1.6.2013

LONG REVIEW FOLLOWS:SSDs offer the best performance but the obstacle remains the price. 500gb SSDs have dropped a lot but the popular 256gb sized drives are priced much the same as they were a year ago. If you are a Laptop user, unless you're willing to either spend a lot of money, compromise on storage space or have a laptop with space for more than one storage drive, SSDs are not suitable and this is where Hybrid drives can come in.The hybrid drive uses a small amount of fast NAND memory to act as a cache for frequently accessed data and thus speeds up the drive considerably. Seagate's new line of Hybrid drives sees 8GB of NAND as standard. The 750gb model makes way for a 1TB drive and both drives now use spindle speeds of 5400rpm.Seagate also claim the incorporated algorithm that caches data has been improved (common writes as well as common reads are now cached). If you still want a 7200rpm Hybrid drive, snap up the 750gb Momentus quickly as it is discontinued.Installing in an old 2008 Macbook Pro was easy, I opted to restore from a Time Machine backup as I wanted my drive exactly as it had been though a clean install and use of Migration Assistant (or windows equivalent) is probably the best option for an error free experience. I would try to avoid drive cloning unless it's really necessary.As with the old Momentus drive, the first boot wasn't particularly impressive as the algorithm had yet to determine what data to cache but after I'd restarted 3 times, things were definitely faster.Some figures:From a cold start, I timed how long it took to reach the grey Apple logo, how long to fully load the desktop and a total boot to desktop time:5400rpm HDD: 39 seconds, 38 seconds respectively. 1 minute 17 totalOld 500gb Momentus: 18.58 seconds, 21.22 seconds respectively. 39.8 seconds total.1TB SSHD: 7.8 seconds, 16.52 seconds respectively. 24.32 seconds total.Booting up into a tab heavy Firefox session took the old HDD 3 minutes, the Momentus a minute and this drive 42 seconds (which, if memory serves is not far off the Samsung 830 SSD I once used).As well as a faster boot, more programs I use regularly open in a flash. I used to find that quite a few regularly used programs remained sluggish to load but now far more have speedy launch times (not all, you'd still have to go SSD if you want everything quickly). For those things that are not cached, I couldn't detect any real lag compared to the Momentus despite the slower spindle speed with the added bonus that the drive is now noticeably quieter (though power usage is higher).It's disappointing that Seagate didn't go beyond 8gb for the cache. Other manufacturers make cache SSDs of up to 50gb. Seagate claim that 8GB is the sweetspot, enough to cache 98% of the unique read data of a "typical corporate user". Ideally, it would be nice if Seagate could produce a genuine 2-in-1 hybrid with separate SSD and HDD partitions, allowing laptop users the same option as desktop users of a SSD boot drive and HDD archive drive. This is likely a way off and for all we know, SSD prices may plummet before that but at the very least a version with a bigger cache would be great in the near future.PROS:Fast SSD like performance. There are improvements over the previous Momentus drives and massive improvements over conventional HDDs. The SSHD is now even closer to the perfomance of a SSD despite using a slower spindle speed HDD. Pricing remains fantastic, the 500gb model currently costs a quarter the price of an SSD equivalent whilst the 1TB version costs a fifth of a 1TB SSD, a lot more money for a performance boost many users wouldn't even notice. At time of writing, the cost of one of these Hybrid drives would likely still only get you a 128gb SSD. The drive is also quieter than its predecessor and seems to run far cooler.CONS:This remains SSD-like performance rather than a genuine SSD. You will not find everything on your machine to be magically faster. Another downside is power consumption, according to Seagate spec sheets, these drives use almost double the power of other 2.5" drives. It won't send power bills through the roof but will probably reduce battery life. Finally is the fact that as a HDD, it carries with it all the frailties of the tech. The use of an SSD isn't license to throw your laptop around but in those horrifying moments when your laptop falls off a table, you can be fairly sure that while your laptop might not be okay, your data probably is. This isn't the case here.FINAL LINEAs before, the SSD would offer far greater performance than the SSHD overall but it still comes back to price and capacity. SSD prices and capacities have improved a lot at the high end but still remain inaccessibly expensive for most users. If you want speed but don't want to spend huge amounts, you're still going to have keep a lean computer running from a small capacity SSD or go with the SSHD almost as good performance and plenty of space.

