128 GB SSD vs 5400 rpm HDD?

Laurbert515

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Jul 23, 2013
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I currently have a HGST HTS541010A9E 5400 1 TB hdd in my laptop and I am writing a program which needs to read a large amount (~14 GB) of data from it and I notice it is incredibly slow. While I am exploring other options as far as programming efficiently, could my HDD be part of the problem? I am considering putting in a 128 GB mSATA SSD to help with the I/O speed, but I can't seem to find good comparison of the two to see what the speedup would be. For example, I see that the Crucial M500 has 500 MB/s read and 130 MB/s write, but how will this compare to the 5400 rpm HDD I already have installed?

Any help would be great thanks!
 
Solution
Laptop hard drives are designed for power efficiency first, performance second.
A SSD is about 50x faster than the best hard drives in small random I/O. That is what the os does mostly.
A SSD will be 2-3x faster in large sequential operations than the best hard drives.
The main drawback is cost per gb, but if you are targeting a 14gb app, then that should be easy.
Larger ssd's are a bit faster because they have more nand chips that they can access in parallel.

A ssd for the os and apps will trandform your laptop performance.
I have changed out every laptop I own.

oczdude8

Distinguished
let me tell you that using a good SSD will BLOW YOUR SOCKS OFF!! Honestly, it make such a hugh difference. Went I upgrade my 7200rpm WD Black hdd to a SSD, I was shocked at how slow the HDD was.
your HDD probably has around 50-100mb read vs 500mb read of an SSD. that's almost 10x!

also get the crucial m4, its really good, better then the m500.
 

robax91

Distinguished
Your drive specs:


Device Type
Hard drive - internal
Capacity
1 TB
Form Factor
2.5" x 1/8H
Buffer Size
8 MB
Bytes per Sector
512
Features
TrueTrack servo technology, Thermal Flyheight Control (TFC), Advanced Format technology
Width
70 mm
Depth
100 mm
Height
9.5 mm
Weight
102 g
Performance
Drive Transfer Rate
600 MBps (external)
Internal Data Rate
125 MBps
Seek Time
12 ms (average) / 20 ms (max)
Track-to-Track Seek Time
1 ms
Average Latency
5.5 ms
Spindle Speed
5400 rpm
Reliability
Start / Stop Cycles
600,000
Expansion & Connectivity
Interfaces
1 x - 7 pin Serial ATA
Compatible Bays
1 x internal - 2.5" x 1/8H
Miscellaneous
Compatible with Windows 7
"Compatible with Windows 7" software and devices carry Microsoft’s assurance that these products have passed tests for compatibility and reliability with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7.
Compliant Standards
Halogen-free
Environmental Parameters
Min Operating Temperature
0 °C
Max Operating Temperature
60 °C
Shock Tolerance
225 g @ 1ms half-sine pulse (operating) / 1000 g @ 1ms half-sine pulse (non-operating)

according to http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=GCE13084
 
Laptop hard drives are designed for power efficiency first, performance second.
A SSD is about 50x faster than the best hard drives in small random I/O. That is what the os does mostly.
A SSD will be 2-3x faster in large sequential operations than the best hard drives.
The main drawback is cost per gb, but if you are targeting a 14gb app, then that should be easy.
Larger ssd's are a bit faster because they have more nand chips that they can access in parallel.

A ssd for the os and apps will trandform your laptop performance.
I have changed out every laptop I own.
 
Solution

ddbtkd456

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Sep 4, 2013
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Problem



Solution

ummmm hahaha im going to end the arguing right here. meet it half way in the middle. Hybird drive. Best of both worlds. SSD speed with HDD storage only by Seagate.

Here:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Storage: Seagate 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $99.99
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-10-13 22:18 EDT-0400)

It's about 100 bucks and saves you money on both buying a hdd and sdd. Besides its the best of both worlds. SSD for applications that you use often and HDD for storage that you need.

Additional Information
I do hope this answer helps. Please also remember to pick the best solution that answers your question correctly, so that others may learn from your thread. Thank your for your time, and have a good day/night.

 
The main problem with a cache is that you need to be able to hold frequently used stuff in the cache, so that it can be repetitively reused once you have loaded it from the slower drive.

If you can do that, then you might as well do one step better and store those things on a ssd in the first place.

The best circumstance for a cache is some sort of pattern where you intensively use one set of data for a while, then flush the cache and use a different set of data repeatedly.
I think those situations are not common, and probably not recognized even if they exist.
 

ddbtkd456

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Sep 4, 2013
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Again this would be the best choice since it uses both....I have done tons of research on this matter for my laptop and my desktop and use them in every system I own and they work without a hitch. They have the speed of an SSD and the storage of a HDD. Even if they are not recognized is no reason to put down another persons answer when they are just trying to be helpful. You might want to think about how you respond in order for you not to offend people in the future. Just a friendly thought.
 

enemy1g

Honorable


I don't think geofelt was trying to offend you, merely just stating his opinion on why a hybrid drive isn't viable in this situation. You must realize that just because someone disagrees with your opinion, doesn't mean they're trying to offend you.

On topic, I would go with the SSD, I switched to a SSD back in 2010 and wouldn't go back.
 

ddbtkd456

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Sep 4, 2013
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Seriously what is peoples respect problem around here....then get an SDD just go with what they said...I'm out of this thread.
 

jbseven

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Dec 2, 2011
646
0
19,160
Install some hdd benchmarking software and see how much your current hdd gives you in MB/s. Compare that to the 530/390 MB/s read/write speed of the samsung 840 pro for example.
To give you a real world idea, switching from a 500gb 7200 rpm hdd to a samsung 830 128gb ssd reduced my windows load times from 30-40 seconds to 10 seconds. Thats very impressive imho.
However your hdd and laptop are most likely sata2, which means you're limited to 300MB/s compared to the 600MB/s of sata3. So you may not get the full benefit of the new ssd. Do look this up on your laptop's website. Though this is the theoretical maximum, I would say your current hard drive would give you maximum speeds of only 130-150MB/s, while the new ssd would give you >250-280 MB/s speeds.
These numbers are however affected by and vary with your laptop's specifications and performance capabilities.
 

robax91

Distinguished
You mentioned mSATA, I found a detailed review for the Plextor 5M5 and it looks promising. I'd say to go for the 128GB model for the best speed/price point.

Specs:
Seq Reads (SATA 6Gb/s): Up to 540 MB/s
SeqWrites (SATA 6Gb/s): Up to 320 MB/s
Rndm Reads (IOPS 4KB): Up to 80,000
Rndm Writes (IOPS 4KB): Up to 76,000

Review:
http://www.legitreviews.com/plextor-m5m-128gb-msata-ssd-review_2229/6

Cheapest Vendor:
$111 and free shipping from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B5BRIMG/?tag=pcpapi-20

It will dramatically enhance your PC experience, I recommend SSD as I have been using one for a year now without any problems (except hating every other PC I touch for being slow without one.)
 

Vincenloris6

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Oct 19, 2013
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Agree with others, if you look for hard drive reading speed, SSD is much faster than HDD. If you do not care that much about reading/writing speed, i.e. you do not do large amount of reading/writing often, then SATA should be good enough for you.
 

popatim

Titan
Moderator
I agree also. A cache is only good for whats cached and you dont have any controll over that.

While SSHD's are great boot drives, in this situation they would be marginal at best - theres simply no way for an 8gb cache to cache 14gb of data no matter how frequently the files were accessed.

To the OP i ask, sure you're reading 14gb of data but what are you doing with it? That will also have a large impact on your perceived speed. For example copying it out to a usb2 drive - nope an SSD wont help that at all.