Seagate Momentus XT

Like with every hard drive manufacturer some drive models may be noisier than others. Look to benchmarking sites such as Storage Review or Tom's Hardware Review for information on new drives or do a Google search.

Faster drives will consume a little more power than slower drives, but the differences aren't much. You can visit any drive manufacturer's web site and find spec sheets on all their models where you will find power consumption information.

I've used 7200 RPM Seagates in several MBPs over the years and did not consider them very noisy in my machines.

I've been hearing about vibration issues. No first hand experience though. Other than that I hear performance is great. I'm waiting for more reports before deciding on purchasing. in particular I want to know if Seagate has solved the click-beep problem some of their drives had with more recent MBPs.

Boot from the Snow Leopard DVD. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. After the menubar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select the desired target drive from DU's left side list, click on the Erase tab in DU's main window. Set the Format drop down menu to Mac OS extended, Journaled then click on the Erase button. Wait for the process to be completed - takes several seconds. Once formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Complete the installation.

Yes, you must partition before formatting. See the following:

Extended Hard Drive Preparation

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard.)

2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.

6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

I just installed the XT 500 in my 17" mid-2009 MBP. I prepped the drive as follows:


Extended Hard Drive Preparation

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard.)

2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.

6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

This took around 3 hours, I think, but I didn't keep that close tabs on the exact time. Since these drives do not come with a recognizable format you should go through the extended preparation and zero the drive as outlined above.

I cloned my old drive to the new one using the Restore option of Disk Utility. I recommend you do the same if you are going to clone your old drive. DU is the best way to clone in my opinion even if it is slower than using CCC or SuperDuper.

Quick tests indicate that for typical operations the drive is around 20-30 percent faster than the Seagate 7200 RPM 500 GB drive it replaced. Sequential r/w neared 100 MB/sec on average compared with around 80 MB/sec for the replaced drive. By adjusting the r/w delays and allowing the cache I was able to see sequential reads of 200 MB/sec which I believe is the limit of the internal SATA bus in this machine.

Are you planning to simply install OS X from scratch or do you plan to clone your old drive? In the case of the former: Yes, you can download a combo updater for any of the Snow Leopard updates or you can use Software Update to do all the updating for you. Updates can be downloaded manually at support.apple.com/downloads/.

It actually looks like this drive uses somewhat more power than a typical hard drive (perhaps because of the added control/management of the flash portion). Tom's Hardware has a breakdown on the power. You can pretty much ignore the rest to their review as they really didn't test the drives performance properly failing to take into consideration the adaptive technology that Seagate is using (which every other review indicates works very well).... but for the power usage, their data looks pretty reliable:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seagate-momentus-xt-hybrid-hard-drive-ssd,26 38.html

I have to say, I installed this drive last night and it is amazing.

Before install, I had maybe 1h45min of battery time. After, 3h30min. I think this is because it is not frequently reading/writing a lot of the tiny files that are frequently updated in the OS and in applications.

There may be other reasons I'm seeing this, too. My old HD was using 220GB out of the 250GB (probably a lot of swapping going on), now I'm at 220 out of 500. Also, Snow Leopard was installed as an upgrade to Leopard, this time I installed Snow Leopard and restored from Time Capsule/Time Machine.

In any case the fact that I'm now typing this outside on my back deck after an hour of usage, and still see more battery time left than I had in total before tells me that an upgrade to a Momentus XT is worth every dime.

With all that said -- be very careful with the removal of the HD! The whole one screw I had to remove, stripped. I literally had to pry and break part of the HD brace that's inside my Macbook Pro :/ I've found in general the screws inside Macbooks to be very prone to stripping.

I installed that drive yesterday too ... but I have mixed feelings:

+ It's fast! Not only did my boot time (power on to login screen) go down from 1:35min to 35s, but also application starting/swapping feels a lot snappier.
+ It's quiet! I can't hear it basically ...
- It's vibrating! Unfortunately if you put it on certain surfaces like my cheap wooden table, the quickly spinning drive seems to make my MacbookPro (i5) and the table swing. That produces a humming noise, which is quite annoying. If I lift it up, it's quiet though and i just feel the vibrations. Maybe I have to experiment with a shock absorbing layer ...
- It's draining power. Well, that's so far just according to the battery status, since i just got it yesterday and couldn't test it yet. But all the reviews showed similar power requirements

One more thing, I swapped my drive quite a few times already but my screws are still in perfect shape. Did you use the wrong screw driver maybe?

I have just put a Momentus XT into my Mac Mini. No noise or vibration, but then it is a lot more hidden in a Mac Mini than in a laptop.

It is very fast. At first I put the Momentus XT in an external USB 2 case just so that I could clone my system. Then I booted of the XT still in the USB 2 case and it booted just a bit slower than the internal drive. Then I rebooted from the XT again in the external drive and it booted twice as fast as the internal!!! Once put inside the Mac Mini it booted faster again.

Feels like an SSD most of the time, especially booting and launching applications.

I used this drive for 4 hours now and replaced it back to the old drive again. The APM/Spin down option creates beachballs 😟

After a couple of minutes the disk goes in some sleep mode and when you try to start a application or browse a page etc etc you have to wait first till the drive spins up again and a beachball appears!

You cant turn off the APM option...

Check the Seagate web site for a firmware update that may solve your APM problem.