A few years ago, Seagate tried the Hybrid drive deal, and it didn’t win too many people over…remember Momentus PSD?
Momentus PSD was the first generation hybrid drive released by Seagate in 2007 and though it was a pioneering technology, it’s drastically different from the new Momentus XT drive recently announced. How?
Momentus PSD featured 128MB or 256MB of flash, Momentus XT has 4GB of SSD Flash.
Momentus PSD was reliant upon Microsoft Vista’s Ready Drive to take advantage of the flash component of the drive. Momentus XT is 100% OS independent. It works with Microsoft Windows, MacOS, and Linux without special drivers or 3rd party software.
Momentus PSD was all about power efficiency and touted performance benefits, but never delivered. Momentus XT was designed 100% for performance.
The one key takeaway from Momentus PSD Seagate learned from users was that if we were going to put SSD on a drive, customers better see the performance benefit. Otherwise, there is no real advantage to the technology.
I think Seagate got it right with Momentus XT…just look at the benchmarks and reviews.
How will a product like Spin Rite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) work on a hybrid drive like this?
what do you spect to save on 4 gb? a dvdrip?
@jh Thanks for commenting…with Momentus XT you are not saving anything to the 4GB of SSD. All data is written to the disk first. The Adaptive Memory Technology analyzes what bits of data are used most for boot, application load, etc and mirrors just those files to the SSD. 4GB of storage is ample capacity to store the many very small pieces of data that tend to slow down your system, not huge files like movies. I hope this adds some clarification…thanks again!
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At least Seagate have faith in their product in offering a Five Year Warranty.
If used in good faith I believe nobody can grumble with that.
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How does AMT play with encryption?
What if the disk is used for LUKS encryption of the whole OS:
will the SLC NAND cache disclose sensitive information that should remain encrypted?
Or shall it be able to cache the data at all?
@encryptor Great questions. I had to seek the answers from our security experts here @seagate. This is what I was told: There are two questions here:
1. How does AMT play with encryption?
Answer ==> Intel AMT can be used with Intel Anti-Theft Technology to manage Self Encrypting Drives. This was showcased at IDF 2009 showing remote management of a Seagate Self Encrypting Drive using Intel AMT/Anti-Theft.
2. What if the disk is used for LUKS encryption of the whole OS:will the SLC NAND cache disclose sensitive information that should remain encrypted? Or shall it be able to cache the data at all?
Answer ==> Self Encrypting Drives (SEDs) (could be HDD, SSHD, or SSD) encrypt all user data that is stored to the drive independent of any encryption at the operating system level. In the case of LUKs as well all data encrypted by the Operating System and any security metadata from the host would be encrypted additionally by the self encrypting drive. For the context of a non-Self Encrypting drive, LUKs encrypted data and LUKs metadata are just data to the drive and it would have no special means to reveal or not reveal the data any more than any other data that might be stored to the drive. So in the non-Self Encrypting Drive the drive cannot do anything to make the LUKs better or worse as the drive is just storing data. For the case of a Self Encrypting Drive the drive additionally encrypts all data coming into the drive and with the activation of locking the drive, the drive can additionally protect all data at rest stored to the drive (data, encrypted data, metadata, OS, etc. ).
Intel’s out-of-band Active Management Technology is supported by our Self-Encrypting Drives, WinMagic has a video on the topic here: http://www.winmagic.com/solutions/seagate-hd-fde-and-intel-at-technologies
Since the entire drive / all of the data is encrypted with Self-Encrypting Drives, there is no risk of OS data being “in the clear” no matter what drive type. There are unique issues with flash memory that need and will be addressed as we explore adding encryption for the SSD and SSHD drives to ensure this. If you are asking about non-SED models specifically like the Momentus XT, then the answer would be dependent on the encryption used.
[…] Seagate offers a middle way with its Momentus XT hybrid drive – mixing solid-state memory with the traditional spinning platter – and has sold 1m of the drives since it came up with the new category last year (the company says its 2007 Momentus PSD drive doesn’t really count). […]