What’s so special about the Momentus XT 750GB? It’s 70% FASTer

Seems like yesterday, but it’s been a whole 18 months since the first Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive was introduced.

Today, Seagate released the successor.

On the surface, you might think the major difference is the capacity bump – up to 750GB, and an SSD bump from 4GB to 8GB – but there is much more to this SSHD evolution. Over the course of the last year and a half, Joni Clark, Seagate’s product marketing manager for 2.5-inch PC Client products, has been entrenched in customer conversations regarding Momentus XT. From large OEMs to everyday users like you and me, tons of direct customer feedback went into designing the new and improved Momentus XT 750GB.

The most glaring difference is what Seagate is calling the FAST Factor – Flash Assisted Storage Technology.

“FAST Factor technology eliminates the need for multiple drives in a system by combining the best of both worlds in one drive. FAST Factor features include innovative data control techniques and Adaptive Memory™ technology to customize performance by aligning to user needs.”

We are all familiar with the Adaptive Memory technology. That was the secret sauce to the first generation Momentus XT, but what are these innovative data control techniques? Joni describes what these techniques are in a technical paper she wrote on the subject available here.

Bottom line: it’s faster! I’m talking 70% faster!

Considering the first gen was pretty close to SSD speeds, the new 750GB SSHD version is running virtually neck and neck with an SSD. Check out the side by side comparison video. Not to ruin the ending for you, but here are the results:

So it’s 70% faster than the previous generation, but what’s more glaring is the speed compared to a standard laptop drive – 3X faster boot and 44% faster application load times. Not bad for a hard drive. Oh sorry Joni… a Solid State Hybrid Drive.

What do you think?  Is hybrid technology making a stronger and stronger case for not just the performance junkies, but the mainstream?

Related Posts:

The reviews are coming in…check out the latest.
Momentus XT Blog history

2011-11-29T10:49:07+00:00

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3 Comments

  1. […] ausreichend Speicherleistung erhalten – und das alles mit nur einem einzigen Produkt.“ …mehr Infos bei Seagate.com Dieser Beitrag wurde unter Produktneuheiten abgelegt und mit Momentus XT, Seagate verschlagwortet. […]

  2. Andrew July 3, 2012 at 4:01 pm - Reply

    I feel like the Momentus XT series of hybrid hard drives is a great idea that performs well, but who’s the target audience? Performance users prefer a separate ssd and hdd combination, while casual users are used to just an hdd. I’m sure a significant number of people are saying only good things about it, but the hhd also falls in an awkward spot between – slower than ssd – and – smaller than hdd –

    This would, undoubtedly, make an amazing laptop solution, providing both speed and size in a single drive, but how would Seagate hope to attract more desktop users to their product?

  3. Cathryne November 15, 2012 at 5:45 am - Reply

    I’m wondering how “intelligent” the algorithm for moving hot data to the SSD part is in real-life applications. Moving boot files and often used programs is nice and fine, but what about pre-caching? Take a modern AAA game for example: only parts of it will be accelerated (those files that are needed for each launch), but level data won’t, right? So, for the next gen Momentus XT I wish for more SSD space and some form of configuration. So a user can over-ride the default algorithm with a 100% caching of certain programs/folders.

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