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Simon · Feb 6, 2009, 10:08 AM

The Seagate Momentus 7200.4 has started selling. It's the first 7200rpm 500GB notebook drive. At 9.5mm thickness it will fit any MB or MBP.

BareFeats tested it and noted it was super-quiet and under load never got hotter than 91F/33C.

Newegg is selling it for $140 (price includes shipping).

ghporter · Feb 6, 2009, 09:59 PM

DANG!!! Half a terabyte for $140 is one very good thing, but the ENORMOUS advance in read and write speed is breathtaking. Holy freaking chrome!

Cold Warrior · Feb 7, 2009, 12:29 PM

I just upgraded over Christmas to 320 GB 7200 but this is a good price for what looks like a fast drive. I may just have to upgrade again.

seanc · Feb 7, 2009, 12:31 PM

I just bought a 500GB 5400rpm WD drive.
I thought about that Seagate drive or one very similar but went for the cheaper option.

Atheist · Feb 7, 2009, 01:26 PM

Nice drive... wish I had $140 laying around waiting to be spent.

Simon · Feb 7, 2009, 01:54 PM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

I just upgraded over Christmas to 320 GB 7200 but this is a good price for what looks like a fast drive. I may just have to upgrade again.

Similar situation here. I just recently bought a Momentus 7200.3 (320GB, 7200rpm). It is an excellent and inexpensive drive, but this offer is just soo tempting. The performance is awesome compared to any previously existing drive. Might just have to get one...

mduell · Feb 7, 2009, 04:35 PM

What's Disktester? Is that like the Xbench of hard drive utilities? It appears to be written by someone called diglloyd.

Where's the industry standard benchmarks, like IOmeter?

Simon · Feb 7, 2009, 05:25 PM

So you've never heard of Lloyd Chambers? Are you new to the Mac or what?

ghporter · Feb 7, 2009, 06:38 PM

Assuming my purchase of a new clothes dryer today doesn't hose up my finances too much, I'm looking at one of these drives and installation in my '06 MBP this spring (date to be determined). Unless something even more awesome comes out in the mean time.

seanc · Feb 7, 2009, 06:41 PM

How many of those hard drives could you buy for the price of that clothes dryer?
Installation is relatively easy assuming the layout is similar to my MBP - the most frustrating part is a ribbon cable very well stuck to the top of the hard drive that needs a combination of gentle force to be removed.

Spheric Harlot · Feb 7, 2009, 07:47 PM

That looks very, very good.

Let's see what Tom's Hardware has to say in their next shootout...

RMXO · Feb 7, 2009, 08:27 PM

dang it. I was impatient about bought the Samsung Spinpoint 500GB 5400RPM 3 wks ago for $99. Oh well, im happy with my purchase but I'm very tempted to get this drive though and use my old drive as a backup drive.

Tomchu · Feb 7, 2009, 11:22 PM

I don't get those results.

I myself have a WD Scorpio Black 320 GB in my MBP, and I can regularly hit 80-85 MB/s sustained read. This guy's graphs only show it doing 66 MB/s.

Spheric Harlot · Feb 8, 2009, 03:49 AM

No mention of test conditions - HD content (performance varies *greatly* depending on how full the drive is, with different drives performing *very* differently), machine (are those tests really done in the identical machine? Doubtful: it looks like they pulled the previous values up from earlier tests.).

The thing looks to be a screamer, but if you really want to know how this drive stacks up, these are the guys to watch: http://www.tomshardware.com/

(I am not affiliated with Tom's Hardware in any way, shape, or form. I have merely found their hard drive shootouts to be meticulous and extremely comprehensive.)

dowNNshift · Feb 8, 2009, 11:49 AM

That's pretty spiffy, thanks for the link...

I hope Seagate's Quality Control has improved though. I've stopped stocking and using them for the greater part of a year since I had a month long bad batch.

Competition is good though, this should push Hitachi and WD to come out with a competitive product.

mduell · Feb 8, 2009, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by Simon

So you've never heard of Lloyd Chambers? Are you new to the Mac or what?

No and yes.

None of the quickbench figures cover IO performance.

Simon · Feb 8, 2009, 03:23 PM

Originally Posted by dowNNshift

Competition is good though, this should push Hitachi and WD to come out with a competitive product.

Indeed. The main advantage with this new type of drive are the 250 GB per platter. That means even if you compare it to the fastest available 320 GB drive (the Momentus 7200.3 has 160 GB per platter) this drive will be a good deal faster simply thanks to its density. And that's exactly what we see in the Barefeats plots.

Ted L. Nancy · Feb 8, 2009, 06:17 PM

I tell ya... Just when I am resolved to save some money and to stop buying new computer equipment every month, somebody on these forums goes and posts something like this!

CharlesS · Feb 8, 2009, 07:15 PM

^ The trick to avoiding spending lots of money on computer equipment is always to keep in mind what the next thing on the horizon is. In this case, my strategy is to give SSDs a while to become affordable, and then I'll be able to get something that will absolutely smoke any conventional notebook drive, even this one. Of course, once affordable SSDs come out, there'll be something even better just around the corner, so I'll want to wait for that... it's a great money-saving technique.

