SSD VS HDD Netbook boot race.

Computer Help and Discussions The Lounge
1

I decided, just for the fun of it, to try a netbook boot race. Specs are below:

- Both have the same clean installed 32 Bit 7

- Both have the same AVG 2012 with updates

- Both are running with performance set to full power

- Acer has 160 GB HDD (5,400 RPM) with 140 GB free

- Dell has 16 GB SSD with 5.4 GB free

- Both have 1 GB RAM

- Acer > Dual core 1.66 GHZ atom

- Dell > Dual core 1.6 GHZ atom

* Both are defragged with Defraggler 2.07, have System Restore off, & have 1 program loading (AVG) at boot.

__________________

Acer One D260:

- Power On > 42 Seconds

- Power Off > 17 Seconds

- Restart > 53 Seconds

Dell Inspiron Mini 10

- Power On > 42 Seconds

- Power Off > 22 Seconds

- Restart > 64 Seconds

Winner: Acer!

* I thought it was very interesting, that despite the Dell having an SSD drive, the Acer still beat it in shutdown & restart times.

__________________

How it all breaks down:

Acer > 6 seconds saved doing a reboot.

Dell > 0 seconds saved doing a reboot. Exact same time doing a reboot as a power on/power off cycle.

- Power On > Both have the same boot up time

- Power Off > Acer wins by 5 seconds

- Restart > Acer wins by 11 seconds

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I know, I know, Dell had a small & slow SSD, but still, Acer had the 5,400 RPM drive.

And yes, I know you aren't supposed to defrag SSD, but I did it to eliminate any hint of fragmentation causing slow downs for more equal testing.

Wonder how fast Acer would be with a large & fast SSD + 2 GB RAM?

2

How the heck is that possible? O.O There must've been some other factors...

3

How the heck is that possible? O.O There must've been some other factors...

How is what possible? That could be anything. I don't know how to tell you how what is possible, unless I know what you mean by what. Maybe if u let me know more about ur question, I can give u an answer...

I'd love to help u, but I don't know how, cause I am trying to figure out what you mean by "How is that possible?"

4

I know one possibility.

I will give you a clue.

What is the difference between an eBay Fake 16 GB Flash Drive and an eBay Fake 16 GB SSD ?

5

I know one possibility.

I will give you a clue.

What is the difference between an eBay Fake 16 GB Flash Drive and an eBay Fake 16 GB SSD ?

What does this have to do with anything? What are you saying? Dell uses smaller SSD drives because they are cheaper. So they can compete.

Personally, I would have to say that it makes better sense to use use a regular 5,400 or 7,200 RPM HDD, at least until SSD become cheap enough that you can put something with a little bit of size on the netbook. Say, 120 GB or more. Even 64 GB would be a vast improvement over a 16 GB model...

6

I am saying that your SSD may not have the quality and speed that is expected of a SSD.

It might be informative to define as SOURCE a folder which occupies a large amount of disk space,

and define as TARGET an empty folder,

and then run a simple BAT script such as

ECHO %TIME%
COPY %SOURCE% %DESTINATION%
ECHO %TIME%

That would measure to within 0.010 Seconds how long it takes to read and then write 1 GByte (or whatever amount you choose),

I suggest that caching the data via RAM should be disabled for that test.

Perform that test on both Laptops and see which wins.

I can still do mental arithmetic, but for the challenge some years ago I devised a script for XP x32 that still works on Win7 x64

I have used a 1 GB image file as an example below

@echo off

SET SOURCE=E:\Images\v5\2FE769AFA97E71E8-09-09.inc_06.mrimg

echo %TIME% #

FOR /F "tokens=1-4 delims=:." %%d in ("%TIME%") do (

SET /A T1=%%d*360000+1%%e*6000+1%%f*100+1%%g-610100

)

COPY %SOURCE% E:\Test\

echo %TIME% ##

FOR /F "tokens=1-4 delims=:." %%d in ("%TIME%") do (

SET /A T2=%%d*360000+1%%e*6000+1%%f*100+1%%g-610100-%T1%

)

echo Copying %SOURCE% took %T2%0. mSec

pause

Regretably the forum CODE box is still broken today - blank lines get omitted - hence QUOTE box instead.

When I run that script the result is

19:41:19.83 #

1 file(s) copied.

19:41:21.28 ##

Copying E:\Images\v5\2FE769AFA97E71E8-09-09.inc_06.mrimg took 1450. mSec

Press any key to continue . . .

NB I display the pre and post time stamps for when I am sceptical of the accuracy of a digital computer. :unsure:

7

This is "The Lounge"?

8

I am saying that your SSD may not have the quality and speed that is expected of a SSD.

Oh, ok! I knew full well it is a small SSD, but what can you do? If it was mine, I would upgrade, but it belonged to someone else.

But I tested it while I had it.

9

Dell uses smaller SSD drives because they are cheaper. So they can compete.

They should ship that 16 GB "back to the future", i.e.; 1998. I couldn't stomach only having a 16 GB hard disk, wouldn't be able to do jack s**t with it!

10

Oh, ok! I knew full well it is a small SSD, but what can you do? If it was mine, I would upgrade, but it belonged to someone else.

But I tested it while I had it.

My comments are totally unrelated to size - just the speed.

I have a 1 TB Primary HDD

I have deliberately shrunk C:\ down to only 25 GB which has 9 GB of free space and 7 GB of never knowingly used Pagefile.sys and Hiberfil.sys

When I move Pagefile.sys to the Secondary drive and dump Hiberfil.sys I could shrink C:\ down to 16 GB and still have 7 GB of free space :o

(But I will probably not bother shrinking because that changes identification and Macrium will have to start a new FULL image backup.)

I like small.

I just could not bear to face a screen that requires me to run CHKDSK on C:\ if that involved waiting for 1 TB to be processed.

If I ever defragged 1 TB of free space it would be time for my children to get the doctor to sign-off paperwork,

and have me put in a nursing home away from the Internet :rolleyes:

I only use C:\ for Windows and the absolute minimum of applications that need to be installed on C:\

Everything else is on other partitions on the primary HDD,

and are mostly familiar Portable applications that I copied from my XP x32 Laptop,

and because they are 32 bit they take half the space of x64 versions.