Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB vs. Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD?

[valis]

Having used up almost 300GB obviously the 256GB SSD will only work I'd you're going to do a drive caddy in the optical bat from OWC for the old drive too. As for the Seagate, while casual computing users will notice a dramatic speed up from the items that are used a lot staying in-cache, I would probably opt for a mire traditional 7200rpm Hitachi model from OWC. In fact I have one in my MBP and it works great.

[rids]

If you click on the customer reviews tab on the Crucial drive I linked to, you'll see some musicians mention much faster speeds. But yeah, the 256 SSD would only be used in an external case. Though I haven't looked at the prices on those yet. I was thinking I would move some of my big sample libraries from my internal to an external in that case.

[stevelindsay]

I bought the Seagate 750g 7200rpm 2.5" sata drive through OWC. I considered the hybrid SSD drive but was put off by reports of it actually slowing things down due to cache issues, so went with the traditional drive to replace my 160gb hitachi drive in a mid-2009 macbook pro.

OWC sells a package with the drive and enclosure kit/toolset - just hook the new drive in the enclosure kit up to your laptop via usb, format the new disk, install osx and use migration assistant to copy your old drive contents across. Then just swap hard drives between the enclosure kit and your laptop, and you have your old drive available for portable storage. Too easy - and great value!

[valis]

I'm not sure if the Seagate hurts audio performance but it's certainly not targeting audio/video users with the firmware from the reviews I've read. I just don't think it's worth the extra cost over a 64MB cache 7200rpm drive for recording & sample lib storage etc as none of that would ever stay in the SSD portion of the drive (the cache).

The SSD isn't a bad option per se, but ratehr than using it in an external drive you should consider the optical bay swap imo. Make the SSD the primary drive + sample libraries and then put a 500-750GB drive in the optical bay. Partition that into 2 partitions and use the second partition for longterm/large file/not often accessed storage. The first partition would obviously be for projects/recording.

This is my approach on the desktop at least, and it's what I considered for my 17" Macbook Pro 4,1 from 1 year before the yours (rids). My machine has already had a 750GB 7200rpm drive added along with my ram upgrade a few years ago, so swapping it over to the optical bad & adding an SSD would be easy for me to achieve. However I have more need for processing power than HD performance so maybe just a 750GB drive upgrade is sufficient for your needs? I can't say as I don't know your workload, but I'll conclude by saying I don't use high rompler/kontakt voicecounts (rather I tend to use tools for sound design and commit to audio or freeze).

[rids]

Originally Posted by valis

I'm not sure if the Seagate hurts audio performance but it's certainly not targeting audio/video users with the firmware from the reviews I've read. I just don't think it's worth the extra cost over a 64MB cache 7200rpm drive for recording & sample lib storage etc as none of that would ever stay in the SSD portion of the drive (the cache).

The SSD isn't a bad option per se, but ratehr than using it in an external drive you should consider the optical bay swap imo.

However I have more need for processing power than HD performance so maybe just a 750GB drive upgrade is sufficient for your needs? I can't say as I don't know your workload, but I'll conclude by saying I don't use high rompler/kontakt voicecounts (rather I tend to use tools for sound design and commit to audio or freeze).

You think have a regular HD with more cache (64MB) will be better than this hybrid SSD drive with 32MB cache? Maybe I need to check some comparisons/tests.

I would like to keep my optical in tact. Not sure how much extra performance I'm going to get by swapping it out for another hd.

I use a lot of sample libraries, so I don't more processing power will benefit me in this sense. Though with all the plugins and programs I have, it could help there.

I was also wondering about 10000RPM drives. I haven't heard much about those killing 7200RPM drives, but maybe I just haven't looked into it much.

What's the most important thing in choosing a hard drive? RPM, cache, a combo...?

[valis]

I wouldn't consider a 10000rpm drive in a laptop, obviously an SSD will outperform this anyway so those are a moot point. The primary audio related reason I can think of for sacrificing capacity for performance is if you do a lot of sample library / rompler based work. The ssd's performance is benefit in that case, but again you're over 300GB and considering using a 256GB SSD... So where to put that other data?

