Storage Devices
Western Digital WD Black² 2.5-inch Dual Drive (SSD + HDD)
Right away, 1st thing I realize is the Windows start-up speed, WOW! I took 3 timings of Windows 7 start-up, load and idle before which was 110 seconds. Our new Windows 7 start-up time is a impressive and welcome 32 seconds or 244% gain! Time to test the random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speeds. Usually random accesses are small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger. Two series of CrystalDiskMark tests for balance, one at 5 x 1000mb datasets and another at 100mb.
I expect going from a HDD to a SSD will be a big improvement but how much?
Crystal Disk Benchmark Utility shows us how much. Original HDD, New WD BLACK2 SSD and HDD 1000mb tests shows us.
This laptop isn’t realizing the best 350MB read and 140MB write transfer speeds but I suspect it has to do with the older Serial ATA-150 standard.
| SSD read [MB/s] | HDD read [MB/s] | Percentage change | Difference |
| Sequential 235 | 56.51 | 315.86% | 178.49 |
| 512K 229.3 | 25.09 | 813.91% | 204.21 |
| 4K 19.36 | 0.325 | 5856.92% | 19.035 |
| QD4K 67.72 | 0.587 | 6654.60% | 67.133 |
OH MY! What a sweet upgrade for a old laptop. 315-6655% increase in read performance.
| SSD write [MB/s] | HDD write [MB/s] | Percentage change | Difference |
| Sequential 106.6 | 60.42 | 76.43% | 46.18 |
| 512K 69.6 | 30.32 | 129.55% | 39.28 |
| 4K 27.13 | 0.447 | 5969.35% | 26.683 |
| QD4K 25.43 | 0.472 | 5287.71% | 24.958 |
Write performance is nothing to snicker at either 76-5969% improvements.
Maybe 1000MB datasets are too large as test criteria so lets try 8MB comparisons with ATTO Disk Benchmark.
Original HDD
WD BLACK 2 SSD
We can see the limitations in this sample. The old WD Scorpio average peaks at transfer rates of 50-60MB/sec for writes and 61/MB/sec for reads where the WD Black 2 SSD average peaks are 110MB/sec writes and 200-250MB/sec reads. Specifications boast 350MB / sec read and 140MB / sec write. I have all the drivers updated so there is some limiting factors depending on motherboard chipsets and I assume since it is older Serial ATA-150. Newer ATA standard and you could realize up to up to 400MB / sec write transfers from statistics I’ve seen on other installs.
20 days now since I did this upgrade to the wifes old laptop.
Every night she sits down, hits the power button, I look at her, she at me and I get the sweetest smile.
As a client she’s very happy with the improvements. ALL of the complaints have stopped and replaced with :)