15.6.2014

A quick [re]search shows that this Seagate SSHD drive (Model STBD1000400) is just a repackaged version of the most popular SSHD model ST1000LM014 from Seagate, and perhaps appropriately tagged as '#1 Best Seller' here on Amazon. You normally pay slightly more for the glossy package, a.k.a 'Retail Kit', as opposed to a frustration free OEM package for the ST1000LM014, unless you catch it at the right time (which fortunately I did by chance) with a [strange] price fluctuation sometimes getting even cheaper than the ST1000LM014.This drive definitely made a difference to the operational speed of my laptop as files are accessed faster so in that sense it is better than the conventional HDD.

10.10.2015

Awesome!I was a little apprehensive as to whether this drive would work well on my aging Sony VAIO VGN-NW15G. My biggest concern being the fitment and cloning the old HDD onto the new SSHD. Seagate, you guys rock! I took the opportunity to upgrade my VAIO OS to the new Windows 10 platform prior to purchasing the SSHD. With the Acronis tool from your website, the process of cloning was simple and easy. I was concerned that it would not be, as the Seagate website did not indicate that it was Windows 10 compatible. It worked seamlessly!As for performance, the difference is noticeable. Especially since I had upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The old drive performance was starting to get clunky to say the least.

18.4.2020

OEM disk drive arrived on time. Nothing else in the box apart from drive. Bought a mounting case separately and installed this in a 10 year old i7 dell optiplex desktop machine. Used clonezilla to clone original drive. Took about 20 mins as there was only around 40 GB to transfer (basically transferring a clean install with my fav basic programs). After about 10 reboots system boot up has gone from 1min 45 secs to 37 secs (timed using Bootracer). It is reassuring to see the startup windows background pop up so quickly after pressing the on button. Whilst this may be the norm for people with modern pc's on a old machine this in my opinion, is pretty impressive. It should be noted,

21.9.2013

Bought this to replace a 3 year old WD in my Acer laptop. Basically the laptop packed up so I thought it was the HD only to be told it was the MB. Even with a 3 year warranty Acer tried wiggling out of their responsibilities. Tip - Never buy an Acer!Anyway I couldn't afford a new laptop at the time so found one on Ebay for £129.99 refurbished with dual Core 3 Gb Ram, Windows 7, SD card reader, 6 month warranty that should hopefully tide me over. It's actually pretty decent for the price & the seller has been great - that's all they sell, based in Portsmouth.Problem is it only came with an 80GB HDD & I had this one so used Macrium Reflect to clone that onto this 500GB Seagate.

8.4.2014

My hard drive packed in on my (typically, just out of warranty) Acer aspire laptop so instead of buying a new laptop i thought no...that's what they want you to do try repairing the old one, so after a chat with an IT colleague, he pointed me in this direction so I bought it......... Then after watching various you tube vids I fitted it myself (not hard at all) downloaded windows 7 etc for free (dont pay for back up disc off the manufacturer there's no need as Microsoft directs you to servers that will let you download it with instructions etc you just need to have your licence key for after the install that should be on your computer somewhere,

3.11.2013

I have a 13" Macbook, the first aluminium one from 2008. I had already upgraded to a larger Western Digital drive and put in max ram. However, It's been slowly grinding to a halt, lagging, freezing, getting the spiny wheel all the time, I was expecting it to die. I'm going to replace it in a the next few months but a friend suggested a Solid State disc instead, which I considered to make it more workable between now and the upgrade.After seeing the prices of 500gb SSHD I was going to give it a miss till I came across the hybrids and thought I would give it a go as a budget upgrade before I replace the whole thing.The easiest route for this is to clone the current drive,

19.12.2013

Installed this disk in my 2008-vintage Macbook Pro 2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo (Model No: A1226), replacing the original 120GB drive. The reduced boot times are an eye-opener - down from about 3 minutes (running MacOS 10.5.8) to under one minute after 6 reboots. The machine feels faster for day-to-day use too - applications like MS Word definitely start up faster (although I haven't timed this).Method: Install the drive in an external caddy, do a fresh OS install on it. Boot from the "new" OS on the external disk, (yes, I know 10.5.8 is ancient, but I have applications that won't run under any later MacOS version) and apply all the most recent OS patches. Still running from the external disk,

