Right now the storage story is either SSD or HDD. There are those who moved towards SSD for performance gain. But there’s still a significant population (and its growing even more) that buys mechanical hard drives for the storage space and value with reliability. In both cases, as far as storing large amount of data, mechanical drives still rules the world!
In the midst of confusion between choosing SSD and mechanical drives (those with smaller budget and/or need for large storage space will naturally grab a mechanical drive), hybrid drives are back from the past and it seems to be the right time.
But there’s an untold tale between these 2 hard drives that was clearly forgotten by man (and woman). It dates back to 2007 when there was a concept of mechanical drives with flash memory after Vista was released- hybrid drive. The idea was to improve the performance thanks to XP’s prefetch/ Vista’s super fetch. Prefetch uses the cache to load applications faster whereas Super fetch is more of an advanced version. To add more, it made sense because flash drive consume lesser power consumption giving more battery life as flash consumes lesser power compared to mechanical drives.
Back then when the concept of using SSDs in anybody’s system as a mass storage drive was a distant fantasy. Hybrid drives sounds brilliant and it seemed that it came in the right time to be paired with a Windows Vista system. Alas, it didn’t happen the way many thought it would, but the reason was different. What went wrong? It did save power but that was about it. It was still too premature as there was still no significant performance increase despite vista’s features.
The concept was put in hibernation mode till the time was right- until recently when Seagate drops by to give 3 storage drives, one of them is the already reviewed GoFlex pro and the second one is the Momentus XT Drive.
Advertised specs, package and closer look:
Its looks like any 2.5inch hard drive, nothing much to add as this is the what I received in an anti-static bag.
There are some things you need to keep in mind so that we both are in the same picture about how they work.
The hybrid drive at the end of the day comes with 4GB SLC NAND. After interpreting the part number, its a Samsung 400mhz DDR Rev 11. The drive comes with a 32MB “Read Only†Cache. There is an eASIC controller put up but I wasn’t able to find much about it even in the materials forwarded by Seagate. The rest of it is a typical mechanical hard drive.
Test setup, Disk Info and Benchmark:
AS SSD Benchmark: Read and Write:
AS SSD Benchmark: Copy
AS SSD Benchmark: Compression
--------------------------------------
Crystal Disk Benchmark: Read and Write performance
--------------------------------
HD Tune Pro: Sequential Read/Write
HD Tune Pro: File Benchmark
HD Tune Pro: Random Write Access
HD Tune Pro: Random Read Access
--------------------------------------
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Its comes clear till here, Hybrid drives aren’t best friends with any of the 4k tests. Throughout the test, the drive was inside the closed case, so the temperatures was between 35-40 degrees approx.
--------------------------------------
[Added: 31-12-10] Boot load time
Conclusion:
To set the reader’s expectations, this is more of a “1up†upgrade from a standard mechanical hard drive. Larger NAND and write enabled Cache should improve the overall scores compared to the ones above, but there’s always the cost-to-performance-to-storage space ratio. I was more impressed with eASIC controller’s ability to learn and execute faster loads after judging user’s usage behaviour and not the implementation of a NAND. It does make faster boot/load times compared to first run. eASIC controller which do the same jobs would most likely be implemented in 3.5 inch drives as well.
The first sentence that pops in your head after hearing “hybrid drive†is “Best of both worlds†but that’s wasn’t it. Conclusion isn’t as “exciting†as I thought it would be but there will be a good boost in start up/load time compared to 5400.6 notebook drives. If you have a good budget for your notebook’s internal HD upgrade but don’t want to go the SSD way for either price/storage reasons, this is something you could shortlist. This drive is meant to be a norm for certain mid-to-high end notebooks.
Seagate 500 gigs Momentus costs 8100/- MRP. Seagate Mometus XT 250 gig and 320 gigs costs Rs. 6800/- and 7400/- MRP. I was able to find only the street price of Seagate Momentus (5400.6 RPM) 500 gigs drive i.e available for Rs.2,800.
There is a brand who did release couple of gaming series notebooks with a hybrid drive (second one has 2 in RAID), but they didn’t want/couldn’t confirm whether its the same drive. I am not aware of any other manufacturers who are making hybrid drives but it shows that this time hybrid will be a norm for notebooks. If you are picking up a notebook and your manufacturer gives an option to upgrade to momentus XT and they priced it right, you can grab it. Desktop users would choose a good enough 3.5 inch Hard drive or an SSD (or SSD as primary and a hard drive with lot of storage space).