I can't see your workloads so hard to say which makes more $/performance sense without more info, but I personally work on a desktop & laptop and the laptop is sans most of the Live Suite/Logic libraries and most of my Komplete related content even with the larger HD (I do keep core content specific to my interests/tastes and a bunch of 3rd party content). I have my drive partitioned so that the first 60% is used for OS/Apps/projects and the last 40% is storage. I also try to keep drive usage below 60% as a general practice, but my primary partition on my laptop is really only using about 90-100GB for all my 'OSX' related data and it averages about 180GB total with my audio content in place (so no concerns about 60% here). I also frequently work off of FW800 drives...

In any case I would suggest looking into EITHER the OWC kit to swap your current drive into the optical bay and add the SSD for OSX, apps and sample library content OR getting a 1TB /64MB cache drive. Unless there's a good amount of data you can live without?

[rids]

Maybe I could just restructure and get an SSD for my OS, apps/plugins and only important sample libraries. Then move everything else to an external and just stream. But then again if say 40% of the drive is needed to be free to perform well, then that may be a tough task.

I have yet to understand the differences between the regular hds and SSDs. Not sure what makes which type more efficient and quicker, which was why I brought up the 10000rpm.

[pellefri]

Hi!

i have just bought a "data doubler" optical drive caddy from OWC in Netherlands. Replacing a WD scorpio Blue 1 TB in my MBP 13" 2011.

Have been happy with the WG 1TB but it seems it had gotten corrupt or something has happened after pretty heavy use.

Ordered Samsung 256GB SSD to be placed in the normal HD slot (the bus in that one is faster than the optical). Unfortunately there are only room for 9mm drives in the optical drive caddy, so my 12mm 1 TB need to be replaced, so far with a seagate 500GB. I might consider a Samsung 1 TB 9mm disk or a 750GB.

So far the machine seems much snappier, but I have not transferred the whole system and apps yet. My old systemdrive was 350 GB and is in the progress of deleting unnecessary things.
I was considering a Momentus hybrid disk, but it only have 8GB SSD (i recall?) Using 2 disks seems like a optimal way, separating the system and big sample libraries and giving more SSD space for the system.

Best,

Pelle

[rids]

Valis, so you think something like this drive might be the best option? :

Amazon.com: Seagate Constellation.2 1 TB 7200RPM 6Gb/s SAS 64MB Cache 2.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST91000640SS: Computers & Accessories

Not sure if it will fit in my Macbook, but the specs look good. I'm not completely familiar with what makes an SSD so fast compared to a normal disk drive. I never looked into this, so I'm wondering if the SATA 6gbps + 64MB cache would be anywhere near comparable to an SSD.

Originally Posted by stevelindsay

I bought the Seagate 750g 7200rpm 2.5" sata drive through OWC. I considered the hybrid SSD drive but was put off by reports of it actually slowing things down due to cache issues, so went with the traditional drive to replace my 160gb hitachi drive in a mid-2009 macbook pro.

So you are saying that the 32MB cache it has is not that great? Or is the issue being some hangup with the SATA bus speed and cache processing?

[halfguard]

I'm in the exact same situation. I just got my Mbp yesterday. I was all set on one of the owc laptop drive kits, but they all have only 16mb cache. I'm really confused now.

[rids]

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised that they don't offer 64MB cache drives yet. I did further research and I've come up empty with finding a faster disk drive than the Seagate Momentus XT, which is only 32MB cache and SATA 6gbps. SSD are faster but much more money. But I can't find a drive that measures between 9.5-12.5" to fit my Macbook Pro (with 64MB cache and SATA 6gbps speed). Looks like that is the best disk drive technology on the market right now, but not for the Macbook.

[rids]

Originally Posted by valis

As for the Seagate, while casual computing users will notice a dramatic speed up from the items that are used a lot staying in-cache, I would probably opt for a mire traditional 7200rpm Hitachi model from OWC. In fact I have one in my MBP and it works great.

Do you say the Seagate won't improve performance much because the SSD memory part is small (not sure how many GB on this) and not used by music apps? Meaning the music apps (softsynths, sample libraries, saved Logic projects) aren't going to be the stuff that is 'staying in-cache'?

