Yes, thank you very much for this.

The fact that a technology is used by such archaic devices as floppies doesn't mean it isn't used today by HDDs.

Well guys in reality your talking about a performance increase / decrease in maybe the millisecond range of things. IE not noticeable by humans anyway. Unless your gonna be running a web server or some other high availability software then this is all just pointless banter. Its kinda like people that say there computer is faster because it uses ddr3 instead of ddr2. Its really just a game of whos epeen is bigger.

I did read that article by the way and the author is just making the same point that anyone who has ever seen the inside of a disk knows. There is this little arm that reads and writes data and the thing lives on the outside of the disk not the inside. Thus it will take longer for you to read data from the inside of the disk then the outside as the arm has to travel.

If you really care about any of this so called performance increase then switch to a SSD. But I will warn you that what you get in read performance you loose in write performance on a SSD. Currently no ssd ( let me repeat that NO SSD) that a normal consumer would be willing to pay for, can give you better performance then a regular hard-drive.

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I wouldn't do this today. It's a good thing, but not worth its cost, even for read performance. Even more, i get more than 10 times worse performance with SSD on my EEE PC 901 than on any HD. Really fast SSDs cost too much today.

Having worked for a hardware manufacturer, I can attest to the fact that memory could make an immense difference inperformance and reliability, depending on the architecture particuliarities, because it will affect the wait states. But that was off topic.

When it comes to hard drives, I feel far more concerned about reliability. When your bad sectors start multiplying you prefer it to happen where the reinstallable OS and applications reside, rather than where the data that you neglected to backup regularly resides.

That's why every system admins knows the holy words backup backup backup. I have almost a terabyte of data on one system that I need to backup to something but I am at a loss as to what to send it to other then another harddrive.

Interesting debate, but rather useless in actual practice in my experience. I've had lots of hard disks and some solid state disks going back to the pcmcia sram I used in my old Poqet PC Classic, and up to my current SSD in my Eee 701SD (8gb). I haven't really noticed any performance difference, and probably won't unless I put them side-by-side and punch keys simultaneously. Not worth the effort, imho. Right now I'm using a Puppy linux variant on an Acer Aspire One ZG5 w/120gb hdd, as well as an Asus Eee 701SD w/8gb SSD. I haven't noticed any difference in performance. I'll bet the SSD will withstand a BOATLOAD more vibration & jarring around than the hdd version, though. This is the biggest factor for me in deciding which I'll take with me or use when out on the bike, boat, backpacking, or bouncing around in the truck in the backwoods. That hdd is nice for loading up with stuff like map applications or stuff with development in mind. The SSD is simply more rugged, and I'll replace it with a 32gb model as soon as I can. That would be all the space I need to run 3-4 distros, or just one with a LOT of stuff. If you're using graphics-intensive stuff, gaming, or development, I'd stick with hdd, and use the ssd variants for more abusive environments. You won't notice the speed difference in actual use otherwise, and maybe not at all.

I agree with you there ax25nut that and SSD is better suited for a mobile device, simply because they can take more abuse from vibration. I do however wonder how well they stand up to static discharges.

Isn't the read performance much faster for an SSD, eg. when frequently shutting down and rebooting an OS? I've read next to adding RAM, an SSD can noticeably improve system performance? If your CPU isn't that great, an SSD can really give a speed boost.
Downsides are of course cost and write performance.

rkski wrote:
Isn't the read performance much faster for an SSD
next to adding RAM, an SSD can noticeably improve system performance
If your CPU isn't that great, an SSD can really give a speed boost


My reply:
Regarding read performance....as mentioned elsewhere, anything you gain in read performance is offset by slower WRITE performance, unfortunately.
Adding ram can improve performance immeasurably under proper circumstances. A neighbor once asked me what was wrong with her slow computer. She had eight (8) mb of ram in a Win9x system. Checking her config.sys & autoexec.bat files showed she had at least that much in win$hit crapware being loaded into ram upon bootup. On top of that, she wanted to use her web browser, also a microshaft product (you know the one...), which takes up more ram than that also. Given that her system may be configured to dynamically load swap space as needed, you can see why her system was bogged down. Adding a lot of ram spares your system of using hard disk space for a swap file, saving the time needed for all those unnecessary read/write cycles. Ram is always faster than swap, so adding ram can help speed in this case. Same goes for a linux system. Eventually you can reach a point where you have more ram than you'll use, and you're then wasting money on more ram. Time for a faster (newer) hard disk.

This brings us to the solid state drives (SSD). A truly marvelous idea that nowadays is far advanced from early SSD's. The examples I have on hand are:
Poqet PC Classic (1989) w/ 8088 type CPU, using pcmcia sdram cards up to 2mb in size. These are fast, indeed.
HP Omnibook 300 w/386sx-25 CPU using pcmcia adapters loaded w/CF cards....also quite fast.
Asus Eee 701SD using 8gb SSD....with a CPU at 900mhz, you can't really tell the difference in speed, in my opinion. Faster read, slower write equals i/o speeds on par with modern hard disks. The obvious advantage here is greater vibration resistance vs greater storage space, but not cost. I got a 160gb sata disk for $50. Ill get a 32gb SSD for over $100. I see pretty much the same performance with my Acer Aspire One ZG5 w/120gb hdd that I see on my Asus Eee 701SD w/8gb SDD. I'll replace this 8gb device with a 32gb version that has faster read/write speeds, but I'm really not going to notice enough zip to make it worth it. The extra size will, however, allow me to put everything I want on one drive without the need for extra USB sticks, and THAT is worth the extra cost. I only paid $125 for this netbook, so I don't mind spending more on extras for it. I might not do that if I'd paid full price.

As for the other, older PC's listed above? Well, in all honestly, I don't notice enough difference in speed in the newer stuff over them to brag about. The reason? Programs are WAY bigger these days than when those earlier PC's were made, and that takes more RAM. Windows w/IE 3.x was only about 4-5mb back in the mid-90's when the Omnibook was released. The Poqet PC never had a browser, using a terminal client instead for web connections. It will never dream of using today's applications. Ditto the Omnibook. What they WILL do, however, todays netbooks/laptops could never dream of doing. They'll run all day on one set of AA batteries. Telnet on these early DOS/Win systems is as fast on dialup as your browser today on ethernet, and the reason is ram requirement.

All the above I mention to bring things into perspective. Just how much speed difference must there be before you notice it? Depends on the size of your applications, and the inherent speed of your OS. I may notice a speed increase when I get that newer 32gb SSD, but it'll never be as cost-effective as a real hard disk. I can drop most of my SSD systems on the floor, pick them up, and keep using them, unless I physically break something critical. I've destroyed two IBM thinkpad laptops by merely putting them behind my seat in the vehicle and driving to work on SMOOTH road surfaces! And those were built like tanks in cast-aluminum enclosures! Hrumph....SO.....

If you upgrade your systems with newer, faster SSD's, by all means, clock the boot speed BEFORE you do, so you can compare it with the boot speed AFTER the upgrade. You may notice faster speed, but probably not enough to really brag about. I'll be doing this test here on MY system in the near future, and you can bet I'll post the results on every forum I'm subscribed to for others to see.

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