DCJ001 · Feb 8, 2009, 07:29 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

^ The trick to avoiding spending lots of money on computer equipment is always to keep in mind what the next thing on the horizon is. In this case, my strategy is to give SSDs a while to become affordable, and then I'll be able to get something that will absolutely smoke any conventional notebook drive, even this one. Of course, once affordable SSDs come out, there'll be something even better just around the corner, so I'll want to wait for that... it's a great money-saving technique.

Exactly.

How does this sound:

"512GB... peak read speeds of 240MB per second and write speeds of 200MB per second..."

Coming soon:

http://www.electronista.com/articles...iba.512gb.ssd/

mduell · Feb 8, 2009, 07:42 PM

The really exciting part about SSDs isn't the bulk transfer rates, it's the IO performance.

Lloyd Chambers appears to be a photographer; not sure what his hard drive benchmarking credentials are.

CharlesS · Feb 8, 2009, 07:54 PM

Yes, I think I've read that there are some SSDs out there that are actually fast enough for the speed of the SATA bus to be a bottleneck.

besson3c · Feb 8, 2009, 10:55 PM

Are there any hardware prereqs to make full use of 7200 RPMs?

Simon · 03:09 AM

More benchmarks

olePigeon · Feb 9, 2009, 05:03 PM

Does anyone have performance benchmarks on SAS SSD drives? SSD drives don't appear to be all that faster, but I would imagine it may be a result of the limitations of the SATA interface. SAS has superior sustained throughput compared to SATA, so I'm wondering what the speeds would be like.

Or for that matter, FC SSDs.

CharlesS · Feb 9, 2009, 05:30 PM

Originally Posted by olePigeon

SSD drives don't appear to be all that faster

The SSD drives that mere mortals can afford right now, the cheap ones from OCZ and the like - don't appear to be all that faster, but that's not true of SSDs in general. Check out these benchmarks:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/168...ate/index.html

Of course, the drive being reviewed here is a high-end model that costs thousands of dollars - but that will change. As the technology improves, and as SSDs get more popular and start to take advantage of economies of scale, high-performance SSDs will become the norm. Give it a couple of years or so, and we'll all be using blazing fast SSDs in our laptops that will make today's hard drives look like floppy disks.

mduell · Feb 9, 2009, 08:44 PM

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Does anyone have performance benchmarks on SAS SSD drives? SSD drives don't appear to be all that faster, but I would imagine it may be a result of the limitations of the SATA interface. SAS has superior sustained throughput compared to SATA, so I'm wondering what the speeds would be like.

Or for that matter, FC SSDs.

This test includes spinny disks, flash SSDs, and DRAM-based products.

Simon · 03:03 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

The SSD drives that mere mortals can afford right now, the cheap ones from OCZ and the like - don't appear to be all that faster, but that's not true of SSDs in general.

Unfortunately that's the case right now. Here's this new 7200.4 Momentus against a 64GB SSD from Samsung (at almost $500 not that cheap!). They were both benchmarked in the same notebook.

Momentus 7200.4

Samsung 64GB SSD

Good i/o performance is nice, but it's of no use to me if bulk transfers aren't up to par.

Hopefully truly fast SSDs will become more affordable soon. It would be nice if affordable SSD didn't almost automatically mean crappy SSD. I hope when I buy the rev B unibody MBP (as soon as they come out) I'll be buying my last notebook HDD. I'm not so sure though...

CharlesS · Feb 10, 2009, 04:12 AM

Originally Posted by Simon

Unfortunately that's the case right now. Here's this new 7200.4 Momentus against a 64GB SSD from Samsung (at almost $500 not that cheap!).

$500 is cheap for a SSD at the present time (the high-end costing thousands of dollars), although this is likely to change in the next couple of years.

Simon · Feb 10, 2009, 04:31 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

$500 is cheap for a SSD at the present time (the high-end costing thousands of dollars), although this is likely to change in the next couple of years.

I know. It's cheap for a 64GB SSD. But the problem is that this $500 SSD is being put to shame by a $140 HDD that also offers 7 times the capacity. Even if this SSD has better i/o performance, for most people that won't be able to make up for its disadvantages. Not to mention that most consumers will not put a $500 drive in their $1000 notebook.

SSDs will definitely get there. But it's taking a while. And the current state of the economy is likely to slow that down further.

DCJ001 · Feb 10, 2009, 10:23 PM

64GB SSD for $131:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-NA-_-NA-_-NA

Like all other technology, it's going to get bigger, better, faster, and less expensive over time.

CharlesS · Feb 11, 2009, 02:26 AM

HDDs currently have economies of scale working for them. SSDs don't. That's gonna change after a while.

Simon · Feb 11, 2009, 02:44 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

HDDs currently have economies of scale working for them. SSDs don't. That's gonna change after a while.

It sure will. And I look forward to that day.

Until then, I'll have to find an excuse to get that 7200.4 even though I just got the 7200.3.

