FC-Test

The second benchmark tells that the Momentus reaches its highest read speeds in the notebook. The read speed is over 35MB/s, which roughly corresponds to the maximum transfer rate at the beginning of the disk (see the graph). The highest peak quite naturally falls to the ISO pattern that consists of three huge-sized files. The read speed for the Programs pattern somehow doesn’t fit into the whole picture. The number of files (9006) is a little higher than in the Windows pattern (8504) and, in theory, the read speed should have been lower here rather than higher. We ran the tests a few times, but got similar results (in the range of the measurement error). The file creation (write) and copy speeds are such as we expected them to be.

Now, let’s take a look at the results the drive showed when connected to the desktop PC via USB 2.0. It’s clear it suffered a read speed hit across all five patterns. Copy near (within one disk partition) is also performed slower. Maybe the effective bandwidth of the Hi-Speed USB interface constrains the performance here.

The file creation (write) speed is similar in both cases. When there were more files to be written, the drive in the mobile rack was faster, while the notebook Momentus was better at writing fewer files of a larger size.

Conclusion

Let’s sum up our impressions about the new product from Seagate. The Momentus seems to be a well-done mainstream drive, at least. There are models from other manufacturers in the market that have a higher spindle rotation speed and a larger cache-buffer. The Momentus is no record-breaker in this respect. However, Seagate is known to be among best HDD makers of this world and the new family is just a test of strength in the notebook HDD field. If successful, the Momentus will be surely followed by other models. Seagate is always setting high goals and has every chance to roll out 2.5 HDDs of excellent characteristics. The technologies employed in desktop and notebook hard disk drives are practically the same, so the company can put its experience in the desktop arena to the new use.

The results shown by the Momentus in the tests confirm that it excels older, but still widely available 4200rpm drives in a number of parameters. Of course, we cannot yet say what place the Momentus takes among new 2.5” models from other makers until we run comparative tests.

P. S. One critical remark about the design.

When trying to install the drive into the appropriate bay of the Toshiba notebook we found we couldn’t do it with the standard metallic adapter. It’s because the upper part of the drive’s case is made “hanging over” the interface connector. The adapter of the Toshiba notebook is intended for the use of Toshiba HDDs that have their case end at the base of the connector pins. The exclusive adapter fixes the drive with a special shoulder. In the case of the Momentus, this shoulder pushed the case above the pins. So, we had to install the drive without the adapter. You may want to pay attention to this if choosing a new Seagate drive for manual installation into your notebook.