Seagate has introduced two generations of their Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive (SSHD) which combined the larger storage capacity of a traditional hard drive with the faster transfer rates of a solid state drive. This fusion of technology offered an improvement over standard drives and moved performance closer to a SSD. The third generation is available now, and Seagate is calling this generation the Laptop SSHD or Laptop Thin SSHD, depending on the thickness of the unit.
A few physical changes to the drive were made with this new generation. For starters, the thickness has gone from 9.7mm down to either 9.5mm or 7.0mm. In addition, they increased the cache size from 32MB to 64MB, while they have kept the NAND flash size at 8GB. One other change is that they slowed the drive down from 7200RPM to 5400RPM. On the surface, this change raises some concerns as to the speed of this drive. The benchmarks included in this review will show the facts.
Before we take a look at what the Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD 500GB hybrid drive offers, let's take a look at what Seagate tells us on the
official product page:
Features:
Seagate Laptop and Laptop Thin SSHDs fuse the blazing speed of SSD with the high capacity of a hard drive. With Seagate Adaptive Memory technology, SSHD dramatically improves boot times and application speeds, unleashing your system’s performance.
» 500GB, 7mm design for the latest thinnest laptops
1TB, 9.5mm design for maximum capacity laptops
» Boots and performs like an SSD
» Up to 5× faster than a traditional 5400-RPM HDD
» Easy laptop upgrade to boost performance and capacity.
Perfect when you need to:
» Build a high-performance gaming laptop
» Outfit a high-end workstation
» Optimize fast external enclosures: USB 3.0, eSATA
» Equip a small form factor PC
» Upgrade a laptop to boost performance and capacity
Specifications:
» Specifications: 500GB
» Model Number: ST500LM000
» Model Name: Laptop Thin SSHD
» Interface: SATA 6Gb/s NCQ
» Performance NAND Type/Size: MLC/8GB
» DRAM Cache (MB): 64
» SATA Transfer Rates Supported (Gb/s): 6.0/3.0/1.5
» Average Data Throughput (MB/s): 100
» PC Mark Vantage Average HDD Score: 19,838
» Average Windows 8 Boot Time (sec): <10
» Seek Average, Read (ms): <12.0
» Seek Average, Write (ms): <14
» Configuration/Organization Heads/Disks: 2/1
» Bytes per Sector: 4096
» Power Management Power (W)
Seek, Typical: 2.5
Idle, Typical: 0.9
» Environmental Tempurature (°C)
Operating: 0 to 60
Nonoperating: −40 to 70
» Shock (Gs)
Operating 2ms: 350
Nonoperating: 1000
» Acoustics (belsâ€"sound power)
Idle, Typical: 2.0
Seek, Typical: 2.2
» Physical
Height (in/mm): 0.276/7.0
Width (in/mm): 2.76/70.1
Depth (in/mm): 3.95/100.35
Weight (lb/g): 0.209/95.0
While we are taking a look at the 500GB Laptop Thin model, if you have room in your system for 2.5mm more drive height you can choose from 500GB, 750GB, or 1TB capacities.
