by Andrey Kuznetcov
08/11/2003 | 03:29 AM
It’s time for the manufacturers of hard disk drives of the 2.5” form-factor to make room for one more player. Well, this new player is in fact an old and experienced HDD maker. I guess you know it – it’s Seagate. On June 16, 2003, the corporate website posted a press release with an announcement of a new hard disk drive series called Momentus.
This news would hardly seem extraordinary if it were not for a single nuance – Seagate is returning to small drives production. You may have already forgotten about it, but the company did show up in this market sector – with the Marathon family for notebooks. The last 4GB representative of this series saw the light of the day as far back as the end of 1997. The reason the company abandoned 2.5” drives was simple – this area was far from commercially beneficial. The notebook market was smaller then than nowadays; demand didn’t match supply. But the last few years have brought about great changes.
Mobile computers are evolving fast; there are ever more companies that produce ever more notebooks. It’s quite natural the notebook HDD market is growing at a higher rate than the market of ordinary HDDs intended for desktops and workstations. The demand for 2.5” drives is forecast to be about 50 million in 2004. So, Seagate is quite right in coming back: it has a real chance to be successful and profitable. Moreover, 2.5” drives can probably replace their 3.5” analogs in desktop PCs in the future; at least they have the strength to do it.
Well, managers from Seagate have corrected their course and now offer us new 2.5 form-factor hard disk drives of the Momentus family.
This is a kind of advertisement poster for the new product – the comparison to the hummingbird emphasizes the fast speed and light weight of the drive.
Specifications of Seagate ST94811A:
Interface | Ultra ATA/100 |
Maximum internal transfer rate | 48.25MB/s |
Maximum external transfer rate | 100MB/s |
Sustained transfer rate | 34.5MB/s |
Cache size | 8MB |
Average seek | 10ms |
Average latency | 5.6ms |
Spindle speed | 5400RPM |
Discs | 1 |
Heads | 2 |
Power (Seek) | 2.4W |
Power (Read/Write) | 2.4W |
Power (Idle/Standby) | 0.97/0.36W |
Shock, operating, 2ms | 225Gs |
Shock, non-operating, 2ms | 800Gs |
Noice (Idle) | 2.2 bels |
Noice (Quit Seek) | 2.5 bels |
Noice (Performance Seek) | 3.0 bels |
Size | 9.5х69.85х100.2mm |
Weight | 99g |
Now, let’s examine the newcomer itself. Launching its new product, Seagate had to make sure it would be the best or at least up to a certain mark: the Momentus will have to put up a fight to hard disk drives from Hitachi, Fujitsu and Toshiba.
The drive comes in two capacities – 20 or 40GB (that’s the size of our sample). Physically, it means the drive uses one 40GB platter and one or two read/write head(s). The spindle rotation speed is 5400rpm, this value becoming a de-facto standard for 2.5” form-factor models. The default buffer size for Momentus drives is 2MB; an 8MB buffer comes as an option (our sample was one). In the latter case, the drive performs much faster in a variety of tasks. The interface supported is Ultra ATA/100.
As for technical features, the Momentus took up all the best from its elder brothers. Well, it wouldn’t be right to give up the innovations that have proved their efficiency and usefulness in 3.5” drives. The good acoustic characteristics of the drive are mostly due to the SoftSonic motor with fluid dynamic bearings and a special technology called “QuietStep ramp load”. The latter serves a number of purposes. First of all, it diminishes the noise level. For example, it makes imperceptible the clicks occurring when the drive is waking up from the energy-saving standby mode. The acoustic characteristics are improved by flexible control over the speed of loading/unloading the read/write head(s). Second, “QuietStep ramp load” increases the reliability of the hard disk by using an effective parking method. The heads in the Momentus drive are parked off the outer side of the platter rather than off the inside.
A special design helps the drive go undamaged through an accelerative force of up to 225G in operational mode, which corresponds to the notebook falling down on a hard surface from a height of 3 inches. When the notebook is shut down, this parameter is 800G, which equals the fall from a height of 18 inches.
Energy-saving technologies couldn’t be done without as the Momentus is targeted at notebooks. Seagate claims the new drive consumes the same amount of energy as slower, 4200rpm drives.
The drive also features the exclusive 3D Defence technology. The three “D” are:
Just like any other drive from Seagate, this one comes in a plastic case that protects against physical damage and electrostatic discharges.
Unfortunately, we cannot yet say how much the drive is going to cost. However, our guess for the 40GB model with a 2MB buffer is somewhere about $150. At least, this is the average price for competitor products of similar characteristics. The 8MB buffer will add about $15-20 to the sum.
