Seagate introduced the new Momentus XT harddrives a while back, whos purpose was to give us the best from SSD and harddrives in one package. Seagate has now launched the second generation, with more harddrive space and a larger SSD for cache.
The first generation Seagate Momentus XT came in sizes of 250, 320 and 500 GB, together with 4 GB NAND that worked as cache, all in the 2.5″ formfactor. The harddrive reads which files are most frequently accessed, and via internal algorithms it saves this data in the NAND memory, but also deletes the data that is less frequently accessed. In the long run this enables SSD-like performance in the applications and files that are most used, no matter the file type.
The SSD cache at 4 GB NAND was a bit small though, so with the second generation Momentus XT it has doubled this. The new hybrid harddrives gets 750 GB capacity with two 375 GB platters, and 8 GB integrated NAND memory for cache. The harddrive is still at 2.5″ to fit into notebooks, but also desktios, and no supports the latest SATA 6.0 Gb/s interface.
Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB will be available in stores soon, with a price around 189 dollar, but considering the high demand after the floods in Thailand prices are not set in stone. According to early listing the price is more than 50% higher in stores, and if you are not in the need for capacity we recommend looking at a SSD instead.
