Hard drive vs SSD

[Afromancer]

Alright, I've been taught my entire computer techy live that a Solid State Drive is 99% of the time faster than a hard drive. Personally, I've always wanted an SSD and now i think is a good time. I calculated my storage i use right now (WD 1tb blue) and it comes in about 450 gb, so a 500 gb SSD sounds about right, right?

 

Well, something weird happened while i was browsing specs, the speeds were faster on the Hard drive! It's not a "cheapo" drive I don't think, but I'm open to suggestions. 

 

Thanks for the help! 

 

- Ethan

[pwn_intended]

If you are on a desktop and not a laptop, have both!

Have an ssd to install windows and applications/games on, and a HDD for all your movies, music, etc.

[Afromancer]

1 minute ago, pwn_intended said:

If you are on a desktop and not a laptop, have both!

Haveanssd to install windows and applications/games on, and a HDD for all your movies, music, etc.

Well yeah I'm a desktop, and yeah i was going to use both, but i just wanted to know why the speeds were the same  

[Afromancer]

4 minutes ago, Epmd612 said:

[ insert crap here ]

I just had an idea, I don't need a whole 500 gb! All i need is some fast 250 gb (or less) and just install windows onto that drive. After that I'll make that my boot drive and get rid of all my windows files on the other drive, and in the end move the important stuff onto the ssd. Won't that work?

[Oshino Shinobu]

That's the interface transfer rates, not the drive's actual speeds. The drive actually caps out at around 150MB/s. The SSD is much faster.

 

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771436.pdf

[Afromancer]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

That's the interface transfer rates, not the drive's actual speeds. The drive actually cap out at around 150MB/s. The SSD is much faster.

 

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771436.pdf

oohh what's the difference?

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Epmd612 said:

oohh what's the difference?

The randon speeds are alsoe much faster than that. The rand read and write on a ssd is about .1 ms while on a hdd its about 20ms

[Afromancer]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The randon speeds are alsoe much faster than that. The rand read and write on a ssd is about .1 ms while on a hdd its about 20ms

 

oh alright, thanks! Any thoughts on the "smaller sdd" idea i had above?

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, Epmd612 said:

oohh what's the difference?

SATA 3 is the interface. While the theoretical transfer speed of SATA 3 is 6Gbps (around 750MB/s), it will be slightly less due to performance overhead. The Image you posted actually conflicts with WD's specs, as the theoretical maximum transfer from buffer for the drive is 6Gbps. I assume someone doing to specs mistook 6Gbps to be equal to 600MB/s. 

 

Either way, the drive does not write or read at 600MB/s.

[Oshino Shinobu]

3 minutes ago, Epmd612 said:

 

oh alright, thanks! Any thoughts on the "smaller sdd" idea i had above?

If your usage is 450GB, then 500GB is too small. 750GB sounds better. You don't want to limit yourself to 50GB extra space before having to upgrade. 

[Afromancer]

26 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

If your usage is 450GB, then 500GB is too small. 750GB sounds better. You don't want to limit yourself to 50GB extra space before having to upgrade. 

Well, i was just join to use the smaller SSD for a boot up and some games, whereas ill keep the hard drive as a slower second dive. I did infact see an M.2 500 gb for 149.99

[Oshino Shinobu]

8 minutes ago, Epmd612 said:

Well, i was just join to use the smaller SSD for a boot up and some games, whereas ill keep the hard drive as a slower second dive. I did infact see an M.2 500 gb for 149.99

If you're doing that, then 500GB is good enough for OS, key programs and some games. 

[Captain_WD]

14 hours ago, Epmd612 said:

~snip~

Hey there

 

You can imagine the SATAIII Bus on the drive as a road with a speed limit of 600MB/s and the drive itself with a maximum speed that it can reach of 150MB/s. Though the SATA interface allows fast speeds of up to 600MB/s as a connection, the devices themselves that are connected to it cannot work faster than a certain speed (in this case 150MB/s or whatever is the specific HDD's max speed). SSDs also use SATAIII connection but work at around 550MB/s and still don't reach the maximum allowed performance allowed by the SATA interface. 

 

The same happens when you connect the same HDD to a USB2.0 port. The drive itself again can work at its speed but it's limited by the USB2.0 maximum speed. The drive simply moves on a road with a much lower maximum speed limit even though the drive is capable of moving much faster.

 

Feel free to ask if you need more info! 

 

Captain_WD.