Seagate set to announce promising SSD/HDD product
What if you could gain most of the benefits of SSD without the drive size &
price limitations?
Well on May 26th Seagate will announce Momentus XT the next generation of
hybrid SSD/HDD technology.
Older hybrid technology relied on the host computer to manage the data on the SSD vs HDD. With Momentus XT Seagate is doing the management on the drive itself. A 32MB DRAM cache ties things together and delivers most of the speed of SSD after a few reboots without the harsh size penalty. How's this for a benchmark?
Nice isn't it?
Stephen Foskett says:
Wow indeed. Provantage.com put up some pricing and I think I will actually be looking at grabbing a 320GB or 500GB drive this summer. I hope that Seagate can keep these drives in stock.
Sounds like a potential homerun here for Seagate.
price limitations?
Well on May 26th Seagate will announce Momentus XT the next generation of
hybrid SSD/HDD technology.
Older hybrid technology relied on the host computer to manage the data on the SSD vs HDD. With Momentus XT Seagate is doing the management on the drive itself. A 32MB DRAM cache ties things together and delivers most of the speed of SSD after a few reboots without the harsh size penalty. How's this for a benchmark?
Nice isn't it?
Stephen Foskett says:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Foskett
Assuming I?m right about Seagate?s fully-integrated cache architecture, this drive ought to blow away everything else on the market. The Register includes test results showing SSD-like performance for many workloads, yet this drive is half the cost and twice the capacity. It beats the 10k VelociRaptor drive in every test and will absolutely smoke any ?normal? 7200 or 5400 rpm laptop drive. Feel free to exclaim ?wow!? at this point.
Assuming I?m right about Seagate?s fully-integrated cache architecture, this drive ought to blow away everything else on the market. The Register includes test results showing SSD-like performance for many workloads, yet this drive is half the cost and twice the capacity. It beats the 10k VelociRaptor drive in every test and will absolutely smoke any ?normal? 7200 or 5400 rpm laptop drive. Feel free to exclaim ?wow!? at this point.
Wow indeed. Provantage.com put up some pricing and I think I will actually be looking at grabbing a 320GB or 500GB drive this summer. I hope that Seagate can keep these drives in stock.
- Model\tCapacity\tStreet price
ST92505620AS\t250 GB\tUnknown
ST93205620AS\t320 GB\t$111.59
ST95005620AS\t500 GB\t$133.84
Sounds like a potential homerun here for Seagate.
Comments
I've had nothing but trouble with Seagate drives, I can't understand why Apple even bothers to use them.
I switch mine out for Hitachi drives, the very best and sleep well at night, with them, in my bed, all nice and warm and purring and beeping... :P
So we are FINALLY going to see some hybrid drives come to market, a good two or three years after they should have been here. I can't wait! All the benefits of SSD and Winchester drive technology with almost none of the drawbacks.
It's going to be interesting to see how good Seagate's caching algorithms are. I wonder why they aren't shipping 3.5" drives as well.
Sounds like a potential homerun here for Seagate.
It could well be. It won't be the ultimate solution because the 4GB SSD inside will just cache frequently used data but when it has cached the data, the speed improvement will be significant and 4GB is a suitable size for that.
What I think may happen is that as SSD prices drop, the SSD size in the hybrid drives will grow to the point where they can just make an SSD drive that's affordable. It's a very smart strategy because right now, people are holding back on SSD purchases due to the price.
With hybrid drives, they can sell them at a slight premium but still very affordable and offer large performance gains.
Hybrid drives were tried before but never took off due to system crashes and the fact they had low amounts of storage. Rumor has it, the drives will be launched in 4 days so the reviews will tell all:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Seaga...T-142470.shtml
It's interesting they say that these drives will only be laptop drives, not 3.5" drives. I imagine there will come a time soon when the 3.5" form factor is discontinued entirely given that already 80% of all machines shipping are laptops.
I switch mine out for Hitachi drives, the very best and sleep well at night
I like Hitachi drives too - very quiet.