In the midst of confusion between choosing SSD and mechanical drives (those with smaller budget and/or need for large storage space will naturally grab a mechanical drive), hybrid drives are back from the past and it seems to be the right time.
But there’s an untold tale between these 2 hard drives that was clearly forgotten by man (and woman). It dates back to 2007 when there was a concept of mechanical drives with flash memory after Vista was released- hybrid drive. The idea was to improve the performance thanks to XP’s prefetch/ Vista’s super fetch. Prefetch uses the cache to load applications faster whereas Super fetch is more of an advanced version. To add more, it made sense because flash drive consume lesser power consumption giving more battery life as flash consumes lesser power compared to mechanical drives.
Back then when the concept of using SSDs in anybody’s system as a mass storage drive was a distant fantasy. Hybrid drives sounds brilliant and it seemed that it came in the right time to be paired with a Windows Vista system. Alas, it didn’t happen the way many thought it would, but the reason was different. What went wrong? It did save power but that was about it. It was still too premature as there was still no significant performance increase despite vista’s features.
The concept was put in hibernation mode till the time was right- until recently when Seagate drops by to give 3 storage drives, one of them is the already reviewed GoFlex pro and the second one is the Momentus XT Drive.
Advertised specs, package and closer look:
Its looks like any 2.5inch hard drive, nothing much to add as this is the what I received in an anti-static bag.
There are some things you need to keep in mind so that we both are in the same picture about how they work.
The hybrid drive at the end of the day comes with 4GB SLC NAND. After interpreting the part number, its a Samsung 400mhz DDR Rev 11. The drive comes with a 32MB “Read Only†Cache. There is an eASIC controller put up but I wasn’t able to find much about it even in the materials forwarded by Seagate. The rest of it is a typical mechanical hard drive.
Test setup, Disk Info and Benchmark:
AS SSD Benchmark: Read and Write:
AS SSD Benchmark: Copy
AS SSD Benchmark: Compression
--------------------------------------
Crystal Disk Benchmark: Read and Write performance
--------------------------------
HD Tune Pro: Sequential Read/Write
HD Tune Pro: File Benchmark
HD Tune Pro: Random Write Access
HD Tune Pro: Random Read Access
--------------------------------------
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Its comes clear till here, Hybrid drives aren’t best friends with any of the 4k tests. Throughout the test, the drive was inside the closed case, so the temperatures was between 35-40 degrees approx.
--------------------------------------
[Added: 31-12-10] Boot load time
Conclusion:
To set the reader’s expectations, this is more of a “1up†upgrade from a standard mechanical hard drive. Larger NAND and write enabled Cache should improve the overall scores compared to the ones above, but there’s always the cost-to-performance-to-storage space ratio. I was more impressed with eASIC controller’s ability to learn and execute faster loads after judging user’s usage behaviour and not the implementation of a NAND. It does make faster boot/load times compared to first run. eASIC controller which do the same jobs would most likely be implemented in 3.5 inch drives as well.
The first sentence that pops in your head after hearing “hybrid drive†is “Best of both worlds†but that’s wasn’t it. Conclusion isn’t as “exciting†as I thought it would be but there will be a good boost in start up/load time compared to 5400.6 notebook drives. If you have a good budget for your notebook’s internal HD upgrade but don’t want to go the SSD way for either price/storage reasons, this is something you could shortlist. This drive is meant to be a norm for certain mid-to-high end notebooks.
Seagate 500 gigs Momentus costs 8100/- MRP. Seagate Mometus XT 250 gig and 320 gigs costs Rs. 6800/- and 7400/- MRP. I was able to find only the street price of Seagate Momentus (5400.6 RPM) 500 gigs drive i.e available for Rs.2,800.
There is a brand who did release couple of gaming series notebooks with a hybrid drive (second one has 2 in RAID), but they didn’t want/couldn’t confirm whether its the same drive. I am not aware of any other manufacturers who are making hybrid drives but it shows that this time hybrid will be a norm for notebooks. If you are picking up a notebook and your manufacturer gives an option to upgrade to momentus XT and they priced it right, you can grab it. Desktop users would choose a good enough 3.5 inch Hard drive or an SSD (or SSD as primary and a hard drive with lot of storage space).
. My next purchase after I save some money.