| Seagate Momentus-XT Solid State Hybrid Drive |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Monday, 24 May 2010 | |
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Page 9 of 12
EVEREST Disk BenchmarkMany enthusiasts are familiar with the Lavalys EVEREST benchmark suite, but very few are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The EVEREST Disk Benchmark performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Because of the full sector-by-sector nature of linear testing, Benchmark Reviews endorses this method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article. However, Hard Disk Drive products suffer a lower average bandwidth as the capacity draws linear read/write speed down into the inner-portion of the disk platter. EVEREST Disk Benchmark does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting. The high-performance storage products tested with EVEREST Disk Benchmark are connected to the Intel ICH10 controller on the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 motherboard. Using the 1MB block size, read performance of the 500GB Seagate Momentus-XT Solid State Hybrid Drive measured an average 126 MBps with a similar maximum peak of 133 MBps. Linear write-to tests were next...
Linear disk benchmarks are superior tools in my opinion, because they scan from the first physical sector to the last. A side affect of many linear write-performance test tools is that the data is erased as it writes to every sector on the drive. Normally this isn't an issue, but it has been shown that partition table alignment will occasionally play a role in overall SSD performance (HDDs don't suffer this problem). The waveform chart below illustrates how the integrated buffer manages file transfers, and makes linear write performance appear even yet unsteady. The results seen here are still relatively consistent compared to most other SSD products we've tested in the past. The Seagate Momentus-XT Solid State Hybrid Drive recorded an average linear write-to speed of 124 MBps, with a maximum performance of 133 MBps. Based on these results, it appears that Seagate's Adaptive Memory Technology feature was working in the background because performance doesn't drop off until 405.3 GB into each test. Any other hard drive would decrease performance from beginning to end, as demonstrated in this Linear Bandwidth test.
The chart below shows the average linear read and write bandwidth speeds for a cross-section of SATA storage devices tested with EVEREST:
I personally consider linear tests to be the single most important comparison of storage drive products, although HDD products suffer performance degradation over the span of their storage capacity. Linear bandwidth certainly benefits the Solid State Drive, since there's very little fluctuation in transfer speed. This is because Hard Disk Drive products decline in performance as the spindle reaches the inner-most sectors on the magnetic platter, away from the fast outer edge. Adaptive Memory Technology NoticeThe Seagate Momentus-XT Solid State Hybrid Drive employs a proprietary Adaptive Memory technology that improves application performance matching the highest usage patterns. In most cases, benchmark performance tools do not activate the hybrid SSD features of this storage device. Drive Hardware
In the next section, the 500GB Seagate Momentus-XT Solid State Hybrid Drive is tested in real-world usage...
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Comments
However, I'll look to see a true 'desktop' release hybrid configuration to confirm or unseat my skepticism. 6Gb/s interface, 64MB cache, 10k speed, Nand that offers both read and write benefits and perhaps even dual porting -now that the 6Gb/s interface offers the signal strength to meet such a feature without too many issues.
Time will tell. Again great review.
1.) Can you defrag them? Do you need a special tool? Can you damage the SSD portion by defragmenting the drive?
2.) What about Raiding these drives? Is is possible and what should be concerned with? Can you defrag them Raided?
3.)Special drivers? Does the OS matter with regard to performance?
I wonder how these would perform in a server environment raided?
As for RAID, we only received the single unit. I don't wish to speculate on how the Momentus XT would perform in RAID without more experience witht he product.
I read a different review and RAID is definitely possible and brings the performance even closer to SSD levels. Because they are just normal Hard Drives to the operating system, you can do anything with them that you can with a ordinary Hard Drive.
Defragging won't damage the SSD portion, but in case something does damage the SSD portion seagate said your drive should still operate as an ordinary hard drive.
If 'learning' is so important for these drives, that fact must have a significant impact on dynamic, real-world performance.
Extrapolating from the article, and perhaps in error, it seems to me that a hybrid drive best might support a user who engages in repetitive work, and that someone with a more varied approach to his computer and work life would not see much benefit from a hybrid. Even having to consider factors like this when considering a storage device is NEW, and I feel deserves some discussion.
It's a souped-up HDD, but still ONLY a HDD!
Ever wonder why Seagate offers such long warranties (5 yrs on new drives) and still so cheap???
It's ALL marketing due to their LONG history of making CRAP. And then they went out and bought up other companies (like Maxtor) that actually had quality products and messed up their stuff.
Over the years (almost 20 now), I have had more Seagate failures than ALL OTHERS COMBINED (even the newer drives, that I couldn't talk people out of).
In short, I wouldn't buy (and recommend against) Seagate's REAL SSDs as they will LIKELY be the 1st SSDs to FAIL (IMHO)
If you plan to not use it as a primary HDD for any OS the SSD has tons of uses, mainly being a cheap expanded SD card for storage of your grandmas photos.
Nothing beats solid hilarity :)
I do not know too much about harddisks, but I seem to be coming up with better results than prof. tests show - all the time.
you can do a search, SSD can be as reliable as HDD