SSHD: Seagate Momentus XT Review | StorageReview.com

The Seagate Momentus XT is an excellent notebook hard drive and under the
right circumstances surpasses drives well out of its class. The 4GB of cache
helps to significantly improve the access of common read/write patterns that a
user might see in their daily routine. At its worst it still offers a
significant boost in performance over its older 7200.4 brother, but at its best
it outperforms even the 10,000RPM Western Digital Velociraptor desktop hard
drive.

 

For the user who might load the same programs multiple times a day this
drive might be a better choice than a low-capacity SSD. At $155 for a 500GB
Momentus XT it is priced under even the 80GB Intel X25-M SSD which currently
sells for about $200. Power users might still want to consider other options in
their workhorse machines however, if speed is worthwhile at all costs and
capacity is less of a concern.

 

Overall the Seagate Momentus XT makes the most sense for a anyone who just
wants a noticeable increase in notebook performance, while still getting
capacity without a huge jump in price. For its intended market this drive is
very hard to pass up, especially considering the highest capacity model only
costs $155 retail.

The SSHD (solid state hybrid drive) is a very interesting concept, fusing a classic hard drive with solid state memory, letting the disk’s controller decide which files (the ones most accessed) to move to the fast solid state memory.