SSD vs. HDD Performance

[Altemose]

Merry Christmas!

For Christmas, I was given a PATA SSD by KingSpec that I promptly installed into my PowerBook G4. Do these results look right compared to a stock 5,400 RPM hard drive? Some things feel faster and some feel slower and it is hard to tell. I used Xbench and a fresh install of Leopard from my retail disk for the test. Thank you and Merry Christmas!

 

[Intell]

Those speeds appear to be slightly slower than what is expected of a SSD in a Powerbook G4.

 

[Altemose]

Those speeds appear to be slightly slower than what is expected of a SSD in a Powerbook G4.

Are they faster than a 5,400 RPM hard drive. Unfortunately the drive was going out in here so I did not think it would be fair to put the SSD vs. a dying hard drive. It is a KingSpec so I was not expecting breakneck performance but I just want to be sure the money was well spent. Boot up is about 50 second power button to full menu bar.

 

[Intell]

Some of those speeds are faster, others like the sequential are slower.

 

[2984839]

You can find the specs for those drives here: http://www.kingspec.com/products.php?lan=en&typeid=38

They seem to be about 53 MB/s read, and 23 MB/s write, so yours would be slower than normal.

edit: Yours is here and is supposed to be even faster than that: http://www.kingspec.com/en/product_xx157.html

 

[Altemose]

I just reran the test and the results surprised me. This is after a fresh reboot. Do these look to be in line with real world numbers? I have learned that speeds and specifications need to be taken with a grain of salt and the wise word of the members here is the best information.

 

[Intell]

Those numbers look better, slightly slower on the writes than I'd expect. But they are inline with that SSD's marketed speeds.

 

[Altemose]

Those numbers look better, slightly slower on the writes than I'd expect. But they are inline with that SSD's marketed speeds.

I understand that it is not the best SSD but it feels decent! Could you by chance post results from a PowerBook with a regular 5,400 RPM drive using Xbench if you even have one with a regular drive?

 

[Intell]

Which model Powerbook is that you have?

 

[Dronecatcher]

Did you disable Spotlight before running the first benchmark? That might have impeded the first run and then by the second benchmark had finished it's indexing.

 

[Altemose]

Which model Powerbook is that you have?

PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz Single Layer SuperDrive with 1.25 GB of RAM and the 32 GB KingSpec SSD.

Did you disable Spotlight before running the first benchmark? That might have impeded the first run and then by the second benchmark had finished it's indexing.

Spotlight was not indexing during any of the tests. All programs were closed as well.

 

[Intell]

I'll be able to benchmark a drive in a few hours or tomorrow.

 

[weckart]

Taken on my A1139 with a 120GB mSATA inside. I have read that PATA SSDs fare badly by comparison and many (OWC) are rumoured to be CFs inside PATA adapters rather than genuine SSDs.

 

[bunnspecial]

FWIW, here's my A1138 with a 7200rpm platter drive

 

[Altemose]

Taken on my A1139 with a 120GB mSATA inside. I have read that PATA SSDs fare badly by comparison and many (OWC) are rumoured to be CFs inside PATA adapters rather than genuine SSDs.

FWIW, here's my A1138 with a 7200rpm platter drive

So in summary it is not too much faster than a good 7200 RPM drive and does not hold a candle to weckart's mSATA drive. I am content with it but the initial readings were ridiculously low.

 

[bunnspecial]

While we're at it, here's the mSATA SSD in my 12" Powerbook

 

[Altemose]

I am happy with it but I think I will stick to mSATA or 7200 RPM drives from now on.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Whoops---looks like you already did a test! Ignore that part in my last post where I suggested that you do one.

 

[Intell]

mSATA with an adapter is the best way to go. Not only do you get newer technologies with the SSD part, they can be much cheaper and larger in capacity.

 

[bunnspecial]

I'm pretty seriously considering putting an mSATA drive in my DLSD. The 7200rpm drive is not bad performance wise, but is loud and a big drain on the battery.

 

[Altemose]

In the upper end machines I will go for a mSATA SSD but for low end machines these KingSpec drives are fine!