Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Purchased this recently for a early 2011 MBP 17"-2.2GHZ 16 GB ram, Lion & Snow Leopard & data partitions (3 in all-in same order of creation) The drive replaces a Samsung 1TB 5400rpm drive- which had replaced the stock Toshiba/Apple 750 GB 5400 rpm drive. Formatting & copying the previous partitions on the Samsung to the new Seagate was done via SeriTek 6G expresscard while Seagate was still external. Installed after copying w/o event, booted fine. Apple system profiler show the Seagate drive connecting at the 6G speed- no issue's, not like the well reported 6G SSD connection trouble with early 2011 17" & some 15" MacBook Pro's. My 17" BTW was built in April 2011 & reports 6G in HD bay as well as in optical bay. The new Seagate is very quiet while copying outside the MBP. Not much info on outside of its case other than Seagate name/size of drive, manufacture date-11/2011, part/model/serial numbers, firmware-SM12 and rated @5V .70 amps. And made in CHINA (Amperage draw is lower than the Samsung 1 TB which is .85 amps & Toshiba/Apple 750 GB rated at 1.0 Amps. both of which are only 5400 rpm drives)Does not state speed, flash memory, or cache size, or SATA interface speed- which are 7200rpm, 8GB flash memory, 32MB cache & SATA III or otherwise known as 6G. Seagate did a pretty good job with current draw on drive compared to other laptop drives- inc. Samsung & Toshiba/Apple stock drive. I don't know how they are cramming all this stuff into a 2.5" form factor- but the Seagate weighs more than any of the 2.5" drives that I have here. The Seagate comes in at 3 7/8 oz.- somewhat heavier than the other 2.5" drives(I have). They weigh from 3 3/8- 3 1/2 oz The previously installed 1TB 5400rpm-only 8MB cache Samsung was somewhat faster speed wise by the numbers overall than the stock Toshiba/Apple 750 GB 5400rpm drive it replaced. The Samsung was replaced early on during its first 30 days for pending failing sectors back in July. Some people were having trouble with that drive(Samsung 1TB 2.5") initially. The replacement Samsung has been fine ever since. I purchased it(the Samsung 1TB-2 platter) for the extra size- but really was waiting for at least a 750GB, 7200rpm w/larger cache & of course 6G - since the MBP early 2011 supported SATA III in the chipset. FINALLY Seagate does it. The new Seagate is in fact faster. Based on a variety of different tests & real time usage even with 3 partitions on it performance-wise it comes out around 15%- 25% faster over the Samsung & Toshiba/Apple drives based on the numbers. Boot time on my Lion 10.7.2 (which is a very loaded system, 138GB used-#1 of the 3 partitions on drive) went down from around 52 seconds from the sound of the chime to login screen- to 30 seconds from chime to login. Aperture launches 180 GB (1st launch after boot, non referenced, stored within Aperture library) within a few seconds. That to me is fairly impressive, probably half the time the Samsung needed to do same. Time on battery feels better also. Sitting around on battery while surfing web-doing nothing really intensive other than Firefox using 1GB graphic chip at times for who knows what, the time remaining in menubar just kept going on & on- definitely longer than the Samsung battery usage. It would seem that Seagate has implemented some aggressive power management -don't know for sure, but feels like it. For those interested in Raiding this drive, Storage Reviews has review comparing this drive with others inc SSD. So the Momentus XT does Raid 0 very well. PRO's * Finally a 7200 rpm, 750 GB, 32 MB cache, 8GB flash memory using the SATA III-6GBS interface. * Flash memory integration/management non OS dependent- seems to learn & improve performance * So far no Seagate bs firmware as with certain previous drives-(you know who you are-right?) * Real & felt speed increase(to ME, but I was not using a 7200rpm drive in the 17"MBP to compare so YMMV) * A little bit of this(8 GB flash memory) & a little bit of that(7200 rpm, 32MB cache, SATA III) * Probably the fastest 2.5" spinning drive on market- 9.5 mm height fits all laptops. * 5 year warranty * Appears to have-according to Seagate specs high shock capability-if you go around dropping your laptop * Raid capable * 0 issues so far. * Made in China, no flooding ?? * Price is in the right area NOW, only because of inflated disk based drives due to flooding. CON's * Price at $239.00 is STEEP. I paid $89. for the Samsung. Prices are up, of course due to Asian flooding. * Made in China- quality ?? * Still not a 1 TB size with same features as this drive- come on Seagate, Hitachi/Western-need 1TB * Not a SSD @ spinning drive price. LOL Conclusion : If you are not prepared to spend lots of money on a large SSD given the still high price- around $1.75 per GB. The Seagate is a really nice blend of features for a disk based laptop drive, performance & capacity @ around $.32 per GB. Still an ouch. Would prefer a price around .16 per GB-tops, but with the flooding issue in Thailand(not China though??) I guess that's the market. The drive is not a game changer- yet, still it's a nice & very noticeable incremental speed increase, as well as price. It will be interesting to see if spinning drive manufacturers keep adding more flash to spinning drives & start seeing similar-not equal, just similar to SSD performance & how that plays out price wise between the 2 formats. So far no issues with drive- but only a few days of use- time will tell. Highly recommended, so far- except for the price- but heh the economy is recovering- right??? LOL