Showdown at Big Sky -- Sandisk 32GB SSD Vs. Seagate 160GB 7200RPM HD

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by Les Tokar

The SanDisk 32GB SSD and Seagate 160GB 7200RPM lineup (view large image)

After the overwhelming response to my first Solid State Drive (SSD) review listed at ‘Sandisk 32GB SSD Tested’, I formed the opinion that a completely accurate real world comparison of a SSD and HDD was a necessity.* Thanks to the temporary loan of the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 ST9160823AS (160GB 7200RPM) hard drive through Dell, I was able to run comparison tests.

The computer used for these tests is a Dell XPS M1330 with an Intel T7300 Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of RAM.* It's packed with all the goodies including LED display, NVidia 8400m graphics card and I have it running 64-Bit Vista Ultimate.

To start, I used two testing programs, HDTune and ATTO Disk Benchmark, to tackle all angles of storage device testing.* After looking at these results for the first time, I thought it should be mentioned that my laptop runs in AHCI mode with the Intel Matrix Storage Manager update.* On initially configuring my system, I learned that a system in AHCI mode with the storage manager produces far better results then a system running in ATA mode.

HDTune Results

SanDisk 32GB (view large image)

Seagate 160GB 7200RPM (view large image)

*

ATTO Test Results

SanDisk 32GB SSD (view large image)

Seagate 160GB 7200RPM (view large image)

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Comparison Result Summary

An initial glance shows the SSD holding its transfer rate at an average 65 MB/s with ease while the Seagate dwindles from an impressive start but drops 25 MB/s as the test continued on.* On the other end of the spectrum, the Seagate produced an impressive burst speed of 102 MB/s while the Sandisk struggled at 44 MB/s, even with a best access time by the SSD of an incredible .2 ms in comparison to 14.7 ms posted by the Seagate.

Not seen in the tests are the incredible heat created by the Seagate and immediate fan necessity at full bore. The Seagate registered a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius while the SSD didn’t even register a reading.* This is commonplace in every day usage as, unless I’m plugging in my 22” Dell monitor, I forget that there is a fan in this laptop.

Another significant difference is the SSDs ability to handle startup and application executables.* The ‘flash’ of the SSD is quite evident in booting the system as well as starting everyday windows toys and applications.* An example is the start of MS Word or Excel which can’t be measured as it appears instantly.

Battery Duration Testing

For this test to be completely accurate, I copied an old video file, 150MB in size, to the hard drive.* The laptops OS was set in ‘power saver mode’ and the video played full screen and looped.* I used the same system, first for the Seagate drive, and then later in comparing the SSD. To add, all the goodies such as Sidebar, Bluetooth, quickset and Internet were turned off.

Utilizing the 9-cell battery, the Seagate test yielded a total play time of 4 hours and 3 minutes while the SSD added a further 47 minutes to that result by giving 4 hours and 50 minutes.

The 6-cell battery also lasted for a period of 2 hours and 31 minutes with the SSD once again adding 30 additional minutes to break the 3 hour mark.* Remember now, we are running a laptop on full screen video which is being played from a hard drive.* This results in a great deal more battery drainage then one who sits typing a document, playing a game or using the Internet.

System Startup Time

In testing the startup time, my laptop has been tweaked to its limit and a great little program called TuneXP has been very successful in reducing start times significantly.* All tweaks along with access to this program can be found in my full tweaking article at ‘Top Vista Tweaks You can Find’. The best average start time I could get to with the Seagate was 37 seconds while the Sandisk bettered that by cutting a further 9 seconds off that yet to give 28 seconds.

Pricing

The Seagate is the hands down winner here as with it listed in Dell Canada as a $160 upgrade while the SSD, originally a $550 upgrade has just been replaced with the Samsung 64GB option at a whopping $1000.* Simply, the SSD remains a toy of the ‘absolute gotta have' PC enthusiast, although its performance and reliability will make it a very strong contender for mainstream storage as prices drop.

As sizes increase, the business application of the 64GB and larger SSDs will become much more evident.

Conclusion

A lot can be said about both the hard drive and the solid state drive from both ends.* Price and storage capacity are a huge factor of purchase for the HDD although the silence, lengthier battery life, quicker start time, and great reduction in heat and fan use are factors that just can’t be missed with the SSD.* As there are no moving parts within the Sandisk, normal everyday risks need not concern the user as is that of the HDD.*

One of the better comparison articles I have seen can be found at ‘Toms Hardware’ website. Samsung claims that this has been improved greatly with its release of the Samsung 64GB SSD now being offered by Dell.

Stay tuned for Part Two of Showdown at Big Sky should Dell once again allow my testing of another of its offerings in the 64GB SSD.* Once again, thanks to Dell for providing the equipment to make this review possible!

 

Very interesting article...

The Seagate seems to perform slightly slower than the Hitachi 200 GB 7200 rpm drive...

