I've been hearing a lot of talk about the future of gaming hard drives, most of which is touting to gaming consumers that the newest solid state hybrid hard drives are truly the direction games are headed on a PC, Mac or other compliant gaming device. I have a few friends over at Seagate, one of the world's leading hard drive manufacturers and they were nice enough to allow me to take a closer look at the technology and performance of their new Momentus XT solid state hybrid laptop hard drive. Incidentally, earlier in my career I wrote an article about how simple you can swap out your PlayStation 3 hard drive, it takes less than ten minutes with the correct tools and instruction (located here).
Now, I've never claimed to be an expert at hard drives, although I clearly have the drive to handle the most intense gaming situations... at any time, on any console, or PC if that's how you'd prefer to die. I do consider myself to be a tried and true expert when it comes to video games and the latest gadgets and technology innovations, so of course I'm going to install that Momentus XT hard drive in my PC laptop or my MacBook as soon as I possibly can. And, I can guarantee that my thoughts on the direction of gaming hard drives will be shared with About.com's loyal audience immediately after I come to an fully educated and properly informed decision.
Oh, you might have noticed that you only have until January 13th, 2012 at 4:00 PM (Pacific Time) to enter for their grand prize... "a gamer's dream laptop from Alienware that's loaded with a Seagate Momentus XT, the industry's fastest solid state hybrid drive," according to Seagate's statement at this year's CES and their "Hybrid Gamer Sweepstakes." Continue reading for more info and to enter the sweepstakes.I just entered the contest myself, since I'll have to send this unit back once I've completed my analysis of the drive performance and the technology's potential influence on the quality of your gaming experience.
I found some general information on the Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive on one of their marketing leaflets.
"The Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive (SSHD) fuses the blazing speed of solid state drive technology with the high capacity of a traditional disk drive to unleash your system performance. The Seagate FAST Factor advantage takes the Momentus XT SSHD to a new level by implementing a set of innovative algorithms that enables the drive to intelligently decide what data should be written to the solid state memory portion of the drive. By managing data this way, the overall effectiveness of the drive is increased, as is the storage longevity.
Using flash-assisted storage technology (FAST), you get solid state performance, high capacity and exceptional reliability all in one drive.
• Your laptop or PC can start in seconds, not minutes.1
• Your laptop responds up to 300% faster than it used to.1
• Proven SATA technology, but now up to twice the interface speed with SATA 6Gb/s
• All-in-one design for simplicity and easy installation
• Your investment is backed by a 5-year limited warranty."
For the technically inclined, or simply interested and informed gamer you can visit some of these resources as well, they're all from Seagate so do your research elsewhere for verification of the stated specs.
- Momentus XT Hybrib Solid State Hard Drive Data Sheet (download .pdf file)
You can visit Seagate's sweepstakes page here or go to one of the following URLs for more information and all ways you can enter to win what seems like a pretty sweet gaming rig.
- Seagate.com (Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive info page)
- twitter.com/seagate
- facebook.com/seagate
You can also use a Twitter post to enter as well, here are those details which just happened to arrive via a carrier pigeon on the roof.Wait, no, I must have got that one confused with Assassin's Creed.
To enter via Twitter, re-tweet anyone's Tweet from a person who "fragged" at the Seagate Hybrid Gamer demo. Or, tweet the phrase: "I wish I was at CES so I could frag with @Seagate hybrid drives at #ces! #hybridgamer." Make sure the tweet includes the hashtag #hybridgamer and the handle @Seagate!
Check my video game cheats blog in about a week for more thoughts on both the Seagate Momentus XT as well as the technology behind it. Good luck, I hope you win that laptop, not me... I'll still beat ya! Good luck anyhow. Have thoughts about the technology or the hard drive? Post away, comments are free. 8--> vgstrategies out for now.
Comments