SSD vs. HDD Boot Time Comparison
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- SSD vs. HDD Boot Time Comparison
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Post
philip
April 24, 2012
What difference does an SSD make to OS boot times? Check out the video below to see. We used the configuration from our gaming build video to demonstrate the difference.
Both sides are shown real-time and share identical configurations except for the hard drive.
For the SSD based build: Crucial M4 64GB SSD
For the HDD based build: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200RPM
Both drives have been imaged with the same base windows installation (Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit). The HDD disk has also been defragmented prior to running to ensure it boots as fast as possible.
As you can see from the video, the SSD solidly trounces the HDD in boot performance (~22 seconds vs ~42 seconds, of which almost 9 seconds is waiting for the BIOS screen to show). The tradeoff is limited storage space (64GB vs 1TB) and a higher price per gigabyte. To get the best of both worlds, use an SSD as the main boot drive and add a traditional hard drive for extra storage space.
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