Using HD Tune, under Windows Vista, in AHCI mode (with latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager) I get an average transfer speed of 53.1 MB /sec and 3% CPU utilization with the Hitachi drive...

Would love to have that 64 GB SSD drive though

 

50C?!?!

My Hitachi Travestar 7200rpm is running at 27C.....21C at startup 36 at load...

 

Your application startups are noticeably slower on the HDD vs the SSD?

On my i1520 with a traditional HDD and 4GB of RAM (in 32bit Vista) I can't measure a startup time for programs as they are so fast... Why is there a difference between us in that regard?

 

Interesting, but from reading the article i can tell which you own

 

That's because more hdd space in the same given area means the data is more densely packed. Therefore, on the 200gb drive, the hard drive has to move less in order to access the same amount of data on the 160gb drive, thus reducing access time slightly.

 

if that was the case, how come the WD raptor 150GB is slightly slower than the 74GB raptor according to a Tomshardware review?

 

There are other factors that contribute to HD speed. What I described above doesn't affect speed that much, it only accounts for small differences when all other aspects are the same.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/19/sbm_high_end_system/page7.html

 

Yeah, in general the higher the disk density (GB per platter), the better the performance (but this is a generalization at best).

I suspect there are brand differences between the 2 drives...

BTW, regarding temperatures, mine is running at 37 C (from HD Tune) after several hours of use...

 

Its probably a older gen 7200 that dell sent him 50C is abit much i have to say.

 

Besides price, what other downside is there? How long will a SSD last?

 

There are reviews that allege that a SSD will jump leaps and bounds around a HD for total life span, some controverted by many who question the drives method of storage standing up over time.

Time will only tell as this is such a new product I think.

 

So far no one has brought up the absolutely abysmal write speeds of the SSD versus the HDD. Average of around 15MB/s versus almost 50MB/s, that is horrible. The 128KB file size test got up 28MB/s but still that is 20MB/s slower than the HDD!
I want to see a write test done. Copy 10-20GB to both drives and list the time it takes.
I would like to see the test done a few times: with large files, then with small-medium files, then a mix etc...

 

Agreed weezedog, I'm surprised no one else has commented on that, not even the author of the article. Anyone want to chip in with a reason for as to why the SSD would perform poorer than the HDD in this regard?

 

As recognized, prices and size are the two factors favoring the mechanical drive. I wouldn't love to have the SSD even if it weren't quite so expensive just because of the limited capacity. And the 7200 RPM HD is quite fast in its own right.

I also have a 37-second startup time with a 160 GB 7200 RPM drive, but made by Hitachi. I haven't tweaked Vista, though the install is fresh.

I'm not convinced longevity is a serious problem in the mechanical drives, either. Perhaps for a server-type system with constant access, but hard drive crashes seem pretty rare for the everyday user, even years after the computer was bought. Of course what it all comes down to, once a slightly higher capacity is achieved, is price.

 

Regarding write speeds, that is simply something I overlooked in proofing my final draft. I had mentioned it in the concluding paragraphs in my original write-up, but for some reason I ended up with "Samsung claims that this has been improved greatly with its release of the Samsung 64GB SSD now being offered by Dell."

"That" specifically is the abismal write speeds which are supposed to be around 65-70MB/s with the release of the 64Gb SSD. Although no review is available the claim of the newly released SSD is that it improves performance by at least 30% over the 32Gb.

Thank you for making that observation.

 

All
Regarding 'write' v 'read' - anyone care to comment on the ratio of 'write' to 'read' time for 'average use'*.
Clearly, there's a metric of 'perceived speed' (largely driven by read time, time to load applications etc, but would also include copying tasks). I'm wondering, for an 'average' day, what the mix of reads and writes would be. Is this defined in any of the more normal 'office work' or productivity benchmarks.

*'average' is obviously going to be different for different sorts of people. I'd suggest starting with whatever the 'office benchmarks' have, e.g. tasks such as w/p, surfing, some powerpoint / excel work. I'd _guess_ that the volume of 'read' will be much higher.
These would clearly be different to, e.g. a keen photographer, who'll be doing a lot of card to disc copying, CD burning, image manipulation.

 

Wow, too bad about the super poor write speeds. I guess I will be waiting until this tech improves a little bit. These flash drives are so fast, in a few years no one will ever want to boot up from a spinning disk.

 

Good point. I was also going to ask this question because of the review. One thing the reviewer does not take into account is the SuperFetch capabilities of Vista. This is most likely the reason who your programs start almost instantly, and I believe it's also the reason that they started instantly on the SSD.

To really test the program startup time, you would have to install a program or start one up that you have never used before. Since the reviewer has 4GB of RAM, a lot of that could be used to preload programs into RAM.

