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Seagate Momentus 5400  (Source: Seagate Technology)
Seagate's latest notebook offerings, 3 capacities with hybrid NAND flash technology, does not currently produce promised results

The first Seagate hybrid hard disk drives are now shipping but the reviews will disappoint. Seagate first announced the Momentus 5400 PSD line of hybrid 2.5-inch hard disk drives this past June promising a performance boost based on the hybrid design using NAND flash memory for use with the Windows Vista operating system.

The Momentus 5400 PSD line is shipping in capacities of 80 GB, 120 GB, and 160 GB of magnetic storage combined with 256 MB of flash. The manufacturer's specifications state a 44 MB/sec sustained stransfer rate and 8 MB of that oldschool cache. The average seek time is 12.5 ms with an average latency of 5.6 ms. Combined with Microsoft Windows Vista's ReadyDrive technology hybrid hard drives are supposed to improve system performance, hold increased reliability, and reduce power consumption and/or increase laptop battery life.

However, the first impressions of the first hybrid hard disk drives are leaving consumers with those familiar "empty promise" feelings. Is Seagate's product to blame?

Melissa Johnson, a product manager for Seagate, stated that the cause of the lack of performance improvements over the original flavor of the Momentus 5400 line was in the BIOS and operating system drivers.

Earlier this year, before any hybrid hard drives were available to the general public, Lenovo bloggers made bold claims that first generation hybrid hard drives would be a bust. So far, it seems those claims were true. We can only hope these issues are resolved or the entire idea of a hybrid hard disk drive may become another technology that never could.

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Sorry--this is not MS's fault.
By Domicinator on 10/8/2007 9:25:53 PM , Rating: 2
This concept works just fine with a regular SATA hard drive and a thumb drive using Ready Boost. So the fact that these particular hard drives DON'T work so well in Vista is not necessarily the fault of MS. MS does not write drivers for this stuff.




RE: Sorry--this is not MS's fault.
By mindless1 on 10/8/2007 9:55:44 PM , Rating: 2
Pick one of these:

1) You installed a special driver from your thumb drive manufacturer and SATA hard drive manufacturer to enable this feature.

2) You didn't install a special driver for either of those, instead the feature is dependant on the OS.

It has to be one or the other!


RE: Sorry--this is not MS's fault.
By mindless1 on 10/8/2007 10:16:11 PM , Rating: 2
My point was, it may not be MS' fault that the performance isn't there simply due to what Seagate has made, it's inherant limitations, but it is their (MS) feature and I/O optimization at play, not some 3rd party driver.


RE: Sorry--this is not MS's fault.
By tcsenter on 10/9/2007 6:56:54 AM , Rating: 2
ReadyBoost/ReadyDrive is proven to work as advertised, given a minimally acceptable configuration. Third parties whether software or hardware have never had the luxury to define their own OS requirements.

If OS XYZ must have 12MB of graphics memory, a manufacturer can't blame the OS because it only chose to put 16MB on its graphics card, leaving a seriously inadequate 4MB left-over for applications when at least 16MB for applications is required for optimum performance (illustrative scenario only).

The hardware vendor needs to configure its product appropriately (i.e. at least 12MB + 16MB graphics memory instead of 16MB, for the scenario above). If Seagate didn't put enough NAND flash on its hybrid drive to make good use of ReadyDrive, how is that Microsoft's fault?

We still have third-party storage controller drivers that cannot make use of certain performance-enhancing features of modern SATA II drives such as NCQ and TCQ. Look at all the problems NVIDIA had getting support for NCQ and TCQ working on its storage controller drivers. Microsoft's fault, again?

Legacy IDE interface is just that - legacy IDE. It does not provide any hardware-specific feature support, which continues to be the domain of third-party drivers. What part of "hybrid" drive do you interpret to mean "legacy"? Vista's legacy IDE support works just fine with these Seagate drives - you get legacy IDE performance and functionality.


wrong way
By tastyratz on 10/10/07, Rating: 0
Another hit on Vista...
By Operandi on 10/8/07, Rating: -1
RE: Another hit on Vista...
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 10/8/2007 2:54:33 PM , Rating: 4
Hardly. Even with out it Vista is pushing ahead just fine. This is just a driver problem from the manufacturers. Using standard IDE drivers with Hybrid hard disks doesn't work out so well.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By euclidean on 10/8/2007 4:10:07 PM , Rating: 1
No way, it's all Microsoft!!!.....

Generally speaking, almost all of the issues currently out with vista are either driver related, or people are trying to run the OS in 32bit on old technology. Move up in the world people and quit complaining...there were more probs with XP when it first came out than so far with Vista.

