Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ 2.5" Solid State Hybrid Drive Bare Drive

Pros: I've been running this in my netbook for a couple of years and its been great. No issues so far!

Cons: none

Pros: Easy to set up

Cons: Bought it Feb and it died around May. Kind've having trust issues with Seagate.

Pros: Having used it for my laptop for 2 years, I think it is safe to say that this product works exactly as it is advertised. No, it's still a HDD and won't work as fast as any SSD your MBP's have got, but it has noticably improved my boot performance across Windows 7 and 4 versions of Linux Mint. It's definitely worth it for the price when I bought it, although now that SSDs are cheap and plenty you might consider getting a proper SSD instead.

Cons: Can't think of any

Pros: Replaced a Dell Laptop (Pentium M) drive with this about 2 years ago. It still works fine.
Once the SSD caching system starts to cache correctly, it does boot quite fast.

Cons: I would probably say unless you need the space, the Crucial M500 is far faster and is about $120 for 240 GB right now.

Other Thoughts: My brother's laptop (The Dell) is pretty fast with this drive, but it doesn't stand a chance against my laptop in terms of drive speed. The Crucial M500 240 GB in my laptop is wicked fast / will probably outlive this drive.

Pros: I thought I would save myself a few bucks buying this instead of a true SSD 2 years ago when I built my dream system. I should have sprung the extra cash for a real SSD. This drive is nothing special. I love Seagate drives. But I don't think "hybrid" drives have a future. All this is, is a mechanical spinning laptop drive (2.5") with a large solid state cache. I see no improvement in read/write times over tradtional hard drives. As with all the Seagates I've ever owned, it has not given me any mechanical failure issues or even any bad sectors or blocks. But a speed demon it is not. I recently ordered a true SSD as an upgrade to replace this. I will then make this the boot drive on my backup server or maybe replace the boot drive on one of my workstations.

Cons: A little pricey for basically a regular hard drive of only a 500 GB capacity.

Not any faster than a traditional hard drive.

Other Thoughts: My build in April 2012:

Rosewill BLACKHAWK-ULTRA Gaming Super Tower Computer Case

Thermaltake Toughpower Grand TPG-1050M 1050W ATX 12V PSU

Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo)

CORSAIR Hydro Series H100 (CWCH100) Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA2 2011 ATX Mobo

Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ 2.5" Solid State Hybrid Drive

Patriot Gamer 2 Series, Division 4 Edition 32GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 15000)

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950 OC 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Pros: Slightly faster than a normal HDD. Worked for a bit I guess.

Cons: -Failing fast. (getting error messages...wont be long..
-Loses speed fast
-Pricing is getting worse

Other Thoughts: You can get a 250gb Top of the line SSD for less than they want for this. I am never buying a seagate sshd again. May just go SSD over HDD for now on.

Pros: Fast, cheap, easy to install.

Cons: A couple weeks ago it thought my fan was running full time. But there was no air blowing from the fan ports, so I started looking at the only other moving part in my laptop, the aux drive (main drive is SSD). Seagate won't take it back because it hasn't failed yet; noise is not sufficient for a warranty claim.

This problem seems to be well-known. So I guess I'll back it up and buy an HGST drive so I'll be prepared when this one fails. I've been using Seagate drives since the ST-251 days. They're just not as reliable as they used to be.

Other Thoughts: 4 eggs because it hasn't failed to function yet. I will reduce my rating if dies before the warranty runs out.

Pros: - Immensely fast for what it is, boosts performance considerably.
- Drive runs quiet and reliably like a standard drive.
- Installs without a single flaw; like any standard HDD.
- Same great warranty you've come to expect from Seagate.
- Plenty of space for the cost still.
- Heck, cost effective as a drive period.

Cons: - Still a mechanical disk, so can be damaged by movement.
- Not as fast as an SSD, of course, but darn close.

Other Thoughts: Some have said online the drive can make a funny clicking noise...I've yet to experience this, even with the latest firmware. The biggest problem is the hybrid part of the disk is small, so while you get general boosts in performance its not exactly perfect and can actually degrade noticeably with time. Case in point, a fresh install with Windows, using it for awhile, almost all of the critical boot files get cached and Windows boots insanely quick. However after a few months and installing more and more software, you'll start to notice Windows won't bootup with the same intensity it had before. However, it will still generally be very quick. Its just to say it has its own "personality" that occurs as the disk learns what files are best to keep on the flash memory.

Pros: Still going strong after 2+ years as the primary drive in my Alienware m11x, which sees almost daily use. Nowhere near SSD speed, but a massive upgrade on the typical 5400rpm 2.5" drives small laptops come with.

Cons: Price was almost twice what I paid for the same size rpm and capacity non-hybrid drive for another machine. Hybrid tech hasn't proven to be much faster than regular drives.

Other Thoughts: Even at the sale price I picked this up for two years ago, it was probably not worth the premium over a regular 7200 rpm 2.5" drive. That being said, I have no complaints about the drive's performance or reliability and it has been a major upgrade over the drive it replaced.

Pros: Boot and App Load Performance close to SSD speed.

Cons: I first used a Momentus XT 500 for a couple of years and wanted to upgrade to a 750 for the added SSD cache, so I cloned my 500 up to the 750 using Acronis True Image. It worked fine for over a month and I did notice increased speed in boot and application load times. After a reasonable burn-in period, I used the old XT500GB drive for something else and right after that, I went to turn on my laptop and the heads were clicking and It was all gone. All of my data and everything.

Other Thoughts: I know I'm an idiot for not backing up my turbo tax data and other important info. However, I have never had a brand new hard drive fail like that after just one month. Usually there is some kind of warning if bad sectors and read errors start occuring. Just sucks for me!