Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 24, 2010 9:31 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Seagate
- Momentus XT
- Hybrid Drive
- SSHDs
Sequential Read/Write Speed
Using the 6-22-2008 build of Iometer I ran a 3 minute long 2MB sequential test over the entire span of the drive. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length:
Both sequential read and write speed are improved over the 5400.6 but we're still not in VelociRaptor territory. The X25-V is cripped in its write performance by comparison but most other SSDs do very well.
Random Read/Write Speed
This test reads/writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time.
Random read/write performance is abysmal. You can't really make out the numbers here but that's 0.7MB/s for reads and 0.3MB/s for writes compared to 40MB/s+ for the SSDs. It's the poor random access performance that ultimately prevents the Momentus XT from feeling like an SSD most of the time.
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numberoneoppa - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
As much as I miss my girlfriend who's been on the other side of the world for two weeks... I've missed you more, Anand.Welcome back.
SandmanWN - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
That's just weird...Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
HAHA that's awesome. well, not for your girlfriend.Take care,
Anand
weakerthans4 - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
There are some itches a girlfriend just can't scratch... Welcome back Anand!!!!quiksilvr - Wednesday, May 26, 2010 - link
Please stop saying things.falc0ne - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link
aaa..lol? :))DoktorSleepless - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
Why wasn't a regular 7200 rpm drive used as another reference point? That would have been nice to have as well.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
I mentioned this on the test page, I simply didn't have a modern 7200RPM 2.5" drive on hand (only older 7200RPM 2.5" drives which were slower than the 5400.6) while I was conducting these tests. As I put together the data for our HDD bench I will add them in though :)Between the 5400.6 and the WDVR you should be able to get a good idea of where this thing falls though.
Take care,
Anand
LoneWolf15 - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
Yeah, the one thing though is that having, say, a normal Momentus 7200 would allow us to tell if the NAND is really offering us a benefit over a drive without it, and if so, what percentage performance increase can be attributed to it.I understand you didn't have the drive at this time, but if you could update this article in the future, it would be much appreciated.
pcfxer - Tuesday, May 25, 2010 - link
The issue with that line of thinking is that this drive is not just HDD+SSD, the algorithms that the drive uses to read and write data is on a vastly different ball field. This drive is an HDD with SSD capabilities and sometimes benefits.Until everyone understands that, they (consumers) will expect SSD performance at least some of the time, which is a result of poor understanding. Of course, after all the technical articles on SSDs and as a result HDDs, I'm amazed that people would ever expect any SSD performance from a HDD with flash. The flash is just like nitrous in a car; a 100 shot doesn't offer 100hp, but maybe 60hp instead. A good poke, but not the real thing.