4.8.2016

Seagate Laptop SSHD ST1000LX001 1000GB NL-SATA hard disk drive 32GB NANDLaptop ASUS N56VJ , I needed an upgrade for my 750gb hard drive as it was getting full and a little slow, and after much research, decided on the Seagate 1TB with 32GB NAND as my replacement. I am not a computer techie and watched many online videos on cloning. I also purchased a BIPRA USB 3.0 Tool Free External Caddy/Enclosure For 2.5" Laptop SATA Hard Drive. USB Bus Powered (USB 3.0 WHITE Tool free) for around £8,59. and had no issues, great bit of cloning kit.I went to the Seagate website and downloaded their free Disk Wizard cloning software, which unfortunately did not work in my case,

4.4.2014

My laptop HD died on me so I bought this Hybrid drive to replace it. It is every bit as good as the advertising claims. I reckon my laptop now boots in about half the time - 15 seconds, and shuts down almost instantly. Also, the machine comes out of sleep in a couple of seconds. An undocumented advantage is that Internet connections are also noticeably faster, presumably because much of the cacheing is done via the SSD. I've had it for a couple of months now with no issues. So why only 4 stars?Seagate haven't really thought these drives out. The HD part defragments just as much as any other HD. Mine is currently 38% fragmented - which would have been crippling on anything other than a Hybrid drive.

1.9.2013

Bought this for an older core2 pc with sata 2. For comparison i have a core2 laptop with sata2. Changing the old hard drive to a samsung 830 128gb my boot times went from around a minute to just 20 seconds.that boot up speed is really noticable.everything i start from the internet to office is instant. Sadly the seagate sshd in my pc is not a game changer like the samsung. Boot up time has gone from just over a minute to just under a minute ,applications dont really feel mch faster. This sshd seems to work for some but not for my pc. For real speed I'd say get the real thing .an sshd is too much of a compromise in its current state....................UPDATE 16-10-13.

28.4.2016

Quality product at good value for money price.I used this with an inexpensive, (less than £6), BIPRA external USB 2 caddy enclosure to "clone" my Sony Vaio laptop hard drive, (500Gb Seagate HDD, in 4 year old Sony Vaio (i3 Intel processor and 4Gb of RAM)..I used the free Seagate cloning software, discWizard, and found it very easy and efficient to carry out the upgrade.It took me about 20 minutes to physically swap the drives, (remember to remove the battery and disconnect the power lead) and the cloning process took about 120 minutes in total to clone 250Gb of content between the discs.I only did this two days ago,

22.6.2017

I decided to replace my old ageing laptop HDD, to one of these "supposed" faster ones, but you know what? although the performance is exactly the same as my old drive, and so far, touch wood, it hasn't fallen down, the speed was the main issue. I don't know if these SSHD drives are for more modern laptops, but my 4 year old Toshiba laptop hasn't noticed any speed difference at all. I haven't noticed any speed improvements, and that's kinda put a dampener on this drive - it doesn't boot up any faster, programs don't suddenly spring into life, a few milliseconds after opening, and my games that I play on the laptop don't seem to run faster. I'm not sure there's a hidden switch that must be turned on to give the drive a speed boost on the laptop,

8.4.2015

I purchased this due to my laptop feeling slow on the ol' loading all the time. (When firing it up mainly). Since replacing the hard drive with this one, it loads up so much faster. I seldom have to wait (we all hate waiting!) and this SSHD definitely provides a boost in performance. I don't do a massive amount on my laptop but even tasks such as opening my web browser straight after logging in, which used to hang, now seems a lot more responsive. My understanding is that the SSHD has a portion of solid state storage (8GB in this case) that caches the most used stored data in order to be able to load it quicker for you, although I may be mistaken,

7.7.2013

This is the 3rd generation of hybrid drive from Seagate - after having had the 1st generation, Momentus XT, in my MacBook for the past couple of years I was running out of space and had read some good reviews of this version, which said it was even quicker on startup and just generally. After having installed it a few days ago, I would say the reviews are spot on. The boot time is very good - around 8-10 seconds, and the programs open quickly ... generally my computer feels very quick. I noticed the difference, even though I was already using a hybrid drive, and if you've been using a traditional hard drive then this will DEFINITELY give you a real improvement in performance.For anyone thinking about buying a new computer because there current one feels slow,

Seagate Laptop SSHD SATA III 1TB (ST1000LM014) - Reviews

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