500GB Seagate Hybrid SSD/HDD for Mac? Does anyone have?

Looking for a good Hard Drive for my mac, but as in a previous topic I had, the price of SSD is sky high right now, and Im wondering if this hybrid product by Seagate is any good?

500GB Seagate Momentus XT 2.5" SATA 7200RPM/SSD Hybrid Drive

Does anyone currently use it?
Has anyone used it before?

Do some forum searching, I think you'll find more negative about hybrid drives than positive. I would stay away from buying one. Get a nice large standard 7200 RPM drive for now. Later on as SSD and flash prices come down you can get one as a second drive or even use it as the primary boot drive.

Some liked it. I am not one of them.

If you decide you want one, I'll sell the one I have for 25% below Amazon's or Newegg's current price. It spent 4 weeks in my Mac - purchased in Jan.

As I have stated in similar threads...I have it in my 13" 2.66 c2D MBP & have not had a single issue or problem.

After doing reasearch myself it seems a common thread with people who have had problems is that they almost all seem to have "cloned" their current drive to the XT which it appears that it does not like....

I used migration assistant and again, have not had a single issue.

With that all said, I see really no performance difference over a standard 7200rpm drive..

I have just purchased a Crucial 512GB "true" ssd for my 15" 2011 MBP and am eager to see the difference over the 7200rpm drive currently installed....

I have the SSD hybrid 500gb in my machine right now.

a 500gb 7200rpm sata is about 60-70$ so for an extra 30$ you get 4gb of auto SSD.

My macbook pro right now is running it and i have no issues, its noticeably quicker. The firmware ends up putting (i think) whatever you use most in the SSD portion of the drive.

I would love an SSD however I cant justify dropping $500 on the size I need....

im not sure what the issues other people have run into are, but im 100% happy with it in my machine. I have seen a lot of people say they prefer the raptor @ 10k but even that drive is $249.

cjj14u said:

I have just purchased a Crucial 512GB "true" ssd for my 15" 2011 MBP and am eager to see the difference over the 7200rpm drive currently installed....

Click to expand...

When you try it out, let me know how it is!

Im very curious. thanks!

AnandTech - Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD

this review compares the Hyrbrid, to the SSD, to the raptor, to the typical 5400.


check it out and assign your monies as you feel necessary..

benchmarks are a few pages in..

BTW the 500gb hybrid is $99 free shipping at newegg right now..

My two cents - have just installed seagate hybrid 500GB no compatibility probs. no noticable speed difference so far but I have not yet demanded much of the new HD

My only complaint is that it is slightly hotter than the stock one.

my machine:
MacBook 5,1
10.5.8 (I know it's old ... waiting for lion)
2.4 Ghz core 2 duo

meh, just buy a real SSD already.

I have this drive installed in both my MacBook Pro and a Lenovo laptop. In both cases I cloned the original HDD to the new hybrid. I have had no issues at all with either machine since upgrading the drives. In the case of the Lenovo, boot time dropped from 1:50 to :53 after running the boot a couple of times to get the SSD cache working. I haven't noticed an increase or decrease in boot times for the Mac (it boots so fast anyways), but i have noticed that applications like Photoshop and iMovie open faster, and in the case of iMovie, loading video files is also noticeably faster.

And I still have one that I'll sell, shipped, for 25% under newegg or amazon price.

Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid SSD

Hey guys, I have had a MacBook 13" White for years...

Then decided to sell every computer I own for the beast I now possess... well worth it!

Very Very Happy with my Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid SSD (8GB SSD - 750GB HDD)

As an IT Professional, I can definitely vouch that if you don't have the cash for the SSD outright, get one of these!

