[barefeats.com]

Are there any other benchmarks around that show they're much faster? Looks like very little improvement over a good traditional HD.

I don't understand why Apple even ships MBP's with such slow HDs. I did something earlier and the most I could get out of it was 45MB/s. Pathetic considering my 2yr old Hitachi 7k500 easily does over 100MB/s. And it was only $60 at the time.

Quad core i7, and a slow HD make no sense. I can't even begin to stress this CPU because the HD is so slow.

Guess I'm also spoiled by having had a SSD for 2yrs+. Photoshop usually launches in one bounce of the dock icon... on this brand new MBP it takes over 30 seconds (though I am comparing CS4 to CS6.)

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2012 02:28PM by M A V I C.

By the subject line I thought you were talking about a Prius or some other kind of hybrid car?

the only thing i can say for sure is boot time is faster.
i have the newer momentus xt 750gb.

ive found iphoto slower at times, not sure if it is because my library is so big that it tries to cache part of it at times.. i get the beachball at startup of that app from time to time.

else everything else is teh snappy but
it is way better than the 5400RPM stock drive that came with the MBP.

either way im happy with my purchase.

if its not up to snuff for you based on capacity, RPM speed and barefeats, then its not for you..

Compared to what? For the capacity you're looking at I don't think there's anything faster that doesn't have a stratospheric price.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2012 03:17PM by davester.

Quote
davester
Compared to what? For the capacity you're looking at I don't think there's anything faster that doesn't have a stratospheric price.

Compared to a traditional drive. The benchmarks show it's pretty much only a tiny bit faster for most things.

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I'm looking at those same graphs and they tell ME that the 750GB XT whips the hell out of the standard 750gb 7200rpm drive. The "Gen1" XT was the 500GB drive and the HDD part was greatly improved in the Gen2 version.

The numbers:

26 vs 18

39 vs 17

111 vs 97

158 vs 126

110 vs 96

109 vs 105

84 vs 79

Most of the first number (Gen2) is WAY bigger than the second number (hitachi 750GB 7200RPM)

but yes, the current SSD whips 'em all

In practice, the hybrid is faster is key areas like:

app launch faster

machine boots faster

Files you update frequently load faster

The machine feels peppier in daily use.

Not as nice a pure SSD or a dual SSD boot / hard drive arrangement, but still better than a HD.

I find it difficult to use a standard HD machine after regularly using an SSD.

I bought a hybrid drive when they first came out; now a couple of years ago. I benchmarked it then and it was measurably much faster in most things. Eventually and fairly quickly though I got used to that speed. I do wonder if I sometimes have errors or problems as a result of that drive, but I don't know how to pin that down.

That drive is almost full though, so I need to come up with a new plan, which probably should mean cracking the mini again and sticking in a real SSD, and moving all the files to some huge external drive.

I meant to include agreement that the 5400RPM drives that ship in the macbook pros is like installing a bottleneck on purpose. The pro line should NOT ship with a 5400RPM drive - PERIOD.

FWIW, the 750GB 5400rpm stock drive is peppier than the stock 500GB at the same rpm.
Still no hybrid or SSD...


///

I was thinking of my experience with the early 2011 model and it's 500GB drive...

The stock 5400rpm 750GB is pretty close to the 7200rpm 500GB for most stuff as a comparison, so it probably won't get confused w/a hybrid, or even a SATA II SSD...

///

Quote
hal
I'm looking at those same graphs and they tell ME that the 750GB XT whips the hell out of the standard 750gb 7200rpm drive.

I guess I don't consider "109 vs 105 & 84 vs 79" a "whipping the hell out of." That's only 4-5%. Especially when compared to a SSD - 109 vs 105 vs 1230. 1230 is "whipping the hell out of".

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Quote
M A V I C

Quote
hal
I'm looking at those same graphs and they tell ME that the 750GB XT whips the hell out of the standard 750gb 7200rpm drive.

I guess I don't consider "109 vs 105 & 84 vs 79" a "whipping the hell out of." That's only 4-5%. Especially when compared to a SSD - 109 vs 105 vs 1230. 1230 is "whipping the hell out of".

CHEATER!!!

Sure... cherry pick the most modest results...

how about:

26 vs 18 - more than 40%

39 vs 17 - more than 125%

and all of the OTHER ones are what I consider a significant difference

Those ones are for "the average of 5 cycles of random transfers ranging in size from 4K to 1024K" - which I do very little of. Right now I'm duplicating VHDs... later I'll be launching, reading and saving VMs. I do deal with small files, but only a few at at a time and the regular cache on a traditional drive will work just fine.

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Quote
M>B>
By the subject line I thought you were talking about a Prius or some other kind of hybrid car?

Quote
M A V I C
Those ones are for "the average of 5 cycles of random transfers ranging in size from 4K to 1024K" - which I do very little of. Right now I'm duplicating VHDs... later I'll be launching, reading and saving VMs. I do deal with small files, but only a few at at a time and the regular cache on a traditional drive will work just fine.

Not true. The OS uses a lot of small files, all the time.

You would not regret this upgrade.

Quote
sekker

Quote
M A V I C
Those ones are for "the average of 5 cycles of random transfers ranging in size from 4K to 1024K" - which I do very little of. Right now I'm duplicating VHDs... later I'll be launching, reading and saving VMs. I do deal with small files, but only a few at at a time and the regular cache on a traditional drive will work just fine.

Not true. The OS uses a lot of small files, all the time.

You would not regret this upgrade.

Not if you have enough RAM. I can watch my disk access and see it sit at 0 for both R & W for periods of time.



That graph is over about 30-40 seconds.

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Interesting.

How much RAM do you have?

the XT Momentus brought new life to my aging MBP. no regrets at all and I paid about $40 more than the best price lately.

sekker, on that machine I have 8GB.

mrbigstuff, which drive did you have in your MBP and which model was your MBP?

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just replaced a dead 3.5in with a 2.5in Momentus XT in an older iMac (24 in, white).

the read/write tests are both 100 MB/sec using AJA.

apps launch on one bounce, in most cases. bootup is very, very fast.

this is with only 2 GB of RAM.

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My 7k500 gets R/W at a little over 100MB/s using AJA.

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Quote
M A V I C
sekker, on that machine I have 8GB.

mrbigstuff, which drive did you have in your MBP and which model was your MBP?

it was just the stock Hitachi (?) 5400rpm 160gb drive.

All I can say is that we have a MacBook with 5 GB of RAM and the hybrid drive was a big speed improvement on that machine.

Quote
sekker
All I can say is that we have a MacBook with 5 GB of RAM and the hybrid drive was a big speed improvement on that machine.

What was the previous drive?

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Quote
M A V I C

Quote
sekker
All I can say is that we have a MacBook with 5 GB of RAM and the hybrid drive was a big speed improvement on that machine.

What was the previous drive?

320 GB 7200 drive from a couple years ago.