Solid state disk vs harddisk

[Klinux]

Hi,
I know that SSD harddrives are much (and I say much) faster than traditional mechanical harddisks.
So I was wondering myself a USB stick is also an SSD drive.
Will PClinuxOS boot faster on a USB stick rather than a harddrive?

Thanks

[Dragynn]

Hi,
I know that SSD harddrives are much (and I say much) faster than traditional mechanical harddisks.
So I was wondering myself a USB stick is also an SSD drive.
Will PClinuxOS boot faster on a USB stick rather than a harddrive?

Thanks

My only experience has been with a conventional HD, and a USB 2.0 stick (I expect maybe a much larger difference with USB 3?), but in my test, the USB was easