Data speed comparision of modern HDD vs SSD

Thread Starter

Willen

Joined Nov 13, 2015
333
Just curious, todays WD's purple versions of HDD has rating of 6Gb/s. I think it is Giga-bits per second. Practically I think HDD has around 60MB/s and maybe SSD has almost ten times faster than this. Still modern laptops come with HDD instead of SSD. Does this mean todays advanced HDD from WD or Seagate has pretty better performance than 60MB/s and I won't regret much, choosing HDD insted of SSD?
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
Just curious, todays WD's purple versions of HDD has rating of 6Gb/s. I think it is Giga-bits per second. Practically I think HDD has around 60MB/s and maybe SSD has almost ten times faster than this. Still modern laptops come with HDD instead of SSD. Does this mean todays advanced HDD from WD or Seagate has pretty better performance than 60MB/s and I won't regret much, choosing HDD insted of SSD?
You'll regret not getting an SSD. They still cost more for a given amount of space and that's the only reason that HDDs are still viable. The SSD is soooo much faster.

One strategy is to have both. Run your system and apps off the SSD and use the HDD for data storage. I do that and it's tolerable, but I wish I'd just gotten a bigger SSD. Mine is 256Gb and that might work in a corporate environment where you're not really supposed to be storing files locally. For personal use where you may have music, pictures, all your files, etc., you need 512 as the bare minimum.
 

sagor

Joined Mar 10, 2019
903
SATA interfaces are "peak" or communication rates. HDD cannot fill the 6 Gbits/sec bandwidth, and most SSD cannot either.
Real life speeds vary for HDD, depending a lot on their design. Many are slow 5400rpm drives, better ones are 7200rpm. Data center drives may be 10,000rpm.
In my tests, most HDD will give around 120MBytes/sec (MBps) in speed tests, give or take 40MBytes/sec, depending on design, cache on the drive, etc.
Most of the SSD I've used give about 480MBps to 500MBps with a SATA III interface, so you are looking at 4 times the average "user speed". At around 500MBps, you are approaching 4 Gbits/sec on the SATA interface
If your system has a M2 PCIe interface, you can try using a M2 PCIe interface SSD card. The one I have in an i5 laptop that gives around 1500MBps, about 3 times faster than your average SSD. That is because it uses a PCIe x 4 interface to transfer data (4 times the serial channels). Boy, does that ever boot fast, blink and you miss the logon screen.

Everyone's tests will be different, a lot depends on make, model of the computer and the SSD as well. Things like drivers and operating system version can make a difference as well. Numbers quoted are my results, yours may vary.
 

peterdeco

Joined Oct 8, 2019
484
An SSD flys but make sure your data is well backed up. Failure often means goodbye all data. I have my data backed up on 3 thumb drives at my home office (they fail too), another on my keychain and in 2 different computers at work. Maybe it's overkill but it gives me a feeling of security.
 

BobaMosfet

Joined Jul 1, 2009
2,110
Just curious, todays WD's purple versions of HDD has rating of 6Gb/s. I think it is Giga-bits per second. Practically I think HDD has around 60MB/s and maybe SSD has almost ten times faster than this. Still modern laptops come with HDD instead of SSD. Does this mean todays advanced HDD from WD or Seagate has pretty better performance than 60MB/s and I won't regret much, choosing HDD insted of SSD?
SSD will always be faster, but HDD is fast enough for most people, and can last longer if taken care of. I get 10-15 years out of a standard HDD, and frankly, I put everything via e/net to a 9TB NAS that is RAID'd. No HDD will ever beat an SSD for performance, but you have to weigh all the factors.
 

MrSoftware

Joined Oct 29, 2013
2,188
In the real world, SSD is faster, by a lot, than mechanical hard disks. Especially in random seek. That said; there are tons of SSD options, all with trade-offs. To oversimplify; there's speed, reliability and low price. You can only have 2 at the same time, so do your homework before you buy. Mechanical disks are still used because they are less expensive, so any budget minded laptop or computer will likely have a mechanical hard disk by default, possibly with an SSD as an upgrade option.

For reference; at home I run a pair of SSD's in a RAID-1 configuration (mirroring), and those are backed up to a pair of much larger mechanical hard disks also in a RAID-1 configuration. Mirrored disks reduce the risk of loss due to device failure, larger backup drives allow you to keep a few revisions. Plus I periodically back up to an external hard disk that sits by itself on the shelf and one that I rotate to a safe deposit box. The external and off-site backups are in case I get attacked by something like ransom ware, or my PC is stolen.
 

Audioguru again

Joined Oct 21, 2019
6,674
Hi Willen,
My old pc had two hard drives and the one with the Windows 10 operating system failed 2 years ago.
I shopped around and found a local computer chain of stores had refurb computers previously used by businesses and only 2 years old. We have a low cost sale day called Black Friday so I bought an HP computer with a 3.3GB Intel processor with many cores, Windows 10 Pro, a 236GB SSD drive and 16GB of Ram. It had a low price and was guaranteed for 1 year but never failed. I installed the working old mechanical hard drive for my seldom used files.
It boots and does things instantly. My internet provider offered a faster internet speed.
I use a cheap 128GB USB stick to store some files.
 
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