In the test 15 years ago: The advantage of SSDs over hard drives in everyday life 101 comments
Solid State Drives (SSDs) became increasingly popular 15 years ago thanks to affordable models and ever-increasing capacities. In a test carried out 15 years ago, Techoutil answered the question of what the advantages of an SSD over a hard drive really are in everyday life.
Fast access times
While traditional hard drives have mechanical components to read and write information, SSDs are entirely electronic. One of the main advantages of SSDs is therefore the fast access times, because the components do not have to be moved mechanically (i.e. physically). At the same time, random (non-sequential) access to data was significantly faster for the same reason. In practice, both had strong implications: from application startup to operating system startup, SSDs were significantly better positioned than traditional hard drives.
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The test field of nine SSDs and two hard drives covered everything from inexpensive entry-level models to SLC SSDs. The two hard drives, Western Digital Velociraptor 300 GB and Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB, each represented absolute and popular high-end mid-range hard drives.
Daily benefits
During the boot process, the test results showed clearly to the naked eye which models were SSDs and which were HDDs. Even though there was almost no noticeable difference between the SSDs (at most 8%), booting with both hard drives took twice as long as with the slower SSD. The expensive Velociraptor hard drive was able to gain a slight advantage over the budget model with the same technology. This picture was also found in all application tests: while SSDs started all programs very quickly, hard drives almost always took around twice as long. If you wanted to start multiple programs at once, you had to expect the startup process to take three times as long when using a hard drive. The fastest SSDs were able to run between 17 and 20 percent faster than the slowest models.
When copying large amounts of data, the differences were greater between SSDs. For example, the Agility EX with SLC storage was able to copy a Windows 7 image almost twice as fast as an Ultradrive. As usual, hard drives took last place and were sometimes almost five times slower.
The final test of the application was the installation of the programs; Microsoft Office 2007 and Rockstar’s GTA IV were represented here. When testing, GTA IV was installed using a CD and the optical drive was so limiting that installation took the same amount of time on all SSDs and HDDs. Things were different when installing Office 2007 via virtual drive. The familiar image appeared here: SSDs in the front and HDDs in the back. However, the differences were smaller than usual and the slower SSD was “only” 10-50% faster than both HDDs. For the fastest SSD, this was at least 35 to 85 percent.
Conclusion
Under realistic conditions, it became clear very quickly and in virtually all application scenarios that SSDs were a gigantic upgrade over mechanical hard drives. The conclusion of the test 15 years ago was clear: “No CPU for 1,000 euros, no sixteen GB of the fastest and most expensive DDR3 memory and no new motherboard can speed up daily work with the PC like an SSD. » Regardless, with the chosen model, users can still expect a considerable increase in the perceived speed of the computer. Anyone who nevertheless wanted to take a closer look at the model was well served by the Intel X25-M, which received a recommendation for its high speed, TRIM support and moderate price.
In the category “In the test 15 years ago”, the editorial staff consults the test archives every Saturday since July 2017. We list below the last 20 articles published in this series:
Razer’s Orochi for mobile gaming fun via BluetoothBlackBerry’s Bold 9700 was a budding smartphone.The new Super Mario Bros. was also a hit on the Wii. NVIDIA’s cheap GeForce GT 240 was too expensive Noctua’s NH-D14 was the ultimate CPU air cooler The Radeon HD 5970 was fast and choppy Corsairs Obsidian 800D was ideal for air cooling water. Sapphire got the Radeon HD 5750 a recommendation AMD‘s Eyefinity guaranteed gaming fun on three displays The Radeon HD 5750 was too expensive despite a suggested price of 115 euros Scythes Zipang 2 as a quiet and compatible top-blowing cooler The Radeon HD 5770 offered DirectX 11 from 140 eurosThe Radeon HD 5850 was DirectX plus affordable 11 inputATis Radeon HD 5870 as the first graphics card with DirectX 11Intel’s Core i5-750, i7-860 and i7-870 on Socket 1156Cooler Masters Hyper 212 Plus as a budget coolerIntel’s X25-M Gen 2 SSD was the championThe Nokia N97 with 280 MB/s would have liked to have had a smartphone with the Phenom II X4 965 back in the GHz race Corsair’s H50 was water cooling for everyone Apple’s iPhone 3GS was faster than ever
Even more content like this and many other reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner of the Techoutil forum.
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