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8
( I REFUSE TO RUN LION IN LIEU OF NO SUPPORT FOR OLDER APPS, EG. Freehand etc)

Boot Apple OS = around 3 seconds
Boot Windows 7 Pro x64 = around 8 seconds

Opening Apps:
Mail = immediate (approx 3500 mails x 2 mailboxes)
Adobe Photoshop CS5.5 x64 = around 1 second
MS Office 2011:
Outlook = less than 1 second
Excel = less than 1 second
Word = less than 1 second
PowerPoint = less than 1 second
Disk Utility = immediate
Safari = immediate
Firefox 7 = immediate
Firefox 9.0.1 = immediate
Firefox Nightly 12.0a1 (2011-12-22) = immediate (x64 threading / support)
Firefox Nightly 12.0a1 (2012-01-17) = immediate
iTunes 10.5.2 ~ 3481 Songs ~ 25.17 GB = less than 1 second
VMWare Fusion 4 = around 1 second
Launching Windows XP x86 in VMWare F4 = around 4 seconds
Launching Windows 8 Developer Preview x86 = around 4 seconds
Linotype FontExplorer X Pro (3.0) {39535 fonts} = 3 - 4 seconds

More than this would go on for a while, but the proof is there!

And gaming in Windows 7 x64 is outstanding with the new drive compared to the old standard 750 GB 5400 rpm Toshiba

The new drive is : Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid 8 GB SSD 750 GB 7200rpm 32 MB cache
(i don't know what the cache is on the Toshiba that ships with most MacBook Pro Laptops)

That is my rant...

hey Kitsune Akki,
i have a macbook white 5,2 with core2duo 2.13ghz. 2gb ram.
what is ur advice for me to fasten up my mac?
is it upgrading to 6gb ram ddr2 with 500 gb 7200rpm sata?

or

4 gb ddr2 with 500 gb hybrid xt?

thanks

amirfahmi22 said:

hey Kitsune Akki,
i have a macbook white 5,2 with core2duo 2.13ghz. 2gb ram.
what is ur advice for me to fasten up my mac?
is it upgrading to 6gb ram ddr2 with 500 gb 7200rpm sata?

or

4 gb ddr2 with 500 gb hybrid xt?

thanks

Click to expand...

I'd go for the 6 Gb Ram, and the 500GB 7200 rpm
(note temperatures will increase dramatically because of the speed of the drive)
Way to avoid this is to get a 500GB Hybrid SSD or 750GB Hybrid SSD
or a drive with a high cache, 32mb is normally good enough.
Also a clean install and restore from time machine onto a new drive rather than clone is better because you copy junk that the system accumulated over its life span. Or clean install...

There is an official thing from Apple that allows you to "crack open" the ram limit, on the Macbook 5.2 therefore allowing 8GB ram (not sure where or how - google)

Regards

hi, i have it installed in my 08 white MacBook and its worked great very big diference on boot up takes about 20secs and apps do load faster very happy with the drive. I bought it in august and no problems

I reeeeeally want to buy one of these but the horror stories are scaring me. I plan on doing a clean re-install and not cloning my old harddrive which I understand causes the least amount of problems.

Looking for some recent feedback experience to sway me one way or another.

Still looking for any recent feedback experiences.

I always say - most people hop on and post negative stuff rather than positive reviews - so the internet is typically skewed that way. Bob and I have had opposite experiences with hard drives. I've had trouble with my Time Capsule and his has been running forever.

On the hybrid front - I bought 2 500GB Seagate momentus XTs last year and put one in my Dell and one in my Macbook Pro. Both have been great for me. The programs I most use and bootup have been sped up by going to the hybrid. It is cheaper too. The write isn't as fast but for the price I don't think you can beat the price/performance/size. There are now 750GB drives which I think I am going to try. I'd highly recommend it. A 500GB SSD is still much more than a 500GB hybrid - but if you have the money then go with an SSD. I'd take Bob up on his offer in a heartbeat if I needed a 500GB drive.

Hybrid SSD Review

jbrittmartin said:

Still looking for any recent feedback experiences.

Click to expand...

Go see my post regarding upgrading to the Hybrid SSD

I went with the new 750GB version of this hybrid drive.

$175 shipped from Amazon.

I did a clean install of Lion and it has been running flawlessly for a couple weeks now.

The speed increase is phenomenal.