Test Hybrid Hard Drive

[ErnieAd]

Hi!
Can I test with PassMark a hybrid hard drive (Seagate Momentus XT) with both mechanical and SSD components and determine it's advantages over a conventional drive?
If not, why?
Thanks!
ErnieAd

[David (PassMark)]

Sure you can.

I would suggest playing around with different scenarios in the Advanced disk test and running back to back tests against a conventional drive.

[wonderwrench]

Sure you can test it but because of the way the Momentus XT's work you will not see the added performance of the 4 gigs of flash memory on the drive. In simple terms the drive learns what files are accessed most often and when the drive is idle the files are copied to the flash memory. Momentus XT drives should test better than most laptop drives do to the 7200 rpm spindle speed and 32 megs of cache. I replaced the stock 320 gig 5400 rpm drive in my wife's laptop with a 320 gig Momentus XT and what a difference. Its not as fast as an SSD but way faster than a normal magnetic drive. Screen shot below comparing the two drives.

Bill