Seagate has announced their second generation solid state hybrid drive (SSHD), the Momentus XT 750GB with FAST Factor. The new Momentus XT adds 250GB of total capacity over the first-generation XT as well as double the cache NAND, going from 4GB to 8GB of SLC NAND. Seagate is perhaps most enthusiastic though about what they’re calling FAST Factor technology; a series of on-board software enhancements that give the new Momentus XT an extra performance kick. These new SSHDs boast fast speeds in single drive configuration, which gets really interesting when you pair two in RAID0 as we’ll show in this review.
Just what is FAST Factor? It’s Seagate’s effort to better blend the benefits of the on-board cache NAND with the capacity of the hard drive, and generally refers to their integration of the cache and hardware components on the 750GB Momentus XT. Specific examples of where this comes in to play include things like FAST Boot, where Seagate has portioned off a portion of the NAND, just to handle files needed for booting a computer. FAST Factor also makes the Momentus XT OS independent, by keeping the software contained on the drive itself, there’s no need for a driver, meaning the XT will be at home in any computer. Another bit of good news is that FAST Factor can be updated in the future via firmware updates – case in point, Seagate will be adding FAST Write to the Momentus XT to give the cache multi-directional benefit.
FAST Factor is one key part of the intelligence built into the Momentus XT, the other being Seagate’s Adaptive Memory technology. Similar but smarter than the system used on the first Momentus XT, it identifies usage patterns to keep the most frequently accessed data at the LBA level in the NAND cache for faster access. Each profile will vary based on how an individual uses their drive. As with many caching solutions, it will take a little while to build out the profile, but after just a few loads of regular programs like Outlook, a web browser and Word for instance, the benefits will be obvious to end users.
