Choose a capacious, fast and, most importantly, reliable HDD for a laptop from the huge number of different hdds and ssds that are now on the market, it is impossible without understanding what parameters you should pay attention to when choosing. It's like playing in a casino or lottery - there is a chance, but it tends to be close to zero.

When selecting a laptop or netbook, everyone relies on the basic parameters of the device’s performance and reliability, such as: manufacturer, clock frequency processor and/or its model, volume (very rarely - type) of RAM, display diagonal, video card power (built-in or discrete). Concerning hard drive, then the choice is made only by its volume (the more, the better), but this is not always the case.

A laptop hard drive has more critical parameters for reliable operation than its desktop counterparts. If, for example, spindle speed, hdd and power consumption in regular computers is not critical for the reliability of its normal functioning, then when working on a laptop, these parameters directly affect the reliability of the disk subsystem and the safety of your data.

Now let’s look at what is best for us to install in a laptop from commercially available drives for its long and uninterrupted operation.

Before the appearance of SSD drives on the market, the bottleneck in the performance of any computer was precisely their disk subsystem. Even the best and fastest (including server hdds) with speeds of 10,000 and 15,000 rpm this moment several times slower than an average ssd drive. Next, let's look at the pros and cons of using it on a laptop. hard drives And solid state drives.

HDD

This is a traditional type of hard drive. It is based on mechanics and consists of a magnetic head that reads and writes information to magnetic disks. The number of these disks affects the volume of the hard drive and its overall dimensions.

pros

• The main and probably the only advantage is the best price-volume ratio.

Minuses

• low write and read speeds (90% of modern laptops have disks with a speed of 5400 rpm, which affects performance);
• extraneous noise due to the operation of mechanics;
• higher energy consumption;
• heating of the disk during operation;
• vulnerable to shock loads (if you drop the hdd, it will most likely be inoperable, it is especially dangerous if this happens while it is working). SSDs do not have this disadvantage;

SSD

This modern type devices for storing information. SSD (Solid State Drive) is a solid state drive. Its design and internal structure are radically different from the previous generation of hard drives. It has no mechanical parts at all, as it is based on microcircuits and controllers. In principle, this is the same flash drive, only larger in size, data storage capacity and significantly increased operating speed. SSD is completely electronic device and calling it a hard drive is not entirely correct. Compared to the previous generation storage device (HDD), it has a number of advantages:

pros

• the speed of reading and writing data is on average 4 times higher (it all depends on the type of memory and controller used). There are already models that faster hdd no less than 10 times;
• the absence of mechanics significantly increases reliability;
• delays and downtime when working with data are practically absent (data access speed in solid-state drives is about 1ms, and in standard hard drives 9-12ms);
• does not emit vibrations and does not make any extraneous noise;
• very low heat generation, which has a positive effect on the operation of the disk and does not require additional cooling;
• low power consumption, which is good news, as the battery life of the laptop will increase;
• has significantly less weight compared to HDD;
• your information will not be damaged if the drive or laptop with it falls, which can easily happen with a portable device.

Minuses

• What is a plus for an hdd is a minus for an ssd drive. This is the price per gigabyte of data stored. Of course, this ratio is gradually improving and as technology develops, I think this drawback will become obsolete;
• if used and/or configured incorrectly, the service life of an ssd is shorter than that of a hard drive (this depends on the operation of the operating system, the type and manufacturer of the memory used in the ssd);
• in the event of a disk failure and loss of access to data on the solid-state drive, it is more difficult to restore the data, and it will also be more expensive.

SSHD

It would be unfair to ignore this type of drive. This is a so-called hybrid hard drive. In short, the main data is written to ordinary magnetic disks, but they are received and processed in a large buffer of fast flash memory (up to 32GB in some models). Read the article for more details about this type of drive.

Selection criteria and parameters of internal drives for laptops

SSD drives: how to choose the best option

You can significantly strengthen your laptop by replacing mechanical drives with solid-state drives.

The cheapest 60 or 120 GB SSD, having the same form factor as an HDD, is much better than even a top-end device with a spindle speed of 10,000 rpm and a 32 GB cache.

So far, an SSD drive for a laptop large capacity(500 GB, 1 TB) is expensive, and if you need to store a lot of information, then choosing a regular laptop hard drive will be preferable. If you need both performance and a lot of free memory, then you can disable the CD-DVD drive and instead . For example, a combination of a fast SSD for the operating system and an HDD for information may be optimal. Usually it is used for laptops, except in cases where only one device can be connected to the laptop.

Which disks to choose

Typically the form factor determines the purchase:

• size (2.5 or 1.8 inches);
• interface (connector or data transfer standard SATA 1, 2, 3);
• type of drive (mechanical HDD, solid state SSD, or hybrid SSHD systems).

If it is almost impossible to change such indicators of a laptop SSD as size or connector (except using adapters), then data transfer standards are not so critical, for example, any new disk SATA 3 works well on an old laptop.

When thinking about which SSD to choose, remember that there are the following cell standards: . The cheapest and short-lived TLC memory. If you need reliability and not too high a price, take a reliable drive with MLC memory; the fastest is SLC, but it is too expensive and is usually used for servers.

You can choose the best option for yourself only by clearly finding out for what purposes the device will be used and what the expected budget is. For example, if you need office work, then it is better to take an SSD, even a cheap one, for torrents - an HDD or a hybrid device. It should be remembered that solid-state drives have a limited number of cell rewrite cycles.

SSD Variations

In order for the laptop to please the owner with the speed and comfort of work, it is advisable to determine its characteristics before purchasing. In recent years, the internal form factor has played a role in mobile devices great importance. Thus, many smart gadgets use permanent memory, similar to solid-state drive chips, and some devices, such as tablets or netbooks, ultra-cheap laptops can be equipped with removable eMMC drives. They have their own connector and in terms of performance occupy an intermediate state between HDD and SSD. Their memory capacity is small, about 32-64 GB, although there are also samples with 128 and 256 GB.

An inexpensive laptop should have at least 64 GB of memory, even if it is eMMC-type, otherwise you will have to constantly struggle with lack of space (Windows OS alone will require at least 20 GB).

Buy a laptop with a sufficient amount of RAM, since its constant lack of memory greatly affects, due to their constant loading, the data that, if there was sufficient RAM, would be loaded from it. This is the main reason why the laptop slows down very much. Better choose a model with less powerful processor and a large amount of memory.

More accurate data on the main characteristics of the hard drive installed in the selected laptop model can be found on the manufacturer’s website, which is not a panacea, since manufacturers can easily replace a drive from one company with another in a later release of a given laptop model.

Conclusions and videos on choosing the right hard drive for a laptop

What we came to after all of the above:

1. The best upgrade option disk system laptop, there will be a solution to use an SSD drive as the main (system) drive. A regular hard drive, which we remove from the laptop, can be used in two ways: 1. Installing it instead of a DVD drive. How to do this and what you need for this is described in a separate article, the link to which is above. 2. Make it external storage connected via USB. To do this you will need to purchase a special box.
2. If the above option is not suitable, then we simply replace the hdd with an ssd, but here the requirements for the solid-state drive in terms of volume and reliability should be stricter, since you will not have the opportunity to save important data to another medium, although a flash drive can help out. It all depends on their volume.

I think that with this article I have closed for many the question of how to choose the right hard drive for a laptop. I myself have a Sony laptop from 2013 with 4GB of RAM, after upgrading according to option 1 it simply turned into a completely different device. Everything works quickly and is practically no different from a desktop PC, which also uses an SSD for the system (Samsyng 840 EVO 120Gb). By the way, I bought it on Aliexpress, like a more modern model (850 EVO) for a laptop. Everything arrived without problems or complaints. It's been on PC for almost 3 years now. The flight is normal. There is not enough statistics on the laptop yet, but so far everything is OK. If you want to make a turtle fighter out of your laptop, here is a link to the manufacturer.

SSD or HDD what to choose? Part one

Chapter One: SSD Drive.
Most people are now buying laptops for their needs and have to make a decision between getting either an SSD or an HDD as an important storage component. So which of the two is better to choose? SSD or HDD? There is no exact answer to this question; Every buyer has different needs and you must evaluate solutions based on those needs, your preferences and of course your budget. Although prices for solid-state drives are falling, in price and size, the advantage is still decisive with hard drives. However, if performance and fast time bootstrap this is your main requirement and money is secondary, then SSD is your choice. In the rest of this article we will compare SSD and HDD and try to sort out the advantages and disadvantages of both.

What is solid state SSD drive?
Are you shopping for a computer and just wondering what kind of data the SSD actually holds? For starters, SSD stands for solid state drive. You're probably familiar with flash memory USB drives, SSDs can be considered an oversized and more sophisticated version of the humble USB memory stick. Like a memory card, an SSD has no moving parts. Most likely, the information is stored in microcircuits. Conversely, a hard drive uses a mechanical component with read and write heads to move and read information. This difference is what makes working with an SSD much faster. As an analogy, which is faster? Walk across the room to get a book to read information, or just magically open a book when you need it? Here's a comparison between a hard drive and an SSD drive; HDD simply requires more physical labor (mechanical movement) to retrieve the information.
A typical SSD uses what is called flash-based NAND memory. This is a non-volatile type of memory. What does non-volatile mean, you ask? The simplest answer is that you can turn off the drive and it will not “forget” what was stored on it.
This is of course a necessary characteristic of any type of persistent memory. In the early days of SSDs, there were rumors that the stored data would be erased and would be lost within a few years. Regardless, these rumors are certainly not true with today's technology, you can read information and write to an SSD drive all day long, and you are guaranteed to keep your data safe and secure for a period of more than 200 years. In other words, the data storage and service life of an SSD may outlive you!
A solid state drive has no mechanical component to read and write data; instead, it relies on an embedded processor (“brain”) called a controller to perform a bunch of operations related to reading and writing data.
The controller is a very important factor in determining the speed on an SSD. In terms of the decisions it makes regarding storage, cache data, and data cleanup, the overall speed of operation can be determined. We won't go into great detail for the various tasks it performs, such as error correction, read and write, caching, encryption, and garbage collection, to name a few.
But, suffice it to say that a great controller is different from a good SSD drive. An example of a fast controller today is the sandforce controller with SATA interface 3.0 (6 Gbps) SSD controller that supports mass recording technology at speeds up to 550 MB/s. The next generation of the Sandforce 3700 controller, announced in late 2013, is expected to achieve a blistering 1,800 MB/s (read/write in sequence speed, as well as 150K/80K random I/O operations. Finally, you will be surprised by the dimensions of the SSD drive , and how easy it is to install after purchasing it from the store. If you look at the image below, you will see a typical "2.5" sized SSD drive. The technology contained inside is either a plastic or metal case and looks like a battery: SSD form factor -This is actually the same as a regular hard drive. Comes in a standard 1.8", 2.5" or 3.5" size to fit easily into the case and the connectors are standard like the same size hard drives. The connector used for these standard sizes with SATA interface. There are small SSDs that use what's called mini-SATA (msata do-it-yourself) and fit easily into a laptop's mini-PCI Express slot.

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Different SSDs: is there a difference?

I.N. 07/11/2015 00:00 Page: 1 of 2| | print version | | archive

• Page 1: Introduction, participants, stand, testing: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.3 x64, installing games, launching games
• Page 2: Testing: file copying, archiving, mixing, anti-virus scanning, conclusion

Introduction

What is SSD compared to HDD? Of course, these are beautiful numbers in various test applications, an opportunity to show off to friends and interlocutors. It has been proven by practice: solid-state drives really make it possible to “revive” the system quite well. However, there are very few real “live” values. In principle, this is understandable: it is convenient to record the difference in applications specially designed for this, and not in games and so on.

There are different SSD models: slow and fast, cheap and expensive. And it’s not always possible to put an equal sign between pairs of “cheap” and “slow”, “expensive” and “fast”; just compare, for example, the prices of Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB and Kingston V310 960 GB. But is there a difference between SSDs of different categories in practice? The question is quite interesting and sometimes causes quite a lot of very heated debate on various Internet forums.

So, our task today: no “synthetics”. At all. Well, so that life does not seem like sugar, the specified condition will be supplemented by one more: the processor in the test bench will operate in two modes - at the standard frequency of 3.3 GHz (fixed, Turbo Boost disabled) and overclocked to 4.5 GHz. As a result, thanks to our partner - the Regard company, we will not only compare different models drives, but also check the dependence on CPU overclocking.

Test participants

Several different drives were selected for practical testing. First of all hard disks, where would we be without them? The final list of participants included two HDDs and four SSDs.

• HDD Western Digital Red 4 TB (WD40EFRX-68WT0N0). Of course, the selection is not the most representative, but in general it may well illustrate the situation with most modern hard drives;


• HDD Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB. Quite an old, but still quite relevant model of the “laptop” class. It is usually believed among users that HDDs with a 2.5" form factor are slower than their "desktop" 3.5" counterparts. Its testing, apparently, is complicated by the presence of the BMG car parking, which is not disabled by the usual settings of the operating system: during measurements, “outliers” were detected much more often than usual - indicators that differ significantly from the average, and for the worse;


• SSD GK K3 120 GB. The so-called “Chinese” SSD: one of those that can be found on sale on a well-known trading platform AliExpress and the like. Extremely tempting price tags: about 2600-2700 rubles for 120 GB, while more famous trade marks“start” from the level of 3100 rubles and above (at the time of writing this material). But the level of its performance is very disappointing, judging by the tests we conducted. At that time, a conclusion was made about its suitability only for a user who does not operate with large volumes of data, let’s see how correct it is;


• SSD Kingston V300 120 GB (SV300S37A/120G). This drive is much better known to the general public, not least thanks to the scandal. On various Internet forums, everyone and everyone is still making barbs about the V300. However, this is one of the cheapest SSDs on the market and is in good demand due to this. But how inferior it is in reality or whether these are more unfounded fears will become clear as the review progresses;


• SSD OCZ Vector 180 240 GB (VTR180-25SAT3-240G). This is a solution of a higher class: the latest model, new algorithms in the controller microcode for data protection, an updated platform in hardware, high speed characteristics even in conditions where others are losing ground. More details can be found in relevant review;


• SSD Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB (SHPM2280P2H/480G). His review was released under the title " Shock to the foundations": unexpectedly for the general public, Kingston turned away from its beloved SandForce platform and in January of this year released a high-speed M.2 NGFF drive with a PCI-Express interface on a Marvell controller. Yes, not just any kind, but 88SS9293. And it is unique: the only solution based on this controller available for sale.

  And even though Plextor has been showing its M7e at various exhibitions for a long time, but that’s all. According to the latest rumors, the M7e will begin to be sold in the fall - when no one will need it anymore: the demand will be covered by the HyperX Predator and launched in retail just a month and a half ago even more fast samsung SM951 (not yet available on the Russian market).

Test stand

Albeit with minor changes, but the same as used for regular SSD tests: a Radeon R9 280X video card is installed, and the cooling system is replaced with Thermalright True Spirit 140.

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H rev. 1.1 ( BIOS version F11a);
• CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K " Sandy Bridge» 3.3 GHz with overclocking to 4500 MHz at VCore voltage of 1.33 V (Turbo Boost disabled);
• Cooling system: Thermalright True Spirit 140;
• Thermal interface: Arctic Cooling MX-2;
• Video card: Sapphire Toxic R9 280X / AMD Radeon R9 280X “Tahiti XTL” 3 GB GDDR5 (11221-01; copy from this review);
• RAM: 2 x 2 GB Corsair Dominator-GT DDR3-2133 ver.7.1 (9-10-9-24; 1.65 V), operating at 1866 MHz with timings 8-8-8-24-1T;
• Disk subsystem:
• SSD KingFast F8M 128 GB (mSATA; JMicron JMF667H + 20 nm MLC 128 Gbit SyncNAND Micron; KFJ09001) installed in mSATA2 connector motherboard– for the operating system;
• The drive under test was connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port ( AHCI mode enabled), or installed in a PCI-Express x4 slot;
• Power supply: Corsair HX750W, 750 Watt;
• Housing: open stand.

