :D ? Biggest pile of crap on earth...

hybrid ssd? how does it work? spins the memory card?

Caches frequently used data on the SSD part of the drive.

Which one u recommend?

I'm pretty sure the system boot up is faster a lot, but do you see the speed increase while you are working also?
I'm talking about closing/opening regular stuff - firefox, icq etc
And what is stored on the 4GB SSD part? Or does the HDD automatically determines that?

damn, they are pretty cheap too, around $100 for 500GB, if it wasn't such a pain reinstalling the OS I would pick one up :thumbsup

The HDD uses an algorithm to determine what to cache. My computer boots up much faster and common apps I use like Chrome, Photoshop, etc. all run much faster. Even just general OS tasks are much faster. I also noticed the speed I download large files is much faster so it's possible downloads are cached to SSD and then moved to the platters. It is a night and day difference and these drives are cheap...

It's automatically determined, works just like any other cache :2 cents:

My friend has this drive and loves it. His performance on his computer is way better now. When it comes to drives, we brought our editing in house and I was a the tech admin for our editors and I found out a few things. No matter what brand of drive you use, if you don't control the heat they are bound to die. No extreme temps. You can't cool the drive off when it starts to feel hot, the constant up and down in temps will take its toll and lose your data. It's still recoverable unless there is really bad physical damage to the electronics or platters. After we got our temp under control we found that we lost WD drives more often than Seagate. I spoke to a data recovery specialist and he told me that the current generation of Seagate drives are the best for our application. He told me this about 4 years ago. So far he has been right.
:2 cents:
Richard

The orbitting electrons are designed to deliver transgender porn at wrist busting speeds.


Seriously though, that is a very cool idea and it sure sounds like it works great from the reviews here.

Clone your partition! [Acronis True Image Home 2010 does the job]

I'll never buy a Seagate drive again. They just keep failing.

Same here. Heard a lot of people are having problems with the Momentus XT based on the seagate support forums.

Seems the most common problem is that the drive spins down and freezes the computer until the drives spins back up.

The last 2 drives I had fail were Samsungs. Never had a problem with Seagate drives that I remember.

Support forums are always full of people with problems. That is what they are there for :)

The reviews are mostly positive on NewEgg (4 stars for the 500gb and 5 for the 320gb) and my experience has been only positive. I am sure that future versions will include more flash memory and will be even faster.

My only concern is the lifetime of the SSD part. But it looks like a really interesting alternative.

me to had bad experiences with Seagate...
so I try to avoid them...

There is a 5 year warranty on the drives and I think I remember reading that if the SSD part craps out on you the drive functions as a normal 7200rpm drive.

Get a OCZ RevoDrive PCI-Express SSD for your OS.
http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...ress-ssd-.html

Why use a slow ATA interface, when you can go PCI-e

I'll be getting one.

That's pretty neat actually

Btw a nice review can be found at tomshardware
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...sd,2638-4.html

I thought the SSD tech was supposed to be more reliable? No moving parts or something like that?

i have this one as my main drive (os and apps)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167032

Flash-memory drives have limited lifetimes and will often wear out after 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 P/E cycles (1,000 to 10,000 per cell) for MLC, and up to 5,000,000 P/E cycles (100,000 per cell) for SLC

from wiki.. lot of bla, but according to that regular drives have still longer lifetime..

you could clone your OS disk with Acronis :2 cents:

Seagate Momentus 5400.6 (ST9500325AS)-anyone have this version?

Bump for a great thread and for the answer

Passmark ( http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm ) is a great tool to test how fast your drive REALLY is, or if your system have any bottelnecks.

Hybrid for cars: Costs more, and can almost perform as well, or, a lot worse, honestly.

Hybrid for drives: Costs more, and is just a drive with a huge fucking cache on it and a reserved area to make it perceived better/faster.

Have you ever used one?

Be a man.

Get a real SSD.

Using these is like fucking a tranny... Sure its got tits, but it ain't no woman.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh yeah man I saw the one Fris mentioned I am gonna get me one of the Intel ones full SSD... the hybrids are good but there are stills vulnerable platters in em,,

Going with the intel SSD

I have an SLC SSD for 1.5 years and actually have no complaints at all. Two external USB drives 500 GB for data if needed.

Good idea, but would that take care of the stuttering/freezing issues with MLC drives I've heard about??? I wouldn't think so.. And wouldn't RAID0 confuse the piss out of the algo the drive uses??

waste of money, take the intel drives, faster and cheaper

Momentus XTs use SLC memory. No, it works fine with the algorithm.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...t_500gb/12.htm

EDIT:

According to Seagate using these drives in RAID arrays is not supported.

There is a firmware upgrade now that may fix some of the lagging issues people reported and improve RAID support. I have seen several people write about setting up these drives in a RAID 0 configuration with great results.

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentu...m-p/56055#M394

I downloaded the drive check app that Seagate provides and I have the latest firmware already so maybe that is why I do not have the problems others have reported.

I just ordered a new computer to use as a file server in my home and I got it with a 120 GB SSD drive for the OS drive. Was this a bad idea? I thought this would be the smart way to go, using a secondary 2TB drive for my files, but after this thread, I am thinking I made a mistake.

It is going to be on 24/7, 365 days a year.

i have been hearing mixed results, some love it, some hate it

I found some tips on how to speed up your Momentus XT. After disabling Windows prefetching (like you would with an SSD) and installing Intel Matrix drivers things seem to run even faster. I also disabled automatic defragging.