http://www.robertmead.net/ssd-disk-cache/
Seagate Momentus XT 500GB ST95005620AS Review – The Fastest Hard Drive
If you're having a hard time searching for the fastest hard drive, you'll be happy to discover the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB. Seagate introduce a technology that finally bridges the gap between the fast SSD and the huge space of HDD. This is ideal for those notebook users' enthusiasts who don't have an extra drive bay for additional drive.
There are two options to attain the speed limit that you want, first get a super fast and expensive SSD but suffer from low disk space. Second, get a high rotational speed mechanical hard drive but suffers from being noisy, overheat and draw much power.
Seagate solve these problems by creating a hybrid drive by getting the speed of the SSD at the same time having a huge storage. This is good news to anyone who doesn't like the idea of having two hard drives at the same time. With buying both SSD as your boot drive and mechanical drive as your storage will cost you too much penny.
The Momentus XT is a 2.5 inch drive that uses both the Nand memory from SSD and a mechanical drive. The mechanical drive spins the disk at regular speed of 7200rpm with a capacity of 500GB in a 3GB/s SATA interface. This perfectly fits all notebooks and can also be used for desktop PC.
How it the benefits the user?
The Seagate Momentus uses a 4GB SSD that serves as a huge cache memory aside from its 32MB buffer. The 4GB SSD memory are used to store your most frequently accessed programs such as games, Adobe Photoshop and MS office. This also includes the operating system you're using.
Seagate called this special algorithm technique as the Adaptive Memory Technology. With this kind of technology, this makes it a lot faster to load those programs because it is merely stored on the SSD memory without the needs to pull out from the hard drive disk. As a result, it gains up to 40 to 50 percent in speed, windows loading time will boost twice faster than regular mechanical drive.
The only problem arises here is that, if the user is frequently changes his data access. The 4GB memory acts only as a read only, you can never write on it. In short, there's no way you can choose what you like to put in it. The drive does only analyze your access pattern and writes it on the SSD for the most frequently used data.
Seagate Momentus XT In Action
In PC mark vantage test, we can expect a performance in between the real SSD and HDD. This means that, the SSD still on leads speed but close enough and by far shows vast improvements compare with the HDD.
Everybody wants a fast windows boot up, admittedly we don't have the patience to wait for long a time to load the OS so that we can start using it immediately. We can notice it clearly in the windows startup test a tremendous gains of 40 percent. It means that, a typical 60 seconds booting time will take you only 36 minutes.
In a sequential read/write operation, the 4GB NAND memory seems to be useless in this case. This fairly operates only as a regular 7200rpm hard drive. Even though without the NAND memory, the Momentus XT still shows a faster speed compare with other conventional 2.5 inch drive.
Conclusion
The Seagate Momentus XT shows a solid performance and very dependable drive. The hybrid technology it offers results in a vast improvement in speed but, some of its minor disadvantages are also clearly seen. Seagate's main purpose is to create the fastest drive with large capacity, and I should say that they become successful in this area by beating all traditional hard drive with 500GB of storage capacity.
The inclusion of 4GB SLC NAND memory on the drive is a brilliant idea, although it's only a small amount this alone makes a huge difference in speed. Compare with the high speed rpm VelociRaptor, the Momentus has taken all the advantage with low power, quieter and cooler.
This drives are for those who wants speed and large disk space combined in a single drive as well as for notebook users. The boot up process and running your daily program applications are absolutely fast, this makes everybody happy.
At this point of time an average 128GB SSD cost is at $200 while the VelociRaptor 450GB sold for $170 and the Seagate Momentus XT is available for less than $100. You can buy two Momentus XT and get a total of 1TB disk space for the price of a single 128GB SSD. This is 8x the disk space with almost the same in speed using a RAID 0 configuration.
This earns the highest value with the lowest cost per GB with only $0.2, VelociRaptor 450GB at $0.377 and the 128GB SSD a whopping $1.56. An additional $40 is worthy compare to the regular 2.5 inch 500GB drive for the technology and speed it offers. Value, speed, performance, quiet, cool, what else can we ask for the best hard drive?
Read the full Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Review and discover more of the Fastest Hard Drive of today.
|
|
Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST750LX003 $178.99 The Seagate Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive combines SSD-like performance with affordable high-capacity hard drive storage for laptops, external backup and small form factor desktop PCs. This drive is designed for all standard laptop PCs and is OS-, driver-and software-independent, making it easy to integrate and easy to use.... |
|
|
Apple Mac Mini MC815LL/A Desktop (NEWEST VERSION) $477.37 This is a brand new Mac Mini that was professionally upgraded to 1TB SATA Hard Drive & 8GB DDR3 SDRAM. Apple does not even offer a 1TB Hard Drive option so you save over $100 + tax and get 250GB more hard drive space!... |
|
|
Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST95005620AS $128.91 OEM Single Pack 500GB 7200RPM 32MB cache SATA 2.5" - The Seagate Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive is the perfect balance of SSD and HDD enabling laptop PC users to enjoy solid state performance without sacrificing capacity and affordability. Adaptive Memory technology dynamically optimizes performance by aligning to user needs.... |
|
|
Patriot 32 GB Signature Series SATA II 2.5 Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) PS32GS25SSDR $95.99 32GB 2.5" SSD PS-100... |