Seagate Momentus XT

Current - Late 2010 MBP 15" i7 8GB 500GB Hitachi 5400RPM

What a great discussion! Glad people have continued to post their experiences. I've just ordered the

Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid. From what I've read so far in this forum I'm going to love it or hate it.

FROM WHAT I'VE GATHERED, HERE'S MY GAME PLAN:

-Final TimeMachine backup with current system

-Install new XT750

-Update to latest firmware with ISO-burn method, if necessary

-Format and zero out the drive

-Install from scratch

-Use TimeMachine to restore everything else

I'll post my experiences!

Kind of off topic, but I've always loved Seagate vs. WD. Too many WD drives have crashed on me. Seagate had a 5-year warranty while others simply had 1 or 2-year coverage but lately it looks like they've changed their stance and gone with shorter warranties. That's a shame.

Finally, I find it hilarious when people in this forum were talking about moving their laptops around to make noises. If you move your system around (besides very smooth and slowly, say, from your laptop to a table) you're just asking for trouble. How does a record player behave if you move it around while playing? Oh wait... you whippersnappers haven't used record players. 🙂 A vinyl record playing is simliar to the platters in a hard drive. Be gentle!

WackMacHack wrote:

Current - Late 2010 MBP 15" i7 8GB 500GB Hitachi 5400RPM

What a great discussion! Glad people have continued to post their experiences. I've just ordered the

Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid. From what I've read so far in this forum I'm going to love it or hate it.

FROM WHAT I'VE GATHERED, HERE'S MY GAME PLAN:

-Final TimeMachine backup with current system

-Install new XT750

-Update to latest firmware with ISO-burn method, if necessary

-Format and zero out the drive

-Install from scratch

-Use TimeMachine to restore everything else

I'll post my experiences!

Kind of off topic, but I've always loved Seagate vs. WD. Too many WD drives have crashed on me. Seagate had a 5-year warranty while others simply had 1 or 2-year coverage but lately it looks like they've changed their stance and gone with shorter warranties. That's a shame.

Finally, I find it hilarious when people in this forum were talking about moving their laptops around to make noises. If you move your system around (besides very smooth and slowly, say, from your laptop to a table) you're just asking for trouble. How does a record player behave if you move it around while playing? Oh wait... you whippersnappers haven't used record players. 🙂 A vinyl record playing is simliar to the platters in a hard drive. Be gentle!

Try cloning rather than Time Machine:

Clone your internal drive to an external using Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner, when completed reboot your machine from the clone, to test the copy. Then swap drives, nothing else to do after that. I use the 750XT and that is the method I used to install it, took about 1 hour start to finish.

Date Code on mine is: 12183 not sure how to read it though.FYI: I installed RAM in my friends late 2011 13" MBP and it has a Seagate 5400 500GB drive mine was originally a Hitachi lots of folks were complaining about the noise from them so I assume perhaps this is why they went to Segate?
BTW my friends MBP takes 40-50 seconds to boot another feature that I like about this drive quicker boot!

I have the same exact issue, the Seagate XT drive makes the noise when the laptop is moved, it reminds me of a sound coming from a light-saber. It's really annoying. The sounds is espcially prevalant when the computer is moved horizontally. Is this an issue or simply part of the dyamics of the drive coupled with the late 2008 Macbook Pro unibody?

germanwarfare wrote:

I have the same exact issue, the Seagate XT drive makes the noise when the laptop is moved, it reminds me of a sound coming from a light-saber. It's really annoying. The sounds is espcially prevalant when the computer is moved horizontally. Is this an issue or simply part of the dyamics of the drive coupled with the late 2008 Macbook Pro unibody?

Stop moving it around, the noise is the SMS system parking the heads faster than you moving it around can cause damage!

Hey Guys, if you think that this noise is normal, why the original hard disk of my macbook pro doesn't do that noise?

I don't really care why 2 different drives are, ermm, different, OK.

Ya, I don't really gt the fascination with moving a running laptop around enough to get noise from an HDD. Strange!!

OK, I've been up & running a few days meow on my XT750. I took CSound1's advice and used Disk Utility to "Restore" my current HDD to the new Momentus, so simple. I used a little USB --> PATA/SATA adapter I carry and for some reason it said ~10 hours to copy the data, I don't actually think it took that long because I went to sleep and it had already changed to 9 hours after a short period, but who knows. I'm guessing that adapter isn't USB3 or even USB2... time for a new addapter. Anyway, the only hiccup I've had was a strange freeze when I renamed the new drive from "500GB" to "750GB" after first booting from the new drive. Complete lockup, had to hold the power button. Worried me for sure but hasn't blinked since and the name change did stick once I booted back in. Things are definitely snappier overall, the extra space is great. I do notice more sound, I won't call it noise. The drive just puts out more sound when running due to the jump in RPM. I can sense a bit of vibration on my desk at times, but nothing a little Pandora won't cover. The right side of the wrist-wrest gets a little warmer during intense operations, but that's to be expected. I didn't see dramatic boot time differences at first but then after a few I had some really quick startups, so that was nice. Sleeping and waking are improved. Time-to-sleep was driving me nuts before, not sure why Macbooks are so stupid compared to Windows with Sleep/Hibernate, I like being able to choose directly via either closing the lid or pressing the power button! Overall I'd pretty strongly recommend the drive if you're looking for added storage and speed. Pretty sure I've seen a drop in battery life but it wasn't that awesome to begin with - guess I'll just have to get that Macbook eventually. 🙂 Rawk on peeps. Hope this helps someone with their decision.

Final note - your laptop is not a lightsaber! Stop swingin' 'em around to hear funny sounds dummies! Cracks me up!

Hey, you really don't get it, right?! I was not moving my laptop because I wanted to ear a noise, the fact is that I'd noticed that strange noise every time I closed the laptop and move it to put it on the bag. So it was strange because the original HD never did a noise like that. That's it.

Mr.Nobody wrote:

Hey, you really don't get it, right?! I was not moving my laptop because I wanted to ear a noise, the fact is that I'd noticed that strange noise every time I closed the laptop and move it to put it on the bag. So it was strange because the original HD never did a noise like that. That's it.

The original drive is a different drive, it may spin down faster than the replacement, and if you are hearing the noise (regardless of why) you are moving the machine before the drive has stopped.

I have using this app with sucesss on the last 2 months:

http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/

This make kick out the "click noise" problem.

MY drive as I have stated in previous posts continues to be extremely quiet compared to the Hiticahi it replaced. In all honesty I can't hear any audible noise at all unless I put my ear to the palm rest. The CPU fan noise is louder.

I installed a Seagate Momentus XT 500 in a 2010 MacBook Pro in December 2011. I noticed a speed difference right away and was quite happy with the drive.....that is until I started getting random system crashes, brought the whole OS down. I can recreate that problem everytime I do a large file copy, or export a slideshow from iPhoto. For instance today I was copying my iPhoto library (18GB) to an external drive. Not once, but 3 times the machine locked up during the file copy. I was not able to complete it. During another instance I attempted to export a 500mb slideshow from iPhoto twice and got the system freeze. I am currently running firmware revisionn SD28. I think I'm going to have to give up on the drive as much as I hate to lose the otherwise snappy performance.

Mine so far has been fine in MBP 13" early 2011. Since yours is an older model MBP that could be the issue or you may just have a bad drive. Try using it in an external enclosure running your "Cloned" back up and see if the same crashes occur.