[valis]

Originally Posted by rids

Do you say the Seagate won't improve performance much because the SSD memory part is small (not sure how many GB on this) and not used by music apps? Meaning the music apps (softsynths, sample libraries, saved Logic projects) aren't going to be the stuff that is 'staying in-cache'?

Correct, though it's possible some of the actualy binary code stays 'in cache' since it'll be accessed by the running processes enough. However once an app is loaded it stays in RAM anyway, so all you're doing is speeding up app launch & possibly boot times with a 'hybrid' drive. Basically OSX & Windows both have mechanisms to 'identify' files that are important to the booting process, and 'pages' of data (at the low level the OS doesn't deal with 'files' in the sense that you think of them) that may or may not relate to apps that you care about (and again those binary bits stay *in ram* once loaded anyway!).

Under Windows this is called prefetching & readyboost etc (marketing terms mostly) and if you read some of the hybrid HD/SSD reports you'll see this is a good deal of the data that winds up 'staying in' the SSD portion of the Momentus. But under OSX I'm not 100% sure what to refer you to as I haven't seen very many reputable OSX reports on the same drive. OSX certainly builds quite a few caches, as is evidenced by the various 'cache cleaners' out there, the kext caches, the boot caches and so on, so one might assume that the tuning of the firmware will pick up on these caches if the data they represent is accessed frequently and/or during important moments (like booting). It's really up to the Seagate firmware though what gets cached...

So in short the drive is tuned for an 'average computer user' and not a DAW user, and the speed gains that can be had for sample playback etc will not show up with the momentus.

[valis]

Originally Posted by rids

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised that they don't offer 64MB cache drives yet. I did further research and I've come up empty with finding a faster disk drive than the Seagate Momentus XT, which is only 32MB cache and SATA 6gbps. SSD are faster but much more money. But I can't find a drive that measures between 9.5-12.5" to fit my Macbook Pro (with 64MB cache and SATA 6gbps speed). Looks like that is the best disk drive technology on the market right now, but not for the Macbook.

One of the things that OWC *does* insure is that any drives they sell as a portable drive do not have an active motion sensor inside. This is something you're going to have to dig into as well for any other vendor offering laptop drives. Macbook Pros have their own motion sensor, and having the native (MBP) one *and* one in the drive itself both active can cause serious conflicts. There are 'solutions' that allow you to disable the MBP's motion sensor, but I think you're best served by using a drive without this mechanism and leaving the MBP stock (and then dealing with the motion sensor on a case by case basis if you find vibrations during recording are causing problems--but don't worry about this parenthetical statement while shopping it's for later reference).

Also the Hitachi (HGST) drives on OWC have 32MB cache models avail, the difference in performance between these and 64MB models will be based more on higher aereal density with newer platters than the cache itself. I think even the 16MB cache 1TB WD Black drives listed on OWC's site would be fine personally.

Again though you should cost compare this against swapping your *current* 5200rpm drive into the drive bay + SSD, certainly if you keep samples on the SSD and only use the 5200 rpm drive for projects (with a secondary partition for longterm storage of files that aren't not accessed during recording/playback of your DAW) I think you'd be fine as well. It's having to seek around the drive to deal with samples, loops, project files, recorded audio and etc that kills HD performance. Separating everything *but* the recording and longterm storage (which has filled your current drive right? And won't fit onto an SSD?) should give you adequate performance and spread out the data that's currently choking your drive.

Just imo...

[rids]

Originally Posted by valis

Also the Hitachi (HGST) drives on OWC have 32MB cache models avail, the difference in performance between these and 64MB models will be based more on higher aereal density with newer platters than the cache itself. I think even the 16MB cache 1TB WD Black drives listed on OWC's site would be fine personally.

Well I am considering the SSD + HDD option taking out the optical.

