[ PC Gaming ]

Seagate Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief October 11, 2010 · 1 min read

Listen to article

Banks, e-wallets face new BSP rules on digital payment fees Meta strengthens teen protections across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger realme Buds T500 Pro now available in the Philippines DJI files patent infringement lawsuits against Insta360 realme C100 Review

This hybrid drive by Seagate looks interesting — it combines the large capacity of regular HDDs as well as the affordability together with the performance of fast SSDs.

The Seagate Momentus XT comes in 500GB capacity with a 4GB SSD integrated with it (that’s where the hybrid comes in).

Seagate Momentus XT 500GB (ST95005620AS)
500GB HDD
4GB solid state SLC NAND flash storage
SATA 3Gb/s
32MB cache
7200 rpm (spin speed)
300MB/s transfer speed

The drive monitors which applications or files are frequently used or accessed by the system and it stores them in the 4GB NAND flash storage for better performance. As such, I don’t think it will have any significant performance improvement if you’re transferring large files at a time.

This hybrid drive can be used in laptops or external drive enclosures and with a retail price of about Php6,500 it’s still a bit more expensive than the regular ones.

React to this article:

seagate hdd seagate hybrid seagate ssd

Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and is considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines.

8,010 Articles

View all posts by Abe Olandres →

56 Comments

Arvin · 16 years ago

@ianseballe any changes to your WEI score? am very interested in buying one too. Thanks!

hubster · 16 years ago

i’m going to buy one of these and an additional RAM for my system.

hubster · 16 years ago

@beef
Yes, the SSD part of the hybrid drive is more like a permanent “Windows ReadyBoost” and i agree on what you said. I hope it’s possible to put a pagefile on that 4GB SSD so that there’s no need to put a pagefile on a much slower hard drive (that spins a lot just to search for files).

vince · 16 years ago

nice to know that old fashioned brick and mortar stores FINALLY got around to stocking these new tech items

Ligrev · 16 years ago

Bought one from Villman in Park Square 1 a couple of days ago. Bought it for P6,488, as advertised in their website. Initially, 6,999 daw. Kinontra ko. Hehehe.

I really recommend this upgrade, especially for gaming laptops and netbooks. I have never seen Windows 7, Outlook 2010, and the Adobe family of programs start SOOOOOOO fast.

I’m using an Acer Aspire 4740G. I swear I can notice at least a 50% improvement in boot-up and app initialization speed.

There’s one peculiarity though. Sometimes during installation, it seems that its taking a bit longer. But it isn’t. I think its the Adaptive Memory Technology adapting to the app installation for faster execution.

beef · 16 years ago

@hubster: correct me if I’m wrong anyone.. but i don’t think you can control what you put on the NAND part of the hard drive, as far as the end user is concerned, it’s just one big drive and you don’t get to tell it which part you use for what.. its just faster. So, windows ready boost is not gonna be there for you in this drive, cuz it doesn’t see it as a flash drive + a HDD.. it’s just one drive and the NAND part acts like a cache for more frequently used areas.. I guess when one thinks about it, it is like a more permanent “ready boost” without the USB bottleneck which you neither set nor see, but “technically” speaking if you want ready boost, you still need to use a flash drive in your USB port.

hubster09 · 16 years ago

The SSD looks great for use in Windows ReadyBoost.
SSD+HDD=Unrelenting performance.

Hope that we can see bigger SSD sizes in the future and i hope that there will be a day that SSDs are as affordable as HDD.

beef · 16 years ago

and oh, like Jason.. If i find my laptop using the pagefile much, I’ll just add RAM.. so far, I’ve more than enough for it not to have to resort to the hard drive for that..

beef · 16 years ago

yeah, but I don’t really mind the extra second or two of loading time, I’m not that OC.. I can afford 2 seconds it’s never gonna load any of my heavy programs a full minute faster.. I can type this while photoshop or maya loads.. it’s no biggie.. what i really want an SSD for is less the speed but more the security of not having a spinning platter in my laptop’s hard drive that can get damaged if you bump it while it’s writing.. So really, for my requirements, it’s full SSD.. not a hybrid.

vince · 16 years ago

tipid pc sellers sell them

Jason · 16 years ago

Not good for netbook. Bought one for my hp mini but the processor speed is the limiting factor. Move to i5 desktop, saw the gains immediately. Recommended for system in which hard drive is the bottleneck. The hp was betteer served with a ram upgrade to reduced page file usage.

ion · 16 years ago

i wonder where i can buy this here in the philippines? i’ve been hearing about this on laptop forums a long time now and it’s a very popular upgrade. speedy loading times, boot up times, basically anything that has to do with read speed.

Echo San Miguel · 16 years ago

borgy is right.

borgy · 16 years ago

no the SSD part isnt used for file storage. it is just a cache for the most frequently accessed files.

IC DeaDPiPoL · 16 years ago

The 4gb SSD is too small for Windows 7 (IIRC requires around 15gb of space).

Would be nice for Windows XP or Linux Mint (provided you move /temp /home and other frequently written directories to the HDD.

Guy Radaza · 16 years ago

SSDs have fast reading speed. Kaya it makes sense to have SSD for that purpose inside HDD.

Joseph · 16 years ago

As per tomshardware, wala ring silbi yung 4g sdd nya. parang normal hdd lang. the best pa din kung full sdd talaga although napakamahal. kaya nga di masyadong nabibili ito. mga 6mos(kung di ako mali) ago pa nailabas ito sa ibang bansa.

Dina · 16 years ago

Cann’t afford for the price. Maybe just stay on current non ssd sata 2 hardisk. ;)

Echo San Miguel · 16 years ago

Maganda to pamalit sa internal HDD sa laptop. Saan kaya may local reseller?

-Sent via YugaTech Mobile App

vincent valenciano · 16 years ago

nice ilang seconds kea pag niload nya ung win 7 :D

Solidhosting · 16 years ago

I agree! It will just be the same performance as the current laptop HDD out there.

Jhay · 16 years ago

It’s like fusing together a regular HDD and a flash drive for a built-in, souped-up Ready-boost in Vista.

Will other drive makers follow suit?

tipler · 16 years ago

Looks like it get near-velociraptor speeds:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-review-finally-a-good-hybrid-hdd/6

Sad that seagate’s been having firmware mishaps left and right the past few years tho, that’s why my last couple of hdd’s been wd.

I wouldn’t get this for an external drive tho, as you’ll be limited by the interface (usb2, most like). Better to get one of the go flex drives IMO.

borgy · 16 years ago

it’s a nice compromise between mechanical hard drives and solid state drives. the NAND flash is only used for reads, hence its only the reading of files that will be SSD-like. for writing it will be the same as a mechanical hard drive.