Dell D820 - Seagate Momentus HDD's

Just an FYI for upgraders:

In spite of Dell's tech support trying to sell me their replacement HDD's when my original 80GB filled up, I rolled the dice and picked up the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid drive.

Specs:

500GB
7200RPM
32MB cache
4GB flash memory/processor controlled
SATAII

I called support because I wasn't sure if the new hybrid 4GB of flash memory, the 7200RPM (my original from dell was 5400) or the SATAII specs (my original from Dell was SATAI).

Tech support told me in no certain terms that a SATAII drive would NOT work with my D820, and that I should get the drives they offer.. And then they "offered" me two Western Digital SATAII drives.

I asked them about the SATAII, and they once again repeated that "their support book" says that NO SATAII drive will work in the D820.

When I asked about the WD SATAII drives that they said WOULD work, they repeated, "Our drives will work, but you cannot put a SATAII drive into a D820."

Uhhhh.. yeah.

So I rolled the dice, spent $119 on the drive at TigerDirect, and used a $20 USB-SATA cable with backup CD from Apricorn.

The swap from the original 80GB to the 500GB worked flawlessly, including (IMPORTANT!) keeping the Dell support partition (that is formatted in FAT16 and hidden) at the same size, do not use the "AUTO" software and upsize everything.

So the Apricorn software/cable kept the 86MB (or thereabouts) Dell hidden FAT16 partition, I put in 120GB drive C: for the OS and applications using NTFS, then formatted the 360GB leftover in FAT32, because I do a lot of digital audio work onsite and in my music studio, and most pro recording software requires FAT32, which makes the programmers job easy for porting from DOS to Win to Mac to Linux..

This setup has been running on my laptop just about 24/7 since June with zero errors or problems..

This particular laptop lives in my (cough) "Executive Reading Room," and is powered up 24/7.. You never know when you have to make a quick trip to read something important, and it's nice to have everything booted up and ready for.. uhh.. "reading."

The drive is FAST, due the 4GB of SLC (not MLC) flash memory. The NCQ command set required for the hybrid drive is in firmware on the drive itself, so if your computer supports SATA (any version), this Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid is supposed to work.

I can attest to it on my "NO SATAII DRIVES WILL WORK" Dell Latitude D820, may you have equal success..

EXAMPLE OF SPEED BUMP: I don't have time to screw around with benchmark progs, but PRIOR to installing the Seagate drive, when WinXP first is booting, and it has that little graphic "line" that travels across the screen..

.. well, it took btw 13 and 17 times "across the screen" before the logon screen would come up.

.. now with the Seagate Momentus XT (and no other upgrades, changes, software/firmware, no changes at all), it takes six "runs across the screen," or less than 30 secs to completely bootup. About 4.5 months with success sofar, just thought I'd drop the hint in case anyone was contemplating the new technology.

Cheers!

mm1

I'm with you, Djembe. There was a BIG PR blast in May when the drives first came out, then NADA. No customer complaints nor compliments in the Seagate forums, Tom's Hardware, Cnet, no info anywhere..

So, having the severe "gadget fetish" that I have, since my first z80 computer in 1977, I jumped on in. At worst, I could have used it as an extra data drive on one of my five desktops..

But, "oh my!" it's working well. I have had NO problems running any of my utilities.. I was wondering if the flash memory would cause any "gotchas" with my normal HD Test and other software, but no, everything is running fine and dandy.

Thanks for the note!

mm1

Djembe wrote: "and better be careful stealing George Takei's catch phrase!"

Oh my! Is there someplace I should pay my royalties? (grin)

mm1