Software:

• Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 x64 with all current updates;
• Drivers:
• Standard msahci driver for SATA controller;
• Intel Chipset Device Software 9.3.0.1026;
• AMD Catalyst 14.12 Omega for video card.

Global operating system settings:

• Indexing and defragmentation are disabled;
• No antivirus installed;
• The System Restore service is disabled;
• Sleep mode is disabled, power profile is " high performance", "never disconnect disks";
• The page file is disabled;
• Creating a File System standard means Windows 7 OS in one partition for the entire volume of the media, file system NTFS, cluster size – “standard”, “file compression” disabled.

Performance testing

Here some subtleties await us. With an SSD, access to all cells inside the flash memory chip is almost the same, so it makes no difference which of them is accessed, and therefore the location of the files or the number of partitions is completely unimportant.

But with HDD everything is much more complicated: the system works with a rotating circle (magnetic plates) and a reading point moving inside it (magnetic head unit, BMG). Recalling the geometry at a simple level, we understand that the rotation speed, being constant on the axis, will be different for specific sectors located on the outer edge, middle and inner edge of the plates. Therefore, read and write speeds will be maximum at the beginning (at the outer edge of the plates) of the volume and drop towards the end.

That’s why there are unspoken recommendations for HDD layout: the first section should be operating system and towards the middle - the most important applications, towards the end - archived data, the speed and access time of which are the least important. And this testing affects precisely the “middle option”. Therefore, if we test SSDs by marking out the entire volume, then we will do things differently with HDDs. On the Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB for testing, one partition was created equal to 158 GB (a third of the total volume), located in the middle of the volume, but for the Western Digital Red 4 TB, due to its large capacity, a partition of 977 GB was created, located in the second quarter volume.

As a result, the obtained indicators will be closer to reality than if we thoughtlessly marked them empty for the entire volume and the tests would physically fall on the very beginning of the surface of the plates, which, as already noted, should be given over to more pressing needs.

In the dynamic graphs below, the gray bars display the results obtained at the standard processor frequency, and the orange bars show the overclocked values.

Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.3 x64

Although the rule was set at the very beginning - “no synthetics,” there is one exception worth making. Crystal Disk Mark is a very popular test among ordinary users. A completely artificial application that is usually used to quickly compare the performance of drives.

And it would be fundamentally wrong to completely ignore it, so let’s just run it - in order to then see what is behind the indicators it produces in reality.

Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB | Western Digital Red 4 TB.

GK K3 120GB | Kingston V300 120 GB | OCZ Vector 180 240 GB | Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB.

Installing games

What is a home computer typically used for? If we exclude spending many hours in various in social networks and forums, then games come first. And what is especially popular is not licensed CDs (DVD, CD) or digital copies (Steam, Origin, etc.), but the use of so-called “rips” - pirated versions.

The essence of such “rips” is that the user downloads a set of installation files to his computer in a special way, which are actually an archive of the installed and appropriately modified game. The volume of such files for games of the latest generation can shake the imagination of a computer scientist with many years of experience: 20-40 GB is far from uncommon and not a record. According to reviews, on a classic HDD, installing games from similar sources can take more than an hour (which we will check). But the question is also interesting for SSDs: the volumes are quite large and even a 10-20% difference in the speed characteristics shown in synthetic tests, in theory, should lead to a real practical difference in the time of performing operations in this kind of tasks.

But what to do with the legal part? The site is a legal resource and we do not deal with unlicensed software. And at the same time, this is a task that has quite practical use. After some reflection, a “Solomon decision” was made: testing was carried out, but the names of the games, as well as links to the source codes, will not be provided. Whether or not to believe such a test is up to the reader to decide. Just as we will not discuss the legal side. For fans of “licensed purity”, I note: the images were downloaded only for tests and were not used “for their intended purpose.”

Testing algorithm:

• Based on the fact that user computers, as a rule, have only one SSD and one or more HDDs, all operations are carried out inside the drive under test (the folder with the initial installation files and the final installation folder) - if you place the original setup files on the HDD, it may be the bottleneck in testing;
• The installation runs once first to test additional packages like Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Packages and DirectX. This launch is not taken into account in the measurements;
• The installation process starts, the time interval between clicking the “Install” button and the appearance of a message about the successful completion of the installation is recorded;
• The test is carried out three times with intermediate removal of the game and reboot test bench(to minimize the impact of system caching on test results).

Installation of game No. 1

Initial package 25.0 GB, final folder – 25.6 GB, seconds
Less is better

Here is the first example of the fact that not all SSDs are useful: the installation speed of this game on the GK K3 128 GB is almost identical to that of WD Red. And the Toshiba “laptop” HDD is a complete outsider. There is no dependence on overclocking at all, except for the most recent case - Kingston HyperX Predator. Most likely, we could have gotten better results if our processor had been overclocked even more. But what a difference: it is almost four times larger than the WD Red HDD, and this is far from the slowest HDD.

Installing game No. 2

Initial package 9.95 GB, final folder – 10.0 GB, seconds
Less is better

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Here the numerical values ​​are smaller, but the balance of forces plus or minus is similar. In general, if you often reinstall games, the more powerful the SSD, the better. Not to the point of fanaticism, but there is a difference.

Launching games

Train Simulator 2015

Version v51.2a. Settings: resolution – 1920 x 1080, anti-aliasing – FXAA + 8 x MSAA, filtration – anisotropic x8, viewing range maximum, water quality – maximum. Route loading time was measured "Faversham P1 - Teynham", conditions – “Autumn, rain, 8:00”. Between measurements the system was restarted. Calculation is the average value based on the results of three measurements.

Train Simulator 2015

Launch, seconds
Less is better

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To my personal surprise, there is absolutely no difference here. More precisely, it exists: SSDs are generally 15-20% faster than HDDs, but in real terms, 5-7 seconds is, you see, almost nothing to talk about.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Settings in “auto”: quality of polygonal mesh/shadows/landscape/vegetation/water/post-processing/effects/anti-aliasing in post-processing – high; Tessellation quality is normal, texture quality is real shadow; multisampling – off, ambient light blocking – HBAO, resolution – 1920 x 1080. Save loading time was measured "Frosty Mountains". Between measurements, the system was restarted. Calculation is the average value based on the results of three measurements.

To conduct this test, the memory capacity on the test bench was increased to 8 GB with two Crucial DDR3-1333 memory modules of 2 GB each (all frequencies and timings in the system were left unchanged). The reason for this was that otherwise the game could not start normally - messages about DirectX errors and lack of memory appeared (we remind you: the page file is disabled on our system).

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Launch, seconds
Less is better

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But with this game the conversation is completely opposite: here the transition to an SSD can provide up to five times faster startup and the dependence on the processor becomes apparent. Moreover, if, for example, owners of Kingston V300 and GK K3 benefit little from overclocking from the processor, then it is highly recommended for owners of Kingston HyperX Predator - there is a chance to get twice as much quick start games.

SSD and HDD are two types of hard drives used to create computers.

– a solid-state drive based on memory chips. It is quite advanced - it appeared in wide distribution only in 2009. There is a common storage device created on the basis of this technology - the familiar flash card (“flash drive”).

SSD has a high speed of writing, deleting and reading data, which is clearly incomparable with similar parameters of previous storage devices. For the same reason, “flash drives” have become so widespread, completely replacing CDs.

In terms of ergonomic performance, the SSD is unrivaled. It does not heat up, does not make noise, which sometimes irritates the ear and distracts from the task, and, most importantly, does not vibrate.

SSD power consumption is quite low. The use of such hard drives has the same positive impact on the budget as the use of energy-saving lamps.

In everyday life, in which physical indicators sometimes become a determining factor in the choice of products, SSDs are invaluable due to their small size. In addition, storage technology is ahead of its time, so the size of storage devices will rapidly decrease.

And the last comparison criterion is price. SSDs are considered high-tech, and therefore have a decent price tag.

SSD (abbreviated as “Solid-State Drive”)

HDD- a fundamentally different type of storage device, more conservative among current realities. Its main difference from “SDD” is the principle of operation - electronic-mechanical versus electronic. The design of the first contains a rotating magnetic disk on which information is recorded using a magnetic head - a solution borrowed from the era of gramophone records, but significantly improved.

The speed of the HDD is not as high as the “SDD”: the recording device is not as perfect, therefore it is not capable of recording information at the speed with which the “SDD” performs a similar operation, and the disk, due to mechanical limitations, is not able to move fast enough, to be a worthy competitor to SSDs.

Special flavor this type drives are characterized by a characteristic noise in the form of clicks, sometimes accompanied by strong vibration. After prolonged operation, the magnetic hard drive becomes warm.

HDD is more demanding in terms of energy supply - this fact cannot be disputed. As mentioned above, a magnetic drive tends to heat up, and to cool it you have to use fans (called “coolers” in computer jargon), which have a very immodest appetite.

HDD sizes are clearly a disadvantage. This technology is already less and less used in portable personal computers, since users have thoroughly cemented in their minds the attitude of giving preference to compact devices.

But despite the outdated principles of operation, in terms of retail cost, HDDs are in an advantageous position.

Conclusions website

1. SSD drives do not use the same mechanics as HDDs.
2. SSDs process information faster than HDDs
3. SSDs are silent and not subject to strong heating, unlike HDDs
4. SSDs are less energy consuming than HDDs
5. SSDs are smaller than HDDs
6. The cost of HDD is significantly lower than the cost of SSD

HDD vs SSD in laptops

part 2: comparison in real applications

Introduction

So, in we compared the performance of hard drives and SSDs. Let me remind you that in synthetic applications the SSD turned out to be significantly faster. However, the theoretical advantage does not always manifest itself in practice. In this part, we'll look at how much faster an SSD is in everyday work and, most importantly, whether it's worth trying to replace your hard drive with a newfangled drive.

Comparing the performance of clean and working systems

However, since we are talking about “real” life, we will start with one interesting aspect, namely, comparing the performance of a pure system and a system with a large number of installed programs. It’s no secret that a freshly installed system without installed programs always works very quickly, and tests are performed on such systems. But we work on completely different systems: in which many applications are open, there are resident programs and modules, and the OS itself is far from ideal. I tried to simulate such a system and compare how much worse the performance of test participants would be in it.

For comparison, the results were taken from the preliminary run, when I determined which applications to install and how to run tests. Therefore, the system turned out to be slightly different in terms of software composition; accordingly, the test results may differ slightly from those given below in the main testing. The measurements were carried out on a Seagate 5400.6 drive.

Let me remind you how the numbers were obtained. At startup, the time from turning on the laptop was measured (i.e. it included the time BIOS test, this time is always 4 seconds) until the moment when the blue welcome screen appears, the desktop appears, the hourglass next to the cursor disappears, and, finally, the time when the system stops actively working with the hard drive. Therefore, the results show four numbers.

When exiting sleep mode, we measured the time from the system startup until the Welcome message and a window with the user icon appeared, and completed the measurement when the system stopped actively working with the hard drive.

When entering sleep mode and shutting down, everything is simple: the time from pressing a button on the screen until the moment when the laptop turns off (the indicators go out) is measured.

The test was carried out in the following order: the system turns on, then enters sleep mode, wakes it up and turns off. This was done two or three times and then two more passes after other tests were taken.

The scatter of data was everywhere, and somewhat strange. So, for example, when measuring the time to go into sleep mode for the first time, it was 13 seconds, then about 10-11. As a rule, the time of others for measurements also dropped a little, for example, launch for the first time 1.03, second and further 57 seconds. By the way, in cases where the results are unstable, I tried to give the most different figure in brackets. Let me emphasize that these are the results that differ most from the average.

Let me also remind you (I already talked about this in the first part) that Windows 7 is better optimized in terms of working with the hard drive. Once the desktop appears, the system can be used, although it continues to load data from disk. HR in such a situation is practically uncontrollable, while the “seven” adequately responds to commands, although it takes a little longer to execute them. The same applies to waking up from sleep mode: although the system continues to work with the disk for a long time, it can still be used.

So, let's see how the system's performance changes after a large number of applications are installed on it, incl. applications with resident modules (antivirus, Nokia software, etc.). By the way, they made the partition significantly heavier from about 17 GB (pure Windows 7) to 32.5 GB.

The start has become slower by an average of 10 seconds, but the disk continues to spin for a very long time - two minutes instead of one. Seven can optimize the boot process, unlike XP, which tries to load “everything at once” and goes crazy (this is just a textbook case when the disk works, but data transfer from it is minimal).

Going into hibernate is predictably longer: after all, quite a lot of the programs that I installed use different agents and resident modules, plus they probably just clutter the system. However, the difference is impressive - the system takes twice as long to fall asleep. Shutting down has also become longer - after all, you need to send a command to close to all resident programs and wait for a response. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that when closing programs, no window appeared indicating that the system could not stop this or that program; everything closed on its own. In my opinion, this difference is critical, because... all this time you have to wait for the system to finish working in order to assemble the laptop. 10 seconds is to get up and collect the rest of your things, 31 get up, get ready and wait twenty seconds.

Thus, clean system performs basic actions about twice as fast as a working one. The difference is especially noticeable when you install the system from scratch, and then install applications on top of it. In my opinion, various types of optimizations (defragmentation, moving data to the beginning of the disk, etc.) help a little, but it is difficult to make a significant difference. There is also a more radical way: manually prohibit the start of some programs and operating system modules, then the loading time will be reduced.

File copy speed

Transferring and copying files is perhaps one of the main tasks where you can clearly see how fast a particular drive is. In addition, one of the most noticeable: here, most often, the user sits in front of the laptop and waits for the copying to be completed. In addition, these figures can be used to indirectly estimate the download speed of programs. The data is taken from the main tests of the Seagate 5400.6 drive. Hereinafter, C and D mean partitions on the drive.

Let me remind you that resident programs are running on the working system, including antivirus. The film (single file) was copied almost exactly the same, when copying archives the difference is already noticeable, for documents the difference is even more noticeable. Moreover, on the working system there is a difference in where files are copied from and to; it is also noticeable for all schemes. We will not draw any conclusions about the unzipping process yet, because... very large scatter on the working system.

Finally, a very strange and incomprehensible situation with erasing files. In this situation, it is difficult for me to draw conclusions; below we will look at the results of other participants. Moreover, the situation was repeated, but with incomprehensible twists, sometimes erasing took 20 minutes, sometimes 30. The conductor erases everything quickly, in seconds.

Comparison of hard drives and SSDs in performing workloads

Well, let's see how the participants in our testing behave in real applications, and whether SSDs will be able to maintain their advantage over hard drives.

Creating and Deploying a Disk Image

As a first test, I couldn’t resist and took what I had to do during testing - creating and deploying archived images of a disk partition. The test is performed outside the operating system, plus archiving... In general, let's see who is faster here.

7200.2 is slightly faster than 5400.6, significantly ahead for some reason when archiving. SSDs are twice or more faster than hard drives. It is especially good at deploying a clean system; here it is almost three times faster.

Starting up, shutting down the system, and going into and out of sleep mode

Now let's see how much time it takes to start and shut down the operating system on various media. For some reason, many people consider the system startup time to be the most important indicator. It seems to me that these are relics of the times when people worked in the office on desktop computers and turned them off at night (however, this practice is still common). Indeed, standby and sleep modes are not needed in this case, the shutdown speed is not important, because after starting the shutdown process you can go home. All that remains is the loading time, because... Arriving at work and starting the computer, you have to wait until you can play solitaire.

When it comes to laptops, and specifically about working with them, things are a little different. I personally turn off my laptop about once every two weeks, when the system begins to behave badly due to constant sleep and hibernation. And even then, more often than not “I rebooted the laptop”, but “the laptop rebooted” (and goodbye data from running applications). In all other cases, I put the laptop into standby mode (when it is running on mains power) or sleep mode (if it is running on battery power, so as not to waste it). Accordingly, the time to enter and exit sleep mode is more important to me. In addition, this mode has two important advantages over turning it off: firstly, the system starts much faster, and secondly, everything required applications are already open, and the work is exactly where you finished last time. This is very convenient and saves much more time than switching from hard drives to SSDs.

