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Seagate ST500LM021 500GB Internal Hard Drive 2.5" HDD, SATA III - 6Gbs, 32MB Cache, 7200RPM, OEM

£9.9£99Clearance
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The SSHD serves to satiate the demand of users looking to couple performance gains and storage capacity without breaking the bank – think gamers and media enthusiasts. However, SSHD technology is not a cure-all, which Seagate readily admits; users craving extreme performance will likely desire more than an SSHD provides. Yet, for the market of HDD users Seagate is focused on, the Seagate SSHDs offer users improved performance at a lower price than SSDs. When it comes to measuring performance of the Seagate SSHD Thin the two categories of benchmarks that we commonly test all consumer HDDs and SSDs on show strengths in different areas. Our synthetic benchmarks are geared at showing the performance of the drive in an uncached “worst case” scenario, while our real-world traces allow the drive to cache data and better show how the drive would perform during repetitive day-to-day activities. Since the SSHD is really geared towards those workloads, we put more weight on than in this review than we would normally do for traditional HDDs or SSDs.

Laptop HDD (Momentus) | Support Seagate US Laptop HDD (Momentus) | Support Seagate US

The Seagate SSHD Gen3 power consumption is lower than the Gen2 in every test but idle, where it is nearly the same. Across the board, the Gen3 made strong gains and saved 0.3-1.2 watts depending on the job it was doing. Our last series of synthetic benchmarks compare the hard drives in a series of server mixed-workloads with a queue depth of ranging from 1 to 128. Each of our server profile tests has a strong preference towards read activity, ranging from 67% read with our database profile to 100% read in our web server profile. In all of our mixed workloads, the Seagate Gen3 performed exceptionally. For each test, it ranked either first or second along with the Seagate Gen2. Overall, the SSHDs performed significantly better than standard HDD’s. The Gen2’s slight performance advantage over the Gen3 comes from its 7,200 RPM spins compared to the Gen3’s 5,400 RPM (with Seagate’s standardization of laptop drives to 5,400 RPM). The next profile looks at a file server, with 80% read and 20% write workload spread out over multiple transfer sizes ranging from 512-byte to 64KB.Seagate’s provided power values came very close to the data we collected from our tests. Our actual idle rate measured 1.15 watts, while active power values ranged from 3.20 to 2.07 watts. Our sequential write pattern had the highest power values and the random 4K read test had the lowest. Seagate’s active seek number falls right in that range. Startup power requirements measured 4.01 watts to get the drive to operating speed.

Momentus Thin SATA - Seagate

For the average consumer, trying to translate random 4K write speeds into an everyday situation is pretty difficult. It helps when comparing drives in every setting possible, but it doesn’t exactly work out into faster everyday usage or better game loading times. For this reason we turned to our StorageMark 2010 traces, which include HTPC, Productivity, and Gaming traces to help readers find out how a drive might rank under their conditions. Seagate products are run by firmware. Having the latest firmware can improve performance and or reliability of your product. Seagate recommends applying new firmware to enhance the performance and or reliability of your drive. The Serial ATA interface connects each disk drive in a point-to-point configuration with the Serial ATA host adapter. There is no master/slave relationship with Serial ATA devices like there is with parallel ATA. If two drives are attached on one Serial ATA host adapter, the host operating system views the two devices as if they were both “masters” on two separate ports. This essentially means both drives behave as if they are Device 0 (master) devices. While not a bombshell, Seagate’s Gen3 model does provide cost-efficient performance and a significantly lower starting price than the Gen2 Momentus XT 750GB. Our benchmarking shows the Gen3 and Gen2 both outperform HDDs where it matters, in our real world traces where the onboard cache can really show its performance benefits. In that case, where data is nicely cached, the new 500GB Thin bests the 750GB Gen2 product by a significant margin. Maak een einde aan de kosten en complexiteit van het opslaan, verplaatsen en activeren van gegevens op schaal.

Hard Disk Drive / SSD / Storage Device Technical Details

Seagate’s third generation SSHDs (solid state hybrid drives), now for both laptops and desktops, are marketed as a replacement for HDDs and serve as a good option for those otherwise considering an SSD. SSHDs aim to offer users the price-point and robust capacity of HDDs while also utilizing NAND flash to provide the performance attained with SSDs by caching critical applications. Slimmed from 9.5mm to 7mm, our review model third generation Seagate 500GB SSHD Thin with 8GB of MLC NAND would fit well in any user configuration and is especially well-suited for ultra-thin, ultra-light laptops. The new SSHD Gen3 line also gets a naming convention update. The first generation hybrids were called Momentus XT, while the second generation models were called Momentus XT with Fast Factor. Now, Seagate has dropped Momentus family branding altogether, opting instead for the simpler category name of SSHD. To help clarify drive generations, StorageReview will reference the drives on a go-forward basis with the SSHD generation number to help clarify the chronology for consumers (Gen1, Gen2, Gen3). In the File Server profile, the Seagate Gen3 offered substantially better performance than all of the competition from 8-64 IOPS at 3x-5x. However, at 128 IOPS, the Gen2 was tops. In addition, Serial ATA makes the transition from parallel ATA easy by providing legacy software support. Serial ATA was designed to allow you to install a Serial ATA host adapter and Serial ATA disk drive in your current system and expect all of your existing applications to work as normal.

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