- 9 Comments
- HOTNESS UNHOT
SuperBiiz has the Seagate ST95005620AS Momentus XT 500GB Solid State Hybrid Drive for $97 + $4 filler - $15 off with coupon code SIZZLE [Exp 9/19] = $86 with free shipping. Features SSD-like performance with hard drive capacity, Adaptive Memory technology to optimize performance, and claims 80 percent faster performance than traditional 7200RPM drives in benchmark scores.
$86
Not worth it unless it is a size upgrade.
Could be worth it. Suppose your laptop came with a low end 500GB 5400RPM HDD, and you want a performance boost but don't want to spend hundreds on a SSD for a used laptop, yet want enough storage capacity to rip a few movies to it for watching on the go.
I just wish there was some way to control what the flash memory caches. For example if you could set it up so all the background writing that windows incessantly does is cached, such that the HDD platters could spin down and stay down for dozens of minutes at a time that would be great.
Anyone remember back in the Win95/98 era where you could work on a computer and actually have the HDD spin down? We now have 20X the memory in PCs, yet to do the same basic tasks... or even leaving the system just sitting idle, HDD with OS partition keeps spinning or if it spins down it is only for a small # of minutes.
Buy a real SSD or go home. They keep trying to unload these POS for a reason.
I agree with #1. These might be worth if you were already in the market for a 500GB drive. Then it might be worth the extra few bucks. The performance increase in this drive is not earth shattering. My hibernation file is already 4GB.
Also be aware that there were major issues with certain firmware versions of this drive. I got this drive when it first came out and never upgraded the firmware. I'm glad I did because there was no downgrade path.
#2, this one writes straight to platter and only caches for reads. It's like using the SSD part as a read cache. I guess it was a safety mechanism in case the SSD part fails.
$95 shipped for me.
Why not Amazon? It's $99 with 2day shipping.
The down price for ssd just wait for Black Friday. Then a desk or big laptop with 2 hd the speed is the great idea.
If you are running Windows 7 get a SSD. Even a low end SSD will smoke this drive in performance. I also can't stand the Seagate name anymore plus the lame attempt to sell the company off. 80% faster performance, what BS.
BTW, Seagate will release Momentus XT ver.2 soon.
It's got bigger memory and more speed optimized mechanism.
Damn... I've just got this drive from Newegg for $99.99... could have saved full 14 bucks... (crying:)
Speaking of the drive itself - so far I like it. I've replaced a 160GB 5400rpm Hitachi in Thinkpad X200-tablet (running Win 7 Pro) with it. Cloned the original with Clonezilla, worked like a charm. While cloning the drive was in the open and it produced an audible whistling sound. When inside the laptop - I can't hear it. Performance-wise - it's a huge difference with the original. Much faster startup, apps pop up much faster, etc.. Well, the original was lame so performance increase should be expected, but honestly - it was more than I expected.
I needed space more than speed, so this drive was a good compromise between small-expensive-fast SSDs and large-cheaper-slower "regular" 7200rpm HDDs.