I like Hitachi drives too - very quiet.
The thing with me is my eyesight is going and Apple/Reseller won't install anything other than their crappy drives and charge a fortune too, nearly $600. So if I'm going to mess with those tiny screws myself, it's going to be once, so I opt for the best and most reliable drive the industry can provide and save money too.
I also usually test the drive in a external enclosure for a bit beforehand as well.
But back to topic, this announcement by Seagate sounds promising. Hopefully it will force SSD prices down, I think it's a racket the industry is pulling. A iPad/iTouch with only 64GB of storage ARE YOU FSCKING KIDDING ME?? No wonder Apple has to tie it to a computer.
I would make the SD slot flush with the case and spring release, this way we can keep a (up to 2TB) SDXC card inside the machine all the time. Then it would be worth paying for the SSD option as one wouldn't need much, just for OS and apps.
Of course if Apple offered a recessed SDXC option, then people wouldn't need to upgrade their hardware as often, so Apple is part of the scam, using high SSD prices and limited storage to force premature turnover.
And had I known how easy it was to switch out the hard drive on this model, I would have done it myself and saved a little more cash. o.O
Update: The Seagate drive is working very well (it's definitely snappier?). After about the third boot, my MBP now boots up in under 20 seconds. In addition, the dock and all icons are instantly drawn and ready the moment the desktop comes up. Textures in games also load noticeably faster than with the original 5400 rpm HD. Launching commonly used apps also feels faster and screen draws are definitely faster. All in all, I'd say the new hybrid drive is worth the money, particularly for the low-end MBP.
And had I known how easy it was to switch out the hard drive on this model, I would have done it myself and saved a little more cash. o.O
"Eggselent" I'll be placing an order for 500GB for an iMac 27 soon enough. Near SSD speeds will ty me over until 256SSD are selling for a song.
Update: The Seagate drive is working very well (it's definitely snappier?). After about the third boot, my MBP now boots up in under 20 seconds. In addition, the dock and all icons are instantly drawn and ready the moment the desktop comes up. Textures in games also load noticeably faster than with the original 5400 rpm HD. Launching commonly used apps also feels faster and screen draws are definitely faster. All in all, I'd say the new hybrid drive is worth the money, particularly for the low-end MBP.
And had I known how easy it was to switch out the hard drive on this model, I would have done it myself and saved a little more cash. o.O
Hi Gamrin
Any problems with excessive vibration? There are a couple of reviews making this claim.
Textures in games also load noticeably faster than with the original 5400 rpm HD. Launching commonly used apps also feels faster and screen draws are definitely faster.
I think most of what you will see performance-wise is due to it being a 7200 RPM drive, which is 25% faster than a 5400 RPM. The benchmark reviews show that it's not much faster than a 7200 Hitachi Travelstar in most cases:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/seagat...w-31903-5.html
Certainly not SSD performance as the drive throughput is limited to 109MB/s from the physical drive. It will take time for the cache to build up properly on the SSD part but it won't boost raw transfer rates like file copying. It may not even affect games all that much because even take Half-Life 2, the game is over 4GB in size so it won't know what files to store on the 4GB SSD. Plus it needs successive launches to know what files you need regular access too.
The OS does its own caching as well during boot and application launch so it's going to be very hard to tell what benefit is coming from the SSD part.
One other thing I wonder about is security. You are able to zero out a HDD when selling on a computer, I wouldn't want the 4GB SSD to hold some cached personal details or files.
Intel are going to 25nm from 40nm so should be able to double capacity for the same price in Q4 this year:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/30/i...-to-get-cheap/
You can already buy 160GB for £250 so 320GB for the same price would be great. I'd be happier if they offered 250GB just under the £200 mark. That might be the cue for a switch but I'd like higher sustained writes. The x25-M only does about 70-80, but the 25-e gets up to 160MB/s, outperforming a 15k drive in some cases:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...sd,2158-4.html