Conclusion
In Hybrid drives are odd beasts that rarely display their true colours in synthetic testing and the new Momentus XT is no different. If we had gone about our business and focused upon benchmarks like ATTO and Crystal Diskmark, this conclusion would have sounded much different than what was finally put to paper. As it stands, Seagate has achieved something of a new standard in 2.5” hybrid performance.
The Momentus XT 750GB is not only much faster than the previous model, it is better able to learn your usage habits and adjust its performance accordingly. We found that instead of taking 8 to 10 cycles before it really “got it”, this drive only took a maximum of three repetitions to realize our needs. Those firmware level refinements and new FAST technology really do seem to net tangible improvements over the past model in real world scenarios.
Unfortunately while we were impressed with the net results, our initial misgivings were proven to be well found. To be blunt, while Seagate obviously have put a lot of time and effort into refining and improving the efficiency of their algorithms, they have hobbled the Momentus with an insufficient amount of high speed NAND. Eight gigabytes may be twice what the original had, but by today’s standards this just isn’t enough to accelerate a large number of your most-used programs. Remember, while Seagate’s new hybrid may start out with 8GB of NAND, a portion of it is dedicated towards speeding up system boot rather than reducing actual program load times.
The real heart of the issue is that forward thinking is great in principle but in practice it can become a double edged sword. In this case there was no reason to add lower capacity, higher priced SLC NAND on the off chance that write caching may be implemented at some nebulous time in the future. Sure, there is only room for one NAND chip on such a small PCBbut if this drive had taken advantage of quad die package MLC NAND Seagate could have easily increased this capacity to 16GB or 32GB without obliterating the XT’s intended price point.
While it may have some limitations in terms of what it can and can’t do, the Momentus XT 750GB is one hell of an innovative drive. It learns usage patterns quicker than any Hybrid setup we have seen before and Seagate’s engineers have once again proven why they are a force to be reckoned with. For systems that can only handle a single 2.5” storage device we know this would be the one we reach for. It can offer near- SSD real world performance while maintaining a relatively high capacity and does so while offering a completely seamless user experience. Hopefully, the hints our Seagate reps dropped about a certain 3.5” “XT” Hybrid version are indeed true as Seagate now have the building blocks to create a true SSD “killer”.
Pros:
- Much improved learning performance over previous generation
- Improved write performance
- Impressive real world results
- Unlike most Hybrid setups it does not need CPU cycles work do work its magic
- 5 year warranty
Cons:
- Price.
- 8GB of NAND is simply not enough by today’s standards
- Like any Hybrid, performance is still variable and most benchmarks will not show the true potential
- Adaptive Memory technology is extremely fast, but still has a lot of room for improvement
Conclusion
In Hybrid drives are odd beasts that rarely display their true colours in synthetic testing and the new Momentus XT is no different. If we had gone about our business and focused upon benchmarks like ATTO and Crystal Diskmark, this conclusion would have sounded much different than what was finally put to paper. As it stands, Seagate has achieved something of a new standard in 2.5” hybrid performance.
The Momentus XT 750GB is not only much faster than the previous model, it is better able to learn your usage habits and adjust its performance accordingly. We found that instead of taking 8 to 10 cycles before it really “got it”, this drive only took a maximum of three repetitions to realize our needs. Those firmware level refinements and new FAST technology really do seem to net tangible improvements over the past model in real world scenarios.
Unfortunately while we were impressed with the net results, our initial misgivings were proven to be well found. To be blunt, while Seagate obviously have put a lot of time and effort into refining and improving the efficiency of their algorithms, they have hobbled the Momentus with an insufficient amount of high speed NAND. Eight gigabytes may be twice what the original had, but by today’s standards this just isn’t enough to accelerate a large number of your most-used programs. Remember, while Seagate’s new hybrid may start out with 8GB of NAND, a portion of it is dedicated towards speeding up system boot rather than reducing actual program load times.
The real heart of the issue is that forward thinking is great in principle but in practice it can become a double edged sword. In this case there was no reason to add lower capacity, higher priced SLC NAND on the off chance that write caching may be implemented at some nebulous time in the future. Sure, there is only room for one NAND chip on such a small PCBbut if this drive had taken advantage of quad die package MLC NAND Seagate could have easily increased this capacity to 16GB or 32GB without obliterating the XT’s intended price point.
While it may have some limitations in terms of what it can and can’t do, the Momentus XT 750GB is one hell of an innovative drive. It learns usage patterns quicker than any Hybrid setup we have seen before and Seagate’s engineers have once again proven why they are a force to be reckoned with. For systems that can only handle a single 2.5” storage device we know this would be the one we reach for. It can offer near- SSD real world performance while maintaining a relatively high capacity and does so while offering a completely seamless user experience. Hopefully, the hints our Seagate reps dropped about a certain 3.5” “XT” Hybrid version are indeed true as Seagate now have the building blocks to create a true SSD “killer”.
Pros:
- Much improved learning performance over previous generation
- Improved write performance
- Impressive real world results
- Unlike most Hybrid setups it does not need CPU cycles work do work its magic
- 5 year warranty
Cons:
- Price.
- 8GB of NAND is simply not enough by today’s standards
- Like any Hybrid, performance is still variable and most benchmarks will not show the true potential
- Adaptive Memory technology is extremely fast, but still has a lot of room for improvement
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