Seagate is trying to meet mobile users in the middle with the Momentus XT.  Their idea is to try to get the size and value per gigabyte of a platter based HDD with a performance boost to make it perform more like an SSD.  To do this they have mated a HDD, currently in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB as the most expensive with an MSRP of $156, and 4GB of MLC Flash storage, plus controller.  The flash is intended to hold the most frequently used files, thanks to an algorithm that ensures faster response the more frequently a file is used.  AnandTech’s testing did bear out this in practice as boot times were cut by half after three reboots.  Other benchmarks proved that this drive works as advertised, it performs more like a slow SSD than a fast HDD.

Keep an eye out for Allyn’s review once he specially redoes his benchmarking procedures for this drive; in the mean time you can see Ryan’s review of the fastest external drive out there, the OCZ Enyo 128GB USB 3.0 Portable SSD.

“Notebook users don’t usually have a ton of drive bays and thus only have room for a single drive. It’s not a lost cause though, if your notebook is your only machine you can get away with an internal SSD + external storage whether in the form of a NAS or just something you attach via USB when you’re at your desk.

For the very portable users that don’t want to lug around another hard drive, or for those who refuse to pay the high dollar per GB rates that SSDs command, there hasn’t really been an option other than mechanical storage.

Today Seagate is attempting to change that with its latest Hybrid HDD: the Momentus XT.”

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

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