Posts Tagged ‘ssd’
Seagate Momentus XT review. You don’t need SSD!
Having tested MacBook Air at my local Apple reseller, my interest in this little baby is rekindled. I know hard disk is the slowest part of any computer, but I can’t bring myself to spend that much money on a SSD. To my surprise, this hard disk isn’t that easy to source offline. After looking around, I managed to get my hand on a 500G version, which is the exact same size as my current hard disk on my MacBook Pro, which is the slower 5400 version.
Installation was relatively easy. I wasn’t looking forward to reinstalling OS X and then Windows and all other crapware all over again. Since the hard disk is of the same size, I simply make an exact, 100% sector-by-sector copy of the hard disk using EASEUS Disk Copy. You will need a portable hard disk enclosure to perform this copy. Create the boot image on a cd, reboot while holding ‘c’ and follow the on-screen instruction. For 500G, it took about 6 hours to complete the copy process. It was 10 pm, and I hit the bed.
4.00 am. Perhaps out of excitement, I jump out of the bed and ah, the copy process was just about to finish in 12 minutes. 12 minutes pass by easily by just staring at the progress bar. Reboot.
First boot was uneventful. Launch NetBean IDE. Ok, that wasn’t any faster. I close it, reopen it and close it again. The 3rd time I open NetBeans, I was sold!. Loading time improved from about 15 seconds to just 5 seconds. I did the same with MS Word. By the 3rd launch, Word loads almost instantaneously. I repeat the same process, training the hard disk to recognize my frequently used applications and all of them start so bloody fast now. 4Gb flash might not be a lot, but the improvement is noticeable. Everything just feel so much snappier.
Noise and vibration. Now, if you Google this product enough, you might have come across vibration and noise issues. Here is my take. Yes, it does make more noise than the one that comes with MacBook Pro, which is absolutely silent. But, other than occasional clicking sounds when there is too many IO activities, it really isn’t noticeable. After a couple of days, I no longer noticed it at all.
Battery life. No different as far as I can tell. I was at a conference and manage to get 4 hours of usage, mostly emails, Skype and browsing. I suppose if you’re running a hard-disk intensive apps, you probably going to get much shorter battery life, but for most user, there is nothing to worry about.
Conclusion. If you can afford it, order it now!. I have tested blood and will never buy a normal hard disk ever again!