However, our article is just about comparing them, so that’s what we’ll do. First, let’s compare how the clean system started here.

At system startup, the SSD is much faster. Moreover, as I already noted, the disk access indicator is not on all the time (unlike the HDD), i.e. The SSD is not the bottleneck; the system takes some time to “digest” the data. The first time he failed unknown reasons, the rest of the times the system started in the same time - 24 seconds. SSD is faster in other disciplines, in some cases significantly, in others not so much, if we consider that by a third this is “not very much”.

In the battle of disks, 7200.2 finally took a little lead. As you can see, with it the system will start and exit hibernation a little faster. Moreover, the advantage is stable, although small - you will save 2-4 seconds.

Let's see what happens if we use a working system.

Let me tell you right away what “long” means: it’s more than two and a half minutes. It felt like on different occasions this time was anywhere from three and a half to five minutes. But disk activity has almost no effect on operation.

The hard drives are very close, the difference in operation is impossible to notice. Quite possible, new hard A 7200 rpm disk will give slightly better results, but by how much? Give me a sec? At the same time, the spread of results sometimes reached 5-6 seconds. That is, as you can see, on a working system the difference in disk performance is leveled out. Perhaps it will manifest itself in some specific tasks (they say that in some cases of video encoding the disk is very important), but when performing standard tasks the difference in numbers is insignificant.

The SSD starts up quickly, goes into hibernation quickly (plus, which is important, while the system is writing data to go into hibernation, the laptop can already be packed into a bag, no need to wait), it turns out... in terms of numbers, it’s not much faster, but that’s all for me It also seemed that the system worked faster with it. Plus, if the hard drive spins constantly and you can already hear the crunching noise from operation, then with an SSD the data is read in portions and with pauses. Shutting down the system is about the same everywhere, but I think that this process is simply not so dependent on the disk subsystem.

Let's summarize all the data in a single table. For each drive, the first column is a clean system, the second is a working one.

Everywhere the time has approximately doubled. Moreover, it is exactly doubled, regardless of whether the initial value is small or large. Therefore, if you want to get the most fast system, then you need to not only upgrade the drives, but also pay attention to optimizing the system itself, and most importantly, select applications that will work. It is much cheaper and can also bring good dividends.

File copy tests

Well, let's move on to the most, in my opinion, interesting tests - tests for copying data. These tests are interesting to us for two reasons: firstly, this is precisely the case when the speed of the disk subsystem determines the time spent, and secondly, using these data we can indirectly determine how quickly applications will launch and files will be opened: after all, these are also operations reading from disk. Using them, you can evaluate the speed of disks and SSDs on a daily basis, when, for example, they launch an application or open a file.

Let me remind you that the files were copied from one disk partition to another, i.e. The disk both read and wrote data.

*This is from D to C. C to D is copied for 3.45
** This is on C. On D it will unzip in 5.11.
*** the conductor erases everything in a second or two

Honestly, I don’t know why such numbers turned out when erasing files on 5400.6. Moreover, the results vary very significantly. I have an idea that the software (for example, antivirus) is to blame, but, on the other hand, the system is identical for all drives. Also, I could not explain why the 7200.2 copies faster from C to D, while the 5400.6 does the opposite. Finally, it is not clear why there is such a difference in copying archives from SSDs.

In general, it can be seen that for all drives the speed depends on the size of the files, although with SSD there is almost no difference between a film and a set of archives (only a strange dependence appeared on where it was copied to). The closer the reading and writing process is to linear, the higher the speed. In absolute numbers, the SSD drive is in the lead by a wide margin: most often we are talking about three to four times superiority. Everything that is called “flies”. In the most difficult category, a set of documents, the gap is even more significant.

By the way, since we are talking about comparison, please note that the 5400.6 copies a large volume much faster, almost by a minute. Yes, and unzipping is faster on average (although when unzipping, the time jumped a lot). In copying files, 7200.2 was not able to get ahead, although I was counting on it.

However, the schemes under consideration have a peculiarity: data is read from the disk and immediately written to it from one partition to another. But what if we look at a cleaner case: data is only read or only written? For this we created virtual disk in the computer’s RAM and let’s check how different the numbers are when working with an obviously very fast RAM drive.

The figures are given in film/archive/document format

The results of copying data from a virtual disk to a physical disk lead to the darkest suspicions: is writing consistently faster than reading? It seemed to me that this could not happen. Moreover, in this test the SSD even loses to 5400.

If you compare the data with the table above and accept (well suddenly) that caching has nothing to do with it, you get some funny data: how much faster is it to first copy the entire file to RAM, and then write to disk compared to simple copying from disk to disk. A movie on 5400.6 using a virtual disk was copied in 12+5=17 seconds (i.e., it was first read in its entirety and then written in its entirety), and when it was copied from partition D to partition C, it took 26 seconds, i.e. . we lost 9 seconds out of 26. When copying documents, the difference is generally more than double. I would assume that this difference is due to the fact that the drives “drive the heads” back and forth when reading and writing. It remains to understand why the SSD in the scheme with copying through a virtual disk is also twice as fast, it seems there is nothing for it to reposition.

