When I first heard about the Momentus XT I was thrilled and after doing a bit more research (and because I could afford it) I decided to get me one of those.
Of course it wasn’t available in Australia so I had to ask a favour from a friend in the US. I bought it, he shipped it, I got it, done.
After installing Windows 7 on my machine it had been running a hell lot faster already than when it had Vista on it, but I was still eager to see how this hdd will improve it.
So what makes the Momentus XT special?
It is part old fashioned hard rive with spinning platters (fast spinning ones at 7200 rpm) and part SSD (superfast, no moving parts)
So the way this hard drive works is to monitor which files and programs you are using the most and once it established that it puts those on the 4GB of SSD it has available for faster access.
My Laptop is nothing special and already over 3 years old (Core2Duo 1.83Ghz, 2GB RAM), but the speed increase I got through this new hdd is simple awesome.
so here are some numbers:
| Task | old hdd | 1st time | 2nd time | 3rd time | 4th time |
| startup * | 2min | 1min 32sec | 59sec | 37sec | 37sec |
| hybernate | 1min 50sec | 23sec | 22sec | 22sec | 22sec |
| resume * | 1min 55sec | 27sec | 27sec | 28sec | 27sec |
| Photoshop | 45sec | 19sec | 6.6sec | 4.2sec | 4.3sec |
| Powerpoint | 20sec | 6sec | 4sec | 2sec | 2sec |
* this includes startup, login and opening an explorer window
As you can see especially on the software tests, the times improved the more I used the program and then went static after the 4th time and stayed fast.
I am not a professional lab that does these tests all day long, I just had my Android phone stop watch, so you will have to take these results with a grain of salt.
In Australia you can get them from about $160 – check here
My overall experience with this hard drive was very positive and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a speed improvement on their machine.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I just replaced the 500gb maxtor in my netbook with this 500gb xt…. and its actually very noticeably quicker
what I noticed as well when the drive is doing its thinking, is that you can hear it think but the hard drive LED doesn’t flash.. it only flashes when its doing any active reading or writing..
overall i give it 9/10 because its the best bang for buck you’re gonna get in a 500gb 2.5″ drive