Seagate soups up laptop PC performance with fast, second-generation solid state hybrid drive

December 8, 2011

Seagate soups up laptop PC performance with fast, second-Generation solid state hybrid drive

Seagate Momentus XT 750GB solid state hybrid drive, the world's fastest hard drive for laptop PCs.

Seagate is now shipping the second generation of Momentus XT, its groundbreaking solid state hybrid drive for consumer and commercial laptops and the company’s fastest drive ever for personal computers. With a simple drive upgrade, users can boost boot-up speed and overall performance to turbo-charge their laptop PC. Seven original equipment manufacturers are gearing up to ship laptops powered by the Momentus XT drive. The drive is now available at online retailers Amazon, Canada Computers, CDW, Memory Express, NCIX, Newegg, and TigerDirect.

Powering the Momentus XT drive are Seagate’s Adaptive Memory and FAST Factor technologies. Adaptive Memory technology works by identifying data usage patterns, and then moving the most frequently retrieved information to solid state memory for faster access. Adaptive Memory effectively tailors hard drive performance to each user and the applications they use. FAST Factor technology blends the strengths of SSDs and hard disk drives for faster access to applications, quicker bootup and higher overall system speed.

“Laptop users want faster access to all of their content, from gaming, music and video to spreadsheets and documents, creating strong demand for the highest performance,” said Scott Horn, vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Seagate. “Seagate is excited to answer this need with a second-generation Momentus XT drive that delivers solid state drive (SSD) speed, greater storage capacity and easy installation at an affordable price.”

“High-speed storage devices make a difference when it comes to improving overall PC performance,” said John Rydning, research vice president at IDC. “’s newest Momentus XT drive gives notebook PC users an economical option for boosting PC performance while at the same time providing spacious storage capacity all in one device.”

The Momentus XT drive is nearly 70 percent faster than the prior Momentus drive version and up to three times faster than a traditional hard disk drive while providing 750GB of . The Momentus XT hard drive’s Serial ATA 6Gb/second interface and 8 gigabytes of Single Level Cell NAND flash double the interface and NAND read-write speed of the previous generation. The all-in-one design of Momentus XT drive makes installation and upgrading simple and easy for any or desktop computer and with any operating system.

The Momentus XT drive is now shipping in volume worldwide. Manufacturer’s Suggesting Retail Pricing (MSRP) for Momentus XT 750GB is $245.

Provided by Seagate

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tomlinton
Dec 08, 2011

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That picture
is a solid state drive?
rawa1
Dec 08, 2011

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That picture is a solid state drive?
It seems for me like the quite normal HDD with somewhat faster disk cache and SATA bus.. Apparently whole article is just an payed ad. The question is, why to censor the ad spammers from here after then - if they're posting the very same stuff.
CHollman82
Dec 08, 2011

Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
This is the second time this "article" has been posted on this site...
antialias_physorg
Dec 08, 2011

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is a solid state drive?

The article says it's a hybrid drive.
I.e. it is a combination of a regular drive and a solid state drive. An algorithm automatically moves the most used data to the SSD part for fast access. Think of it as a drive with a very large non-volatile cache.

It is a good tradeoff between capacity and performance until the price per GB and the durability of SSDs match that of HDDs.
The bulky data (movies, music, etc.) are usually streamed - so you don't need the ultra fast access.
Frequently used utilities and your operating system should be on the SSD for quick boot times.
jimbo92107
Dec 08, 2011

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Nice advertisement. Is that what Physorg is for?
wiyosaya
Dec 08, 2011

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The concept is not really anything new. It is simply disk caching with a large cache. If I really want the speed, I'll get an SSD. If I want capacity, I'll buy a conventional hard drive. However, I will not pay the price for this drive. IMHO, it is vastly overpriced.
CHollman82
Dec 08, 2011

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Right, get a small SSD for your OS and applications to reside on and one or more large conventional drives for mass long term storage, best solution IMO.
antialias_physorg
Dec 08, 2011

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Right, get a small SSD for your OS and applications to reside on and one or more large conventional drives for mass long term storage,

The article says it's for laptops. Two drives is not an option there as space is at a premium. The size restraint is what makes it seem oberpriced. but laptop hard drives have always been more pricey than those for desktops.
The concept is not really anything new. It is simply disk caching with a large cache.

No. Regular caches are volatile. SSD is non-volatile.
You are, however, correct that the concept of a hybrid drive is not entirely new. They have been on the market for 2 years or thereabouts.
dirk_bruere
Dec 08, 2011

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Cheaper to put the OS and applications on a 128GB SSD and use a terabyte HDD for media
antialias_physorg
Dec 08, 2011

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Read the article. It's for laptops.
Norezar
Dec 09, 2011

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PCIE Revo Drives deliver 10x the bandwidth of any mechanical drive. (No ghetto SATA bottleneck.) Releasing a new "high performance" SATA drive is akin to a new "innovation" in floppy drive technology.
Skepticus
Dec 11, 2011

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As far as I know, solid state memory do not do well with constant rewrites. When that portion finally fails (will be a lot sooner than the magnetic disk portion) you will have corrupted data and a dead drive. Great for your priceless family albums!
Rank 2.7 /5 (3 votes)
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