Well, this concludes our study of file copying speed. Let's look at another aspect where it is very important to us how fast our drive is. Namely, for the installation and operation of applications.

Installing and launching applications

So, let's see how big the difference is in everyday work, namely, in tasks such as installing and launching programs. In principle, I tried to select, on the one hand, applications that are used relatively often, and on the other hand, large packages where the difference in installation time is significant, and which require a relatively long time for breakfast. Let me remind you that readers can suggest their own versions of applications for tests.

Since most of the tests were not run on the 5400.6, the comparison will mainly be between a single hard drive and an SSD. In general, as we see, the advantage of SSD is two to three times. True, there are some exceptions, for example, Acronis was installed in about the same time, and the difference is installing Office not that big. Either when installing these applications, working with the disk does not play a significant role, or the application is installed in such a way that the SSD does not work efficiently. Pay attention to the games. When installing Crysis Warhead, the difference is small; moreover, the space among the hard drives is distributed very strangely. But HawX demonstrates an almost classic scheme.

Let's look at launching applications. In other materials I will once again try to retest the disks in this discipline on a working system. However, on new system everything starts easily.

As you can see, in most cases the advantage of SSD remains. Nevertheless, we will continue testing specifically from the point of view of application speed and invite readers to make suggestions: what exactly and in what modes to test.

conclusions

Well, let's move on to the conclusions and see who is leading in which categories.

Speed

Key takeaway: In the vast majority of cases, SSDs are significantly faster than traditional hard drives. The advantage is two to three times this is a lot, the gap is simply huge. Thus, the results of synthetic testing were generally confirmed, although the advantage of SSD there was even more significant. However, this is normal: the operating system and many other factors contribute, smoothing out the difference in speed various types drives.

When applied in real life and in real problems SSD, as you can see above, provides significant benefits. So big that no measurements are needed: it is very clearly visible “by eye”. Applications launch and run faster, and the operating system is also significantly faster. Having transferred the system to an SSD, you immediately feel that it has become responsive much faster than before. True, there is also a relative disadvantage: if previously you could turn on, for example, copying and go do other things, now it ends too quickly for you to have time to switch. I personally immediately noticed that the system began to go into hibernate faster and come out of it much faster. Moreover, the difference is visible, as they say, with the naked eye. Launching applications has become faster, but it’s not so easy to “catch” it, because... for the most part, they started work quite quickly before.

In general, if speed is critical to you and all other considerations (see below), including the ultra-high price, are unimportant, then an SSD will eliminate one of the known bottlenecks in the system.

Size

As for the size, in absolute numbers the SSD loses a lot. At the moment, even 128 GB models cost a lot of money, and besides, the price very much depends on the capacity: the more space, the more expensive (and much more expensive) the drive is. At the same time, a 500 GB hard drive can be purchased very inexpensively.

But do you need a lot of space? In principle, 128 gigabytes should be enough for working system, especially if you have a home computer or external hard drive where you can dump archives and multimedia data. Well, if your work is not related to something resource-intensive: for example, active video editing. Several working applications, a text archive, an email database, some music and no (or very little) games and films. And when purchasing a drive with a capacity of 64 GB, you need to prepare for saving mode. When I tested the OS with installed applications It already took up 35 GB, and I didn’t install everything I wanted. There will be very little space left for work.

If we are talking about home multimedia laptop, and even the only one (i.e. without external media for the archive), then an SSD is definitely not suitable: its capacity will very quickly cease to be enough. In this case, an SSD will provide a speed boost, but you will have to have an additional external hard drive to store data. However, I would venture to suggest that for most home users, the use of SSDs is simply redundant.

Reliability

Another huge advantage of SSDs: increased reliability in everyday work. After all, it is insensitive to shock and vibration, and if you often carry a laptop with you, shock resistance is a huge plus. However, I was lucky with laptops; despite repeated crashes, the disk in none of them failed. But all my laptops had hard drive protection, usually with an accelerometer that turned it off when dropped - this could play a role. And here external drive I dropped it once (I pulled the wire unsuccessfully), after which a faulty area appeared on it. But it worked fine after that. However, this is my personal example, stories when, after falling laptop hard The disk stopped working or lost a lot of data on the Internet.

An SSD has another operational advantage - you don't have to worry about shaking the laptop at all. For example, when the laptop goes into hibernation (and at this time it is actively writing to the disk), you can already close the lid and pack it in your bag. It is highly not recommended to do this on laptops with a hard drive; you can damage it.

However, it was not for nothing that I made a reservation about everyday work: after all, the long-term reliability of SSDs is in question. Cheap first-generation SSDs (on the same EEE PCs) are already starting to slowly fail. I think expensive and more new SSDs They will last longer, but how long? Unlike hard drives with their hard-to-predict mechanical wear, SSDs have very specific aging criteria associated with writing to the disk.

Price

The most difficult aspect, because modern fast SSDs are very expensive. About 3-4 times more expensive than a hard drive, which is also three times more capacious. Those. the faster, the smaller and the more expensive. Is the game worth the candle? In my opinion, it’s worth it if you actively work with a laptop. More high speed running a laptop allows you to save precious minutes of life and nerve cells that are wasted when shouting “Why is it all so slow?!” Don’t forget about the greater reliability of the drive and data safety. In this sense, for a working system, an SSD can make work more comfortable, and the increased reliability of the drive is also worth something. As for general and home use, it is worth purchasing an SSD if you are willing to accept the price difference: the performance will pleasantly surprise you.