Seagate Momentus XT 750Gb hybrid - For storage

[BenHoliday]

I have a couple ssd's in my system for the OS and a handful of games. But I have Steam +games and all my storage on a Raptor which is slowly filling up. I am wondering how these hybrid drives compare for storage I was thinking two in raid would give me some breathing room. I also had the thought that 2.5" drives would be pulling less power and getting better airflow then the standard 3.5" drive.

Would I be better off with standard 3.5" drives?

Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB...

 

[RejZoR]

XT's are quite quick. I just don't know how much you'll benefit from the SSD caching part if you'll mostly use it for Steam where files are usually massive and will quickly overwhelm the cache while not caching anything really useful.

I have WD Caviar Black 2TB in my system and i don't really see much need for anything else as most of the read done is sequential for games (they usually load all the data in memory when you start it) so there won't be much benefit really. You'd benefit more imo if you stack up 2 normal HDD's in RAID. You'll get sequential speed of ~250MB/s which is in the SSD territory and that's what you need for games imo. High sequential speed and massive capacity. For semi low price.
You could stack up 2 WD Scorpio Black drives and you'll get a RAID array that is essentially as big as 1 normal HDD. Speed wise, these little devils work just as fast as their bigger 3,5 inch brothers.

 

[Fitseries3]

i used 500gb XT's in my laptops and they are great. ssd like speeds and decent capacity. in a desktop though youd be better off with a 3.5" drive in raid. the XT's are designed to cache differently to save power in laptops. not always optimal for desktop tasks. you'd most likely see a failed drive faster than if it were in a laptop but i have yet to see one die.

 

[BenHoliday]

Thanks for the suggestions and info. Looking at the pricing to get another 600Gb VelociRaptor is $300+ almost the same price if I pick up a pair of somewhat speedy 750Gb-1Tb drives. I'm kind of leaning towards picking up a pair of newer drives for raid 0 and leaving the raptor for backing up important data off of those as I know it has been tried an true for a couple years now.

-Edit-
I think I will have to dig around a bit but in the end may just have to pull the trigger. I have tried a lot the brands over the years and seen failures from most and solid drives from the same batch.

Seagate Barracuda ST1500DM003 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB ...

 

[FreedomEclipse]

For the same price of the XT drive, you could probably upgrade your mobo to a Z68 chipset and a cheap 64GB Sata III SSD to make use of the Intel SRT feature, that would greatly boost overall system performance as opposed to just using it as a boot drive where it only effects the OS and apps that are installed on it.

 

[BenHoliday]

Not a bad thought either. I will have to sleep on that one I just replaced the psu and gpu. If I get to replacing too much I have to fight the urge of just building a new rig.

 

[BenHoliday]

After going over and looking at what I wanted and needed. I ended picking up an external for now. I cleaned up all the excess files that no longer needed to be stored and have 150Gb's for Steam to play with on the raptor now.

BUFFALO 1TB USB 3.0 Black External Hard Drive HD-P...

Was actually a good thing I went cheap for this round as I ended up needing money this past weekend.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I ended up needing money this past weekend.

what you talking about??? You ALWAYS need money on the weekends. how the hell are you supposed to pay for your alcohol with no money???