Speedy Performance and Rapid Boot Times on a Solid State Drive (SSD)

The average boot time that a computer takes to boot up with Windows 7 installed on a traditional hard disk drive that has moving parts is about 1 minute. On top of that, to complete the boot up time and safely start surfing the internet, anti-virus or other start-up software will take an additional minute of boot time. This long delay of about 2 minutes for an operating system start-up will allow the user time to go grab a cup of coffee, or simply sit and wait for the system to finish booting. However, with a solid-state drive and Windows 7 installed, a user can begin surfing the internet 18 seconds after the user first pushes that “On” button. A dream come true for users who cannot stand waiting, love performance, want a quicker system start up, faster updates, and enjoy speedy software installations.

First, what is a Solid State Drive (SSD)? A Solid State Drive is distinguished by no internal moving parts and contains semiconductor microchips similar to a USB drive. Second, what is a conventional Hard Disk Drive (HDD)? A Conventional Hard Disk Drive is distinguished by the conventional magnetic disk it contains with the physical movement of read and write heads. Comparison pictures below show the microchips in the SSD and the moving parts disk in the HDD.

SSDs have greater benefits than regular hard disk drives. The most important benefit of an SSD is speed. If you want a huge performance gain for a computer, switching to an SSD which contains the operating system will give you an enormous performance boost. Some of the benefits of SSDs are that they are totally quiet (virtually silent), use less power, require less space (2.5-inch vs. 3.5-inch), half the width, and produce practically no heat at all.

A quick look at an example of a specification comparison of a HDD versus a SSD follows:

Corsair Force 3 Solid State Drive (SSD):

• Max Read/Write:  Read 550 MB a second/Write 510 MB a second
• Power consumption: 2.0w, standby/sleep 0.5w
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF): 2 million hours
• Interface: SATA 3GB and 6 GB
• Form Factor: 2.5 inch
• Weight: 80 grams

Western Digital Caviar Black Hard Disk Drive (HDD):

• Max Read/Write: Read 138 MB a second/Write 138 MB a second
• Power consumption: 6.8 to 10.7w, standby/sleep 0.7 to 1.3w
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF): 1.2 million hours
• Interface: SATA 3GB
• Form Factor: 3.5 inch
• Weight: 1.52 to 1.66 Pounds

The differences are enormous when comparing the specifications of the HDD and SSD above. However, one main drawback of SSD’s is the cost. SSDs are more expensive than the traditional HDDs. On the other hand, the cost is absolutely worth the performance that the SSD provides. The users will be extremely delighted and shocked when they feel and see the huge performance improvements provided by the SSD.

12/27/2011 – Benchmark comparisons on my current computer using a Corsair Force 3 SSD with 1.3 firmware versus an older Western Digital HDD:

Corsair Force 3 (SSD) – Read/Writes:

Older Western Digital (HDD) Caviar Blue that I have installed that is used for storage:

As you can see above from the benchmark tests, the big differences from the SSD compared to the conventional HDD is the transfer rate per second. The very first chart above shows that the SSD reads and writes over 500MB a second (similar to a dose of caffeine in the human body), whereas the chart below the first one displays the HDD reads and writes up to a measly 65MB a second. In this particular case the SSD reads and writes data 8 to 9 times faster than the HDD, which is a huge performance distinction.

When it comes to storage space, the bigger the storage space on the SSD, the more expensive the SSD will cost. This is because the buyer pays for memory size similar to the cost of computer RAM, instead of a hard disk drive size, which costs less and comes with slow performance.

At the time of this writing (12/27/2011), a Terabyte (1,000 GB) on a conventional HDD that has moving parts costs about $100 to $200, whereas a SSD that contains only half a terabyte (512GB) will cost about $800 on Newegg. The $800 is very expensive for that size SSD. However, depending on how much software a user plans to install on the SSD drive which contains the operating system, an SSD this size is not needed.

The user can determine what size SSD to install used by the operating system. For example, a 128GB SSD on Newegg is big enough and will only run you about $200. Certainly, worth the performance upgrade. Checking the size of your current drive that is installed will show if it is big enough or if a bigger drive is needed.

It is amazing how small these SSDs are, less than half the size of HDDs, and are enormously faster than the conventional hard disk drives. Once a user gets a taste of the speed and performance, it will be tough to accept a system that performs any less. Yet tasting a cup of coffee as the caffeine boosts the performance of a user’s nervous system temporarily, can be compared to pushing the “On” button on a computer system except the performance of the SSD will be permanent.

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