CharlesS · Feb 11, 2009, 02:58 AM

Nothing wrong with that. Meanwhile. I'll use SSDs as my excuse not to get that 7200.4.

Simon · Feb 11, 2009, 03:05 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Meanwhile. I'll use SSDs as my excuse not to get that 7200.4.

Hehe.

hwojtek · Feb 11, 2009, 12:17 PM

Originally Posted by Simon

At 9.5mm thickness it will fit any MB or MBP.

And Mac Mini as well. With a C2D processor and this HDD, it may become a really useful HTPC.

Rumor · Feb 14, 2009, 04:22 AM

I went to get one from Newegg, and the product is deactivated.

ghporter · Feb 14, 2009, 10:39 AM

Originally Posted by Rumor

I went to get one from Newegg, and the product is deactivated.

...Which could mean that they're just out of stock without a "get well" date... This drive sounds so good, I'll bet that demand has been "beyond expectations."

Rumor · Feb 14, 2009, 02:02 PM

Amazon is out as well. I should have grabbed one earlier this week.

besson3c · Feb 14, 2009, 03:00 PM

I ask again: are there any prerequisites for 7200 RPM drives, such as bus speeds?

Tomchu · Feb 14, 2009, 07:33 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Are there any hardware prereqs to make full use of 7200 RPMs?

No. Going from 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM will improve both seek times and sequential transfer rates, and out of those two, only the transfer rate could possibly be limited by the bus -- but the bump in transfer rates is not large enough that SATA150/ATA100 couldn't handle it.

ghporter · Feb 14, 2009, 08:13 PM

As long as the interface is there, the drive should run. Like a scalded dog, to use the vernacular.

I think that at any time a drive gets "too fast" for the interface, that's time for the interface standard to be expanded. Not that this would be necessary for the drive to work, if ATA is any indicator of how these things work, then the "fast" drive on a not-quite-as-fast interface would simply max out the interface and run slower than its potential.

Simon · 05:14 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

I ask again: are there any prerequisites for 7200 RPM drives, such as bus speeds?

The reason nobody replied is because the answer's given in the thread. This drive peaks around 100MBps, and that's faster than any other existing 2.5" 7200 rpm HDD. The SATA bus in your Mac is either 1.5Gbps or 3Gbps. IOW both are more than sufficient.

CharlesS · Feb 15, 2009, 12:11 PM

100 MBps? So it's only just now that the speed of the FireWire 800 bus has been saturated by a 2.5" drive?

mduell · Feb 15, 2009, 03:00 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

100 MBps? So it's only just now that the speed of the FireWire 800 bus has been saturated by a 2.5" drive?

Does FW800 allow you to use alpha mode at S800 speed? I thought you had to use beta mode.

CharlesS · Feb 15, 2009, 04:08 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

Does FW800 allow you to use alpha mode at S800 speed? I thought you had to use beta mode.

AFAIK you have to use beta mode, but I'm a little confused what that has to do with this.

mduell · Feb 16, 2009, 01:22 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

AFAIK you have to use beta mode, but I'm a little confused what that has to do with this.

Beta mode uses 8B10B encoding so the max bandwidth is 78.6MBps, which laptop drives hit a generation or two ago.

Spheric Harlot · Feb 16, 2009, 02:49 PM

Am I getting this right?

8b10b is used to minimise generation of cable noise to other devices and because it's somehow easier/safer to implement over DC power, as in a Firewire bus?
(Can you shed any light on why this is so? The wiki article didn't go into the actual technical reasons.)

Max bandwidth of FW800 is 786Mbps, which would normally translate to 96MBps (at 8 bits per byte), but since 8B10B encoding actually encodes each byte into 10 bits, it effectively limits the bus to 76.8MBps, right?

mduell · Feb 17, 2009, 09:05 PM

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

Am I getting this right?

8b10b is used to minimise generation of cable noise to other devices and because it's somehow easier/safer to implement over DC power, as in a Firewire bus?
(Can you shed any light on why this is so? The wiki article didn't go into the actual technical reasons.)

Max bandwidth of FW800 is 786Mbps, which would normally translate to 96MBps (at 8 bits per byte), but since 8B10B encoding actually encodes each byte into 10 bits, it effectively limits the bus to 76.8MBps, right?

8B/10B minimizes DC bias by avoiding strings with a lot of 0s or 1s; you never have more than six of either in a byte. It also helps with clock recovery because you never have more than five 0s or 1s in a row. It's used many of the current high-speed busses (SATA, PCIe, etc; DVI/HDMI also encodes 8 bits in 10 but uses a different scheme).

Yes, you have the right math for 1394b S800 bandwidth.

Simon · Feb 18, 2009, 03:20 AM

The original BareFeats page has been updated with the WD Scorpio Black 320GB results. The Black does very well for small random writes. The Momentus remains throughput champion.

CONCLUSION
The Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB notebook drive sets a new standard for large sustained transfers and storage space -- yet it's only 9.5mm thick.
...
One of the reasons for our redo of this article was to add in the Western Digital Scorpio Black drive. Like other WD drives we've tested recently, it beats the other brands in overall small random performance.