Besides using the Momentus in a notebook, it’s quite possible to make it a portable storage device, just like any other small-size disk drive. When the popular flash-drives are too small to accommodate the data you need to transport to another computer, the Momentus with its light weight and compact size may come to the rescue. If this is the case, you may want to use it with a mobile external rack of the 2.5” form-factor working across the universal USB 2.0 interface. Such combination may turn to be less expensive than other solutions, while being quite easy to handle.
So, here’s the other product we willy-nilly have to include into the review. It is an external mobile rack from Apricorn. In terms of the manufacturer, we are going to deal with a “notebook hard drive upgrade kit”.
The kit includes the rack proper and two cables – power and interface. The power cable is connected to the PS/2 port and has a splitter at the end for you to use it along with the mouse/keyboard. The second cable is a standard USB 2.0 one.
The design of the device is quite simple: two lids and an internal board with the connector you plug the HDD into. An In-systems SD300A1 chip controls the work. The upper lid has a LED signaling the work mode of the drive. The back panel of the rack carries the interface and power connectors as well as a switch to choose the power source – PS/2 or USB.
So, we tested the Momentus in two roles. First of all, it worked where it was supposed to – as a system HDD in a Toshiba Satellite A15-S127 notebook. Secondly, we tried to use the Momentus as a mobile storage device. This time it was benchmarked in the rack connected to the PC across the USB 2.0 interface.
We used two benchmarks: Ziff Davis Winbench 99 version 2.0 and FC-Test version 0.5.3. The first is a classic benchmark, no need to comment. The thorough description of the second program is here. Briefly, it created, read up and copied five sets of files differing in their number and total size. After each test, the drive was defragmented.
The Toshiba Satellite A15-S127 notebook was configured as follows:
The desktop PC included:
The both computers ran Windows XP with Service Pack 1 installed.
Before proceeding to the results, let’s keep in mind that the reviewed hard disk drive was benchmarked on two quite different platforms in two quite different roles. So, it’d be downright incorrect to compare the results we got on each platform between themselves.
Winbech 99 results:
| Transfer Begining, KB/s | Transfer End, KB/s | Disc Access, ms | Disk CPU Utilization, % | Business Disk WinMark, KB/s | High-End Disk Winmark, KB/s | AVS/Express, KB/s |
Seagate Momentus, Notebook | 34500 | 19200 | 15.8 | 1.16 | 5500 | 17600 | 18900 |
Seagate Momentus, Rack USB 2.0 | 29000 | 18800 | 16.6 | 4.19 | 10700 | 21700 | 20900 |
FrontPage, KB/s | MicroStation SE, KB/s | Photoshop 4.0, KB/s | Premiere 4.2, KB/s | Sound Forge 4.0, KB/s | Visual C++ 5.0, KB/s | |
Seagate Momentus, Notebook | 155000 | 15200 | 9160 | 12000 | 46000 | 16900 |
Seagate Momentus, Rack USB 2.0 | 200000 | 34600 | 8200 | 16600 | 34300 | 34600 |
The read graphs of the drive do differ on the two platforms. When installed as a system drive, the Momentus performs quite expectedly. It notches a high read speed for this type of drives. The internal transfer graph is a step curve with small jaggies that testifies high quality of the platter surface.
The second graph is a long horizontal line corresponding to the peak bandwidth of the USB 2.0 interface. Quite naturally, the read speed is smaller in this case. Moreover, the second graph has certain vertical sumps, although we may have expected the graph to be similar to the first one. The access time is smaller with USB 2.0, but still lies in the measurement error range. And quite predictably, the work across USB 2.0 consumes more CPU resources.
The Disk WinMark results suggest that the Momentus is working more efficiently when used as a mobile storage device. Both values (Business and High-End Disk WinMark) are noticeably higher in this case. The “mobile” Momentus wins most High-End Disk WinMark components, save for Sound Forge 4.0 and Photoshop 4.0.
You shouldn’t be surprised at these results. The testbeds are quite different and we may suppose the desktop PC has a better realization of disk subsystem operations. Moreover, don’t forget that WinBench tests are sensitive to the type and frequency of the CPU.
| Notebook | Rack USB 2.0 | ||||
File Template | Create | Read | Copy | Create | Read | Copy |
ins | 15.663 | 35.415 | 8.596 | 17.545 | 21.457 | 8.043 |
iso | 20.583 | 34.191 | 12.136 | 18.243 | 27.716 | 7.365 |
mp3 | 19.847 | 30.957 | 8.841 | 18.071 | 19.662 | 8.208 |
prog | 9.176 | 30.509 | 6.662 | 12.404 | 23.372 | 5.525 |
win | 8.001 | 32.878 | 5.189 | 9.199 | 22.638 | 3.681 |
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.
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.