But I am wondering about your comment on the higher aereal density on newer platters being more important. This is something I haven't seen talked about much and actually don't know what this aspect of the hard drive is. The hard drives listed on these sites doesn't mention anything about aereal density (from what I can tell). But that's confusing to me since it seems like you are saying that can trump the cache, rpm or SATA speed. The

This drive seems like the best they have HGST 0J26005 500GB 2.5" Travelstar Z7K500 7200RPM... in stock at OWC but maybe I'm not seeing something. They have this drive here HGST 0S03339 750GB 2.5" Travelstar 7K750 7200RPM... in stock at OWC and while it only has 250GB extra, but less cache and SATA speed, it costs much more. Do you know why this is? Is it what you were talking about with the aereal density? Because it's a newer platter? I'm not sure how one can tell what's better being that they don't mention one drive is newer than the other.

[valis]

OWC can always answer questions, but I'm not really trying to divert you to them just suggesting they have knowledgeable employees who have been able to answer questions I've put to them (for example "do any of your drives feature a motion sensor").

As for SATA 3.0Gb/s vs SATA 6m.0Gb/s, you're not going to see peak SATA 3.0Gb/s performance with even a newer drive anyway so I would consider that less of a concern. The cache also makes some difference but in this case I wouldn't suggest the 750GB necessarily performs better due to higher areal density, just that it's another factor. While you can use all of these metrics to some degree to gauge the generation of a drive, drives are marketed on capacity first and performance second (outside of 10k/7200/5200 rpm divisions of course. So the larger drive costs more simply because it has larger capacity I would think.

[valis]

In any case, back up a bit and make sure you know this first: what's your bottleneck? The HD itself or the fact that you're now full? And how much cash are you willing to leverage to fix it? Certainly no holds barred option of a 512GB>1TB SSD solves any issue, but it's so costly still I've yet to personally buy anything that size on my desktops let alone laptop. So you know your options

- just get a 1TB drive & use only it
- just get an SSD and 'make do' with less space
- option 3 of the optical bay swap with a nice balance of performance
- maybe even just do optical bay swap with dual 'regular' drives, not an SSD (new & old)

Anyway I reiterate this mostly because I still have the 160GB 7200rpm drive my 17" Macbook Pro originally shipped with, and I have the new drive. I could easily have already just purchased an optical bay caddy but I'm personally not hitting HD bottlenecks often or that I can't resolve some way. Having an SSD is an obvious benefit for other reasons though and I don't mind the idea, but as I mentioned I hit cpu bottlenecks easily on my laptop so I think it's more sensible to focus forward on that.

Still the dual HD option has been around for much longer than the SSD+HD option as far as macbook pros are concerned, and it's something to think about. If you're on a budget you might even think of some way to use that to leverage your way into better singular parts. Ie, get a nice large 7200rpm drive now to solve space/performance issues and stick that in the optical bay. Move stuff off your current boot drive that you can archive on a 2nd partition on the 'new' drive (the longterm storage area that you can set aside without affecting the 'performance' area of the disk). Then you'll have room on the 'new' drive to 'get by' until you can afford the SSD you'd prefer over having to budget on a lesser one. Just a thought and maybe you have budget for both anyway, but if not...

[dr_Jezz]

I've got the XT in my MBP and sometimes I run the OS, recording and samples all from the one drive for mobility and this drive certainly doesn't slow anything down as suggested above - it juggles everything flawlessly. It's a revelation from my previous drive and works great for logic. 100% worth the minimal extra cost. OK, Logic and all your plugs isn't going to pop up like an SSD, but other stuff like word processors or internet is extremely rapid.

[halfguard]

So valis, which one of the owc 7200 do it yourself kits would you recomend .

[rids]

Well, I've had some softsynth issues also; been thinking about upgrading my computer and decided to get a quad core macbook with a 750GB drive in it. But I've decided that I will at some point either get a 256GB SSD and with the 750 in the optical or get a 512GB SSD if the prices in the near future drop. Can only afford one upgrade at a time and this should take me into next year. SSD does seem like the way to go though.

Thanks to Valis for explaining the specs of HDD along with the SSD + HHD option! The only thing I'm unsure about is my bottleneck and whether it's the HD performance or that I'm hitting a capacity threshold. Using about 60%, so maybe I am. But not sure how to tell the culprit. I've had even my word processing slow and just typing messages on gearslutz takes a while, like a 0.5 -1 second lag for the letters to show up.