Couple of G73JH questions.

[octiceps]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Looks to like my best choice right now is the 2nd generation Momentus XT. I've been doing some research and it looks like the sequential read and write speeds of the Seagate are both around 100MB/s which , thankfully, will not saturate SATA II. While it's got nothing on the OCZ Vertex 3, it's still twice as fast in read and write as my 5400 RPM Momentus.

[gstboy]

You might as well spring for a samsung 830 128GB SSD which would be the same price as the momentus xt. Then use your old hard drive as your second one for storage. The difference real world between Sata II and III is very minimal, the real advantage you will have with the SSD drive vs the Momentus will be boot and load times. Would you rather wait 1 minute for windows to boot or 20 seconds.

Look at the Crucial M4 as well, they are cheaper by $20 to the Samsungs.

[octiceps]

You might as well spring for a samsung 830 128GB SSD which would be the same price as the momentus xt. Then use your old hard drive as your second one for storage. The difference real world between Sata II and III is very minimal, the real advantage you will have with the SSD drive vs the Momentus will be boot and load times. Would you rather wait 1 minute for windows to boot or 20 seconds.

Look at the Crucial M4 as well, they are cheaper by $20 to the Samsungs.

Read the reviews. The 2nd-gen Momentus XT can boot up at near-SSD speeds. And it can be had for ~$120 right now. A 128GB SSD has only enough storage to be used as a boot drive and maybe hold a few applications or games. There's no way I'm gonna run any of my games or applications on a 5400 RPM drive that averages around 40Mb/s sequential read and write speeds. Trust me it's a nightmare sometimes. I don't have enough funds at the moment to spring for both an SSD boot drive and a 7200 RPM storage drive so the Momentus XT is a good compromise.

[gstboy]

The 500gb Momentus XT is still first gen. You have to buy the 750gb model to get 2nd gen.

[octiceps]

The 500gb Momentus XT is still first gen. You have to buy the 750gb model to get 2nd gen.

I understand that. I wasn't talking about the 1st-gen Momentus XT. The prices of the second generation XT's have dropped in the last few months and it's not too hard to find them for the same price as the older generation ones now.

[madnj]

As a first gen Momentus XT user, I think you'd be pleased even with first gen compared to the original 5400 RPM drive the G73JH came with. My tests were 55 seconds for full reboot, so probably closer to 20-30 seconds power on to fully booted. I know SSD will be a bit faster, but not by enough to really matter to me.

I'm going to have to look into those new 2nd gen 750GB drives... I may have to pick up a couple as $170 each is a steal.

[octiceps]

As a first gen Momentus XT user, I think you'd be pleased even with first gen compared to the original 5400 RPM drive the G73JH came with. My tests were 55 seconds for full reboot, so probably closer to 20-30 seconds power on to fully booted. I know SSD will be a bit faster, but not by enough to really matter to me.

I'm going to have to look into those new 2nd gen 750GB drives... I may have to pick up a couple as $170 each is a steal.

They were $125 with free shipping at Newegg on Wednesday with a promo code.

[gstboy]

$125 for the 750gb is a great deal, they are listed at $179 on amazon. I just had back luck with that model. I had to return two that both developed a clicking and chirping sound and failed the seagate diagnostic test. I'm sure that does not happen too often but check it out before you load everything you have on it first.