WD Black or Momentus XT … hmmmmmm
Title says it all really, my old disk (WD blue) decided to crap out on me when I left it defrag overnight, may be salvageable as a backup but certainly don’t feel comfortable using it as my primary anymore, got a good 4 years out of it anyhow and its been seriously knocked around
So I’m in the market for a (non-ssd) primary 7200 RPM laptop drive.
Edging between the WD black or XT 500gb, any others I should look at ?
Momentus xt hands down. I have the 750 gig and it’s hybrid ssd technology destroys any conventional hard drive.
I am installing a 750GB 7200 16mb Seagate Momentus (not XT) right now, in fact whilst typing this is just restarted and is finishing up installing Lion.
My other gig MBP has the same drive and it works perfectly. Plenty fast enough for my Traktor usage.
i have the 500gbxt - the 750xt is even faster and I’m looking to upgrading soon to it. I seriously recommend the segate momentus 750xt
I am in the businees of tech for a while and ı can say WD . But why dont you go with Seagate ?
So am I, just wanted some fresh eyes 
.. seems to be mixed views on the XT in relation to reliability, especially on OSX and performance wise the WD Black seems about fast going by benchmarks.
@ karlos - totally forgot the regular moments came in 7200 flavor as well may just have a lookie.
I have a 750 WD Caviar Black in mine. Plenty fast enough for my needs - I’d expect it to come down to price point. Are the hybrid SSD drives from Seagate not way more expensive than the Caviar?
The hybrid drives are quite reasonably priced and a good compromise over an SSD, Once I free up some cash I’ll be cloning mine standard Apple one onto one, it would have been done sooner but not playing out at the minute so no rush
Take a look a hard drives prices guys. The prices across the board have gone up dramatically, so has RAM.
Floods in china and Thailand ??? I dunno thats just hearsay but from my looking around this week the average HD has gone by £20 - £30.
The Seagate i just bought was £30 cheaper 4 months ago.
Another vote for the Momentus XT 750GB. I got one at Xmas and it’s screaming fast for boot and app loading. Best of both worlds!
Is result of flood wd was destroyed and estimate prices won’t be back to normal for a year or two.
Ram on other hand I have no info on just know there’s a hard drive shortage. Ssd have dropped lots in debating on a 120gbssd and the momentous xt in one of my laptops with dual drives.
There have been serious cries to China this week to let up the stranglehold on precious Earths used for producing tech components.
Another +1 for the Momentus XT. Serious speed for the money.
Don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade but I’ve just sent back my second Momentus XT under warranty. Don’t get me wrong, they are awesome when they work, but I’ve so far found them to be a little too unreliable for my liking. That and the fact my battery life plummets when I have them installed. But I may just be one of the unlucky ones! Saving up for a real SSD next!
That bites, What was wrong with them?
Both S.M.A.R.T. fails. But in Seagate’s defence, they have a massive warranty on them and all I’ve needed to do is swap them into my wife’s Windows laptop, run Seatools and it give’s you an error code which you submit to their site to get a return sorted out.
That and the fact I regularly travel to some proper rubbish sandy places all over the world with my Mac can’t have really done them any good!
Warranty should only be a safeguard “if” something fails not for “when” something fails.
Doesn’t sound like a good option if reliability is one of your primary concerns, in my case getting a replacement sorted out could mean waiting a LONG time due to location (and even possible import duties on return !) …
I think I’ll be going for the WD black for reliability and bang for buck I can get 2x320’s for the same price as a 500XT
Doesn’t seem to be much in it with the exception of application start up and boot times.
Just an Update -
I managed to pick up a 320gig WD Scorpio black for around $55, the reliability issues with the XT told my inner voice to stay away.
So far so good, doesn’t “scream” but about a 20% increase in speed overall. Happy days.
Ditto. I have a SSD that I swapped with my optical drive for Lion and programs. I have a Seagate Momentus for only music and I just sent it back after THREE MONTHS.
I would just be curious to see why some of these are going back? Someone mentioned SMART failure, but that can encompass a whole lot of things. I have an external that failed SMART, but it has bad sectors from platters that were chunked, and that falls on the user more often that not.
I am/was interested in the XT. They did some upgrades with the new ones (8GB flash and firmware update) and it seems the reviews are good. Are these problems happening on the 750GB ones as well.