Windows 7 Boot
For this test, I used a general installation of Windows 7, which is to say I didn’t use a fresh install for testing. It’s all very well saying that your PC can boot in 30 seconds from a clean installation, but it’s the time after as your background applications load and you are ready to use your existing system that really matter. With that in mind, we timed from just after POST (add 11 seconds to the numbers below to include POST times) to the time of the last startup application or gadget finishing loading. Windows was set to login without a password. Eight Gadgets, Mailwasher, mIRC, Waterchill Control Panel, Stardock Object Dock, Stardock Fences, SabNZBD+, Core Temp, Everest Ultimate, Live Messenger, Steam and Dropbox; all of these were set to load with Windows and the times shown below include the loading of those programs.
Time in Minutes:Seconds
Again, the SSD is the clear winner here, but the Momentus XT isn’t far behind. It’s interesting to see it in action as it requires at least two boots before you get this time. My first boot test with the Momentus XT came in at 1m33s, and it wasn’t till the second time around that it dropped to below 1 minute.
Now since the Adaptive Memory is always learning, and since I’m not the sort who reboots very often, I was expecting the drive to become slower to boot after forcefully using multiple programs (started a few times to allow the drive to pick up on them) but so far the boot times have all been around the 1 minute mark. My reasoning was that if the Momentus XT is constantly adapting to your usage habits, would it not dump boot data in favor of data I use more often? Especially since it only has 4GB of Flash to mirror to. However this didn’t seem to be the case and at no point did I feel that the 4GB was not enough.
Crysis Warhead
Rather than testing just a start up of the game, I thought it might be interesting to see how quickly the game would start if loading a demo at Enthusiast levels.
Time in Minutes:Seconds
Now this is interesting. I did the tests multiple times and at different intervals and after having formatted the drive again to make sure, but the Momentus XT would seem to be great at loading games. Once again, the Momentus XT’s first run was 1m:26s with subsequent runs being around the 56s area. I again ran multiple programs, and used those programs multiple times to attempt to ‘clear’ the flash mirror but it would seem that the 4GB is enough, as Crysis always started the demo after 56s. After a drive format and re-installation of the game, the game started once again in 1m:26s and there after in 56s.
Seagate have also uploaded a video to youtube that further shows the read speed prowess of the Momentus XT thats worth watching. Things get interesting at around the 1:40 mark.
