[Watford] SSD performance

[David Edmondson]

On Sun, Jul 22 2012, Alain Williams wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I got my new machine. I got a SSD disk in there - more to play with. I was
> expecting it to be faster than the hard disks that I have, it does not seem so -
> unless I have got something wrong
>
> sda: OCZ-OCTANE S2  	http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-octane-s2-sata-ii-2-5-ssd.html

This doesn't seem to be a particularly fast drive. From the page you
indicate:

128GB Max Performance
    Max Read: up to 275MB/s
    Max Write: up to 175MB/s
    Random Write 4KB: 11,000 IOPS
    Random Read 4KB: 29,000 IOPS

The Intel 330 device (chosen somewhat at random) lists:

SATA 6Gb/s Bandwidth Performance1
(Iometer* Queue Depth 32)
— Sustained Sequential Read: 500 MB/s
— Sustained Sequential Write:450 MB/s
Read and Write IOPS1
(Iometer Queue Depth 32)
— Random 4 KB Reads: 42,000 IOPS
— Random 4 KB Writes: 52,000 IOPS

The 330 is a SATA 6Gb/s device, compared with the OCZ 3Gb/s, though I
don't believe this would make a significant difference to your test.

> Comments ?

As you indicated in your second mail, it's the random access test where
the real benefits show. With no heads to move, you can jump around the
device without any penalty. The lack of moving components is also good,
particularly in a laptop.