Also, to keep on topic, I bet the issue is mainly driver/bios...at least it seems like it anyways, and if it is driver related, then that's Seagate's fault....WD ftw.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By leexgx on 10/8/2007 7:32:56 PM , Rating: 2
i guess you not seen reviews done on these type of hard disks 256mb does not cut it at all when the OS is heavy and bloted (it work wunders on XP tho 128mb boot the rest for other programs) the cache on the disk needs to be 1gb to start off from and 2gb if you want the hdd to stay not spinning for longer times as thats what haveing flash on the hard drive is for so the hard disk can stop spinning for longer and save power 256Mb or 1gb can not do that
with 2-4gb of flash on the disk that five you optons for hard disk power down more offen as well the Flash is Way faster access times then an hdd and the Flash can have faster data rates then the laptop disks more so when there is random access going on (0.2ms flash / 10-15ms hdd with an Masive impact on file read performace)

its more an problem with the hard drive Vista ReadyDrive cant work well at all with 256mb of flash its likey trying to run vista with 512mb of ram its to small to be usefull unless vista ReadyDrive uses it for Small files Only


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By Drexial on 10/9/2007 3:26:43 PM , Rating: 2
i don't even really see how this could be viewed as a disappointment. if you getting a system with 5400RPM HDD your not looking for a hard core system to begin with. so i feel the 20% increase in battery life is FAR more substantial an announcement than the lack of performance increases.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By GoodBytes on 10/8/2007 2:59:05 PM , Rating: 2
quote:

Melissa Johnson, a product manager for Seagate, stated that the cause of the lack of performance improvements over the original flavor of the Momentus 5400 line was in the BIOS and operating system drivers.

Yea yea, their fault, but lets blame it on Windows. Since when Microsoft is supposed to do the job of computer hardware manufactures.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By Zandros on 10/8/2007 3:26:41 PM , Rating: 3
Since they started advertising the feature as a part of their operating system.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By elgoliath on 10/8/2007 5:15:30 PM , Rating: 4
Um, it is a feature and it does work, so I'm not sure what your confusion is. Perhaps you don't know what device drivers are or the fact that Microsoft (OS Division) is not responsible for writing drivers for 3rd party hardware companies? But no, lets go ahead and spout more stuff that just isn't right so we can keep our membership to the anti MS band wagon. It's amusing that with so many other things to fault MS for that are valid, you pick one that they aren't responsible for....


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By mindless1 on 10/8/2007 9:53:34 PM , Rating: 2
It's a Vista feature. Can't have it both ways, if the feature is vista then the function and flaws will be too, for better and worse. That's not to say we can assume the performance isn't there because of windows, it's lacking because of too little flash onboard, but it is MS that is responsible for the layer that optimizes the I/O for hybrid drives.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By bisoy on 10/8/2007 10:39:23 PM , Rating: 2
The layer is there, that's why it is a feature they advertise. But if the device drivers were written poorly as to not take advantage of this new functionality, then surely you cannot fault MS for it.

My first Vista machine I cursed it to death because it is running 100% CPU utilization most of the time, but after a careful research I found it was just the driver of my freaking ATI video card who's the culprit.

I've long moved to Vista 64 and loving it.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By mindless1 on 10/9/07, Rating: -1
RE: Another hit on Vista...
By JonnyBlaze on 10/9/2007 8:15:19 AM , Rating: 3
WRONG!

EVERY device on your system has a driver. You never had to load them as windows has them all for hard drives. Maybe these new drives work better with new drivers.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By TomZ on 10/9/2007 10:49:58 AM , Rating: 2
Very true, and I'll bet that hybrid drives do require a unique driver to allow the OS to access the unique behavior of the hybrid drive. A generic driver wouldn't know how to read/write the flash in the drive.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By mindless1 on 10/12/2007 5:43:33 AM , Rating: 2
WRONG! That driver is not a seller product driver, it is only an OS specific driver provided by the OS designer, the opposite of the prior claim.

If you can't accept it, show me the driver you had to install for any legacy device. Same is true for these products.


RE: Another hit on Vista...
By elgoliath on 10/9/2007 3:48:32 PM , Rating: 3
Wrong- the motherboard chipset is what windows interfaces with to communicate with the HDD. Granted, usually the standard default Microsoft drivers work well enough for non performance related installations, they are just that default drivers. As you said and it kinda makes our point, the standard windows driver is fine for legacy hard drives- unfortunately I don't believe these new hybrid hard drives are really considered legacy devices...

You are correct on the firmware side, but, as I believe you know, that is not a responsibility of Microsoft either.