Comparing SSD Performance to Mechanical HDD Performance in a Dell Laptop

Jayayess1190...

That hard drive has an incredible sound when booting up. Wanna know the difference between that and mine? Sit in a sound proof room with earplugs on.

Now to your startup time. Its not really comparable as your startup only goes to the logon screen. Just now, I timed my startup again which was 34 seconds button press to internet identified and connected (little ball by 2 PC screens). That is when everything is complete in my system and nothing else is loading.

 

What is the point of comparing when you are using 2 different configurations?

 

I like that SSD. Must get one. Full stop. Thanks Flamenko!

Ivan

 

Gr8 review.....gud job !!

 

Flamenko, how fast are scandisk or defrag ?

 

No need for defrag.

 

I do defrag and in fact, I have found a program that reduces boot time specifically. It can be found as Tweak #2 in my tweaking article below.

My boot time on this computer, push button start until internet confirmed, is around the 20 second mark.

The program cuts most boot times in half and I have received a ton of replies regarding it in the Tweak article.

Good Luck

 

What is this driver, please, Flamenko?

 

Intel Matrix Storage Manager (on your driver cd) R154198

 

Thought I would add a little something here. i recently moved up to 64Bit and am seeing a noticeable difference in my SSD.

Specifically, the average transfer rate has increased an average of 10Mb/sec with their also being an increase in burst rate and decline in cpu usage. It also appears to be more stable, if that can be determined by the graph lol.

HDTune results attached...

 

Sorry, I meant what does it do? I googled it and Wiki-ed it and couldn't understand the description. Is it something that would improve the performace of a normal HD on the 1330 or only a SSD?

 

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm

This program enables your system to run in ACHI mode vise ATA which is much faster a have seen in my hard drive tests. Some systems do not need it. Some seem to BSOD on installation without it.

If you dont need it, leave it.

If you go back to pg 5 of this post, I attached my Hdtune results of before and after installation of this driver. There is a decent gain in performance.

 

I have this read thread and it doesn't appear to have been mentioned before that Dell is planning to bring out a 64 SSD drive shortly. I read something on it here.

http://laptoping.com/samsung-64gb-ssd-in-alienware-and-dell-laptops.html
Now that would interest me.
I would to like to know the difference in battery life between a 5400 and an SSD one in the M1330. If i thought it was worth it i may seriously consider getting one.
I don't know how much they would cost but if i got one with the £ being double the $ i would most definetly import one from abroad.

 

It seems that they dont have a big impact in battery life. You might get an extra 10min but dont expect an extra hour or so. However the response time of the system is greatly improved. Still waiting for a reasonably priced 64GB one. Scan computers had a couple of samsung SSD's a while ago.

 

I dont necessarily agree with that but will be doing tests to verify that shortly as a hard drive is on its way. My view is, although the ssd and hd power consumption is neglibible at normal use, they are different at constant use and the hd creates much more heat.

This then creates alot more fan use in the HD system and so on...thus more battery drain.

Stay tuned... Showdown by the end of the week finally.

As for the 64Gb, I believe I will be doing that within a few weeks as well; specifically the Samsung.

 

ssd are worth it. time to get one

 

Or maybe just a bit too early. As prices are going down:

Super Talent Launches MLC SATA-II SSDs for Notebooks

High-Speed MasterDrive SSDs Offer Unprecedented Performance & Reliability

San Jose, California – May 6, 2008 – Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today launched a new line of MasterDrive solid state drives (SSDs) that are 100% interchangeable with hard disk drives (HDDs), but are faster, lighter, use less power and are far more rugged and reliable.
...

HTML:

[TABLE]
[TR][TD]MasterDrive MX [/TD][TD] Description            [/TD][TD] MSRP[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]FTM20GK25H     [/TD][TD] 120GB MLC 120/40 MB/sec [/TD][TD] $699[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]FTM60GK25H     [/TD][TD] 60GB MLC 120/40 MB/sec  [/TD][TD] $449[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]FTM30GK25H     [/TD][TD] 30GB MLC 120/40 MB/sec  [/TD][TD] $299[/TD][/TR]
[/TABLE]

HTML:

[TABLE]
[TR][TD]MasterDrive DX [/TD][TD] Description         [/TD][TD]   MSRP[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]FTD60GK25H    [/TD][TD]  60GB SLC 120/70 MB/sec [/TD][TD] $1299[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]FTD30GK25H    [/TD][TD]  30GB SLC 120/70 MB/sec [/TD][TD] $699[/TD][/TR]
[/TABLE]

MasterDrive DX drives employ SLC NAND Flash to support astounding sequential read and write speeds up to 120 and 70 MB/sec respectively, and are backed with a three year warranty. MasterDrive MX drives use MLC Flash to achieve maximum sequential read/write speeds of 120 and 40 MB/sec, and include a 1-year warranty. MasterDrive SSDs are available now from NewEgg and eWiz.
...

 

Yes the 60Gb 120/40 mlc is going for $449 on Newegg, a decent price for if you are looking for and can live with the 40MB/s write speeds.

I think, for the average user, this wouldn't even be noticeable and there still would be a very visible increase because of access times.

 

Hi Les,
Did you try to test the write performance on your SSD drive ?
I have been using Dell Latitude D420 Laptop with 32 GB ssd drive for more then one year now. The operation system boot time is very fast but the write speed it a big disappointed. The maximum write speed is 11 MB/s.
This is seriously affects the laptop performance. It some cases (indexing outlook email) my laptop just freeze for few minutes.
I tried contact Dell support but they just told me that this is how the SSD drive works. At the moment I am seriously considering changing to 'normal' hard drive.

 

Can I ask...are you using the Sandisk drive? If so, good luck as many have experienced exactly as you describe with no cure as of yet. I invite you to check out my articles below, the sandisk being tested in there I believe.

 

Yes I have Sandisk drive in my laptop. It looks like the only option is to replace it.
Cheers