Although there has been some noise over the years about hybrid drives that somewhat bridge the gap between hard drives and solid state drives, short of getting installed in a handful of notebooks, they haven't had a significant impact on the overall market. Hit your favorite on-line retailer and you'll find a slew of SSDs and hard drives available, but nothing in between. If you need massive amounts of storage space, a hard drive is a necessity (unless you've got an unlimited budget). But if it's maximum performance you crave, only an SSD will do. Today, however, Seagate aims to change that with the release of the new Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid.

The Seagate Momentus XT mates 4GB of solid state storage with a traditional 2.5" hard drive in an attempt to bridge the current gap between hard drives and SSDs. Seagate claims the Momentus XT can offer the same kind of enhanced user experience as an SSD, but with the capacity and cost of a traditional hard drive. That's a pretty tall order. Does the Momentus XT deliver? Let's find out...