Headline: My new Intel 160 GB X25M SSD (Solid State Drive) is really fast! 200+ MB/sec read and 90+ MB/sec write!
Background
I sort of smiled when I opened up my new drive this week to see a little sticker that said, “My SSD Rocks!”. You see, I had a SSD before… The original one that came with my Dell, but I was starting to run short on space. At this time I’m using several Virtual PCs to test software so the 128 GB I had was pretty tight… So I decided to get a “larger” drive.
While searching for a larger drive I still wanted performance. There are definitely larger drives out on the market, but I really wanted a balance between performance and size. After a fair bit of research I settled on the Intel X25M drive.
When it got here I could really tell a difference… But how much of that is because I didn’t have all the software loaded on? Well, now I have all the same software on the new drive that I had on the old one. Was it really faster?
The Machines
These are the last three configurations I’ve had and that I compare:
Dell Latitude D820 with 7200 rpm Drive – This was the notebook I purchased in 2006… A dual core, but I replaced the drive with a 7200 rpm drive. For years the drive has been the limiting factor.
Dell Precision M4400 with original 128 GB SSD – Knowing that the drive is the slowest piece in the system I swore that I would not buy another notebook (the D820 still is a great notebook) until the drive performance improved. Well, when I saw that I could get a quad core with a SSD last year, I did and got in 9 Jan 2009. It came with a 128 GB SSD.
Dell Precision M4400 with Intel 160GB SSD – So this is the exact same Dell M4400, but with the new Intel X25M SSD.
The Results
For the comparison I used PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0 as well as the Windows 7 Experience Index.
If you look at the properties of your computer (right click on your computer and then select Properties) your page should look something like this:
When I click on the “Windows Experience Index” link, here are my new results:
When I had the same machine, but the original SSD the Primary Hard Drive number was 5.9 compared the 7.7 that Windows now shows. I don’t know how they compute these, but if there is any relation to the real performance, that’s 30{f073afa9b3cad59b43edffc8236236232bb532d50165f68f2787a3c583ed137f} improvement.
I that that was really cool… but then I ran the PassMark tests… WOW!
Look at the Random Seek + RW numbers… My traditional hard drive looks like a “dot” rather than a “bar”. But what really impressed me was the raw read/write times! My reads are 5.5 times faster and my writes are twice as fast. (Note: The test results for the original SSD 6 months after I had it so there may be some slow down in that drive.)
So needless to say, I’m a pretty happy camper and smile when I see the little “My SSD Rocks!” sticker on my desk.
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