 

Depending on the amount of RAM your system has can have huge effect on the average because of the windows page file (swap file). Windows constantly is swapping data from RAM to the page file on the drive in the background. The lower the amount of RAM, the more frequent/intense this becomes.
The slow write speeds of the SSD could have big impact on the perceived speed of the system because of slow writes to swap file.
Of course with 2-4GB of RAM you probably wouldnt notice it, but I bet you would with 1GB. BUT, if you have a $600+ SSD drive, I somehow doubt you only have 1GB of RAM.

 

Nice review, would love to have more "real life tests" for everyday users though.

The battery life tests showed a 16% increase in battery life when playing movies on both 6 and 9 cell battery.

The boot time showed a 25% faster boot up.

Tests that I would have like to have seen:
1) Battery life tests using web browsing and typing documents, just like one would do in school, using a low brightness, on both 6 and 9 cell.

2) Transfer speeds of medium and large files in comparison to the HDD.

3) Multi-tasking real world experience, like scanning for virus, while web browsing and transferring a file from 1 partition to another partition. Or Winrar to unpack a movie, all at the same time.

- Ideally more multi-tasking comparisons to the HDD and how the user feels when using the SSD versus the HDD. Just an FYI i generally have my laptop and my desktop doing multiple things at once, like Downloading and transferring files, web browsing and all sorts of stuff in between.

Other than that, I can't wait till I see a review on the 64GB SSD, just an FYI, the Matron SSD are the fasted right now, but a 32GB one costs like $1500 US, and yes it is much faster than what Samsung and Sandisk SSDs.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

I can address many of these concerns if you would like. The battery tests with regards to everyday use I had done in my original review of this system and the SSD. You will see the hotlink in the documment near the top.

With regards to transfer speeds, I believe the write results may be very deceiving. I am on cable and, as such, continually have a very quick download speed. I tried downloading anumber of large files both through cable and then through DVD transfer only to find that both systems were limited by the speed of the cable or DVD. I believe this because download time did not differ whatsoever in all the tests, one including a download of the entire Office Standard disk to the hard drives.

As for multitasking, you may again be interested in my first review as I did such things as use the internet, download programs etc. It explains it better their.

I use my laptop regularly on battery when Im downstairs or doing things such as lectures and coaching. I can say that, on balanced power settings, I dont get under 5 hours on a 9 cell which really impresses the heck out of me.

 

The write speeds are not deceiving. HDTune is the perfect application for benchmarking them, and it shows them accurately.

 

I might add that playing a 150MB video isn't a good test to battery time. The video fits entirely into RAM, so you'll be only using the drive for a short time. Redo that test with a DVD ripped to the HDD/SSD and let's see how it gets. It would be better if you could do it with an HD movie, and even better if you could use less RAM - say 512MB. From your other results, the SSD should perform even better, but right now I think the difference is not really due to it. Also, it might be a good opportunity to try and test the write performance of the SSD. I'd also point out that games are much more battery-intensive than simply watching a movie, unless you are talking minesweeper here.

 

I was careful to watch for this (movie loading to RAM) and am sure it didnt do that. I infact also monitored the HD process (taskmanager/performance/resource overview) and can say that the hard disk was utilized as I had expected.

I may have been tricked somehow by the system but am confident thhat the steady HDD/SSD usage was an effective example of what i needed.

Having said that, I am not an expert, but rather, just a laymen trying to figure out the most effective way to get the results sought.

Sometimes its not so easy, as i described in trying to find which disk could save a file faster.

 

Trying to find info on this Matron SSD...Nothing. Am I missing something here???

 

The write speed is a big issue, and really dulls the SSD's luster even more when you take into consideration the 7200RPM's < 1 second Outlook/Word/Excel, etc. startup with 4 GB.

Ever copy 2 GB of pictures from your camera to your PC? That needs a good write speed. Ever render a 10 GB video on to your HDD? (you couldn't do that on the 32 GB SSD due to space constraints, but, regardless...) That needs a good write speed.

The swap file is a good point, as are the myriad other disk-tasks Windows performs behind the scenes, all of which involve WRITING.

Ugh.

Now, if the choice were 64 GB SSD vs. only 100 GB 7200 RPM for the same price, that might be worth considering depending on your usage.

Frankly, I am also surprised that this issue was basically left out of the review. I am not that surprised, though, since the owner is very proud of his SSD, but even to leave it for the last paragraph is still a very insufficient treatment of the issue, IMHO.

 

why is it "showdown at big sky"?

 

Nothing more than an Old Robbie Robertson song that came to mind when I thought of the showdown of the SSD and HD

 

So you would get the 64SS with the new 1330?
I'm trying to purchase one now???
Thanks for any help.
Jane
[email protected]

 

For the money and the ability to get the deal with a M1330, I would give it a serious thought. I know of two others who, because they called and spoke to someone when making their purchases, were able to offset the cost of the SSD with the lower price of their system after working out the final price.

Consider taking a look at my thread and see if it can help:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=153497

If I can help in any way, feel free to PM me.

 

Darn I should have called earlier, it is probably too late now.
But from your articles it sounds worth it!!
Jane