Windows 7 Hard Drive and SSD Performance Analyzed 248
bigwophh writes "Despite the fact that Windows 7 is based on many of the same core elements as Vista, Microsoft claims it is a different sort of animal and that it should be looked at in a fresh, new light, especially in terms of performance. With that in mind, this article looks at how various types of disks perform under Windows 7, both the traditional platter-based variety and newer solid state disks. Disk performance between Vista and Win7 is compared using a hard drive and an SSD. SSD performance with and without TRIM enabled is tested. Application performance is also tested on a variety of drives. Looking at the performance data, it seems MS has succeeded in improving Windows 7 disk performance, particularly with regard to solid state drives."
Failure to compare with XP (Score:5, Interesting)
Why did they fail to compare performance with Windows XP?
Re:Finally, it's about as fast as XP was! (Score:0, Interesting)
They set back operating systems on the majority of the world's PCs by half a decade.
Right. So then, can you please point us in the direction of the PC operating system that is "on time" according to your criteria? You can scratch Linux off that list, it's still stuck in the 90s. OS X only runs on Apple hardware. Is there an OS out there that only you know about? Please share it with us.
Wrong, no SSD (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, I mistook the "160GB Western Digital WD1600JS-00M SATA 2.0 hard drive" for a SSD.
Still, I don't understand how HotHardware can write: "At this point, everything seems like it's moving in the right direction with this new operating system, and Microsoft is finally showing that it can better compete in terms of usability and user-experience in today's computing environments against OSX and Linux, providing a compelling case why the Windows operating system is such a dominant force." without having compared it with OSX or Linux.
Sorry for the mixup above.
Re:"Fresh new light" (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:But... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is is fast enough to get first post?
(Sarcasm guys)
Depends. What were you using when making that comment?
Anyway, why doesn't the article compare to XP as well? I'm sure 7 is beter than Vista, but we all agreed that Vista was crappy anyway. Will I see any benefit moving from XP though?
Unconvincing (Score:4, Interesting)
Having struggled with two Vista PCs for many months, I am perpetually on the lookout for a better solution. (I've even considered running XP in a VM under SuSE Linux). I have a pretty powerful desktop machine, with a 2.9MHz 4-core i7, 6GB of fast RAM, two Velociraptors and an SSD. This machine is very sluggish running 64-bit Vista SP2, and I am sick and tired of seeing everyday applications like Firefox flagged "Not Responding" (and living right up to that) for as much as minutes on end - while Task Manager shows the idle process running 85% of the time. My laptop, a ThinkPad T61 with 2GB RAM, shows similar symptoms but (oddly enough) doesn't tend to stay out to lunch quite as often or as long.
So I glommed right on to this review, hoping to see some impressive figures. But it seems to me they aren't. Improvements in disk read performance of around 10% might not change overall user responsiveness enough for you to notice it.
Why can't Microsoft simply produce a scheduler that understands the key principle: when the user wants to do something, everything else must get out of the way? Their trouble is that they just don't agree with what seems to obvious to me. It's MY computer, not theirs. I paid for it, I own it, I use it. So I want it to pay attention to ME, first, last, and foremost. Not some unnecessary housekeeping task that seem Microsoft developer or marketing chum decided to impose on me. It's ironic that an IBM mainframe should be so much more responsive than a supposedly end-user-centric "personal" computer whose OS is completely dominated by its UI.
Re:"Fresh new light" (Score:3, Interesting)
Then ditch your Windows anti-virus [msdn.com]. I've been running Windows XP for 2.5 years without it and it's great !