An evolution of the Momentus Thin line, the ST500VT000 is a single platter, 500GB, 7mm, 2.5″ model from Seagate’s “Video 2.5 HDD” line-up. These were presumably some of the last drives made to be used in Xbox 360’s, seeing as this one comes from a late-model E variant.
Usually, 360’s hold standalone Momentus drives (or equivalent models from other manufacturers), but this is clearly a point where Seagate began to provide AV-class drives instead.
Drive Attributes ---------------------------------------- Seagate Video 2.5 HDD ST500VT000 ---------------------------------------- Capacity 500GB Mfc Date 2015-07-13 Format 2.5" Height 7mm Interface SATA Platters 1 Heads 2 RPM 5400 Protocol Serial-ATA/600 (lm./150) ----------------------------------------
Being from an Xbox 360, it hails the same QR code system Microsoft insisted upon. With a single 500GB platter, this drive has a 250GB per surface yield, alongside two heads.
This drive labels itself as a Momentus Thin 8, as seen just above the serial number. Based on this, these drives are fundamentally the same, but with auto-park disabled, alongside running at 5,400 RPM, as opposed to 7,200 RPM on the Momentus Thin 8’s.
Based on the date code (alongside the DOM), this drive was made on the 13th of July, 2015.
The underside of these drives is relatively uninteresting, with no labels, markings or abnormalities to speak of. Taking off the PCB reveals more.
Alongside some insulating film (as opposed to foam, assumedly to reduce thickness), the spindle-motor and head-stack interconnect points are present. The QR code trend doesn’t end on the top-side, clearly.
Holding a surprisingly large amount of empty real-estate, these drives have very few IC’s to speak of. Marvell continues to be present in the controller IC market, alongside EMST when concerning buffer RAM (a whopping 16MB!). Seagate also released the ST500VT001, which is identical to these, but with 32MB of cache instead. Sadly, there’s no codename present on the PCB at all.
This drive has been barely used, which is my own fault, but nonetheless it’s practically new still.
Generally, Seagate 2.5″ drives of this era seem to be quite reliable, as opposed to their Rosewood architectures. Being an AV-class drive, these do not auto-park their heads after a specified interval, unlike general mobile units. This was seemingly the case with some older consumer 2.5″ models used in Xbox 360’s, but this behaviour wasn’t always guaranteed, depending on the model used. Fortunately, unlike those models, this drive pretty clearly has no auto-park firmware built-in, being an AV-class drive in the end.
If only Seagate had stuck with these, instead of the Rosewood’s.
Here’s the specifications manual for this series of drives, if you’re curious:
Seagate Video 2.5 HDD Specifications Manual (pdf)
If you missed the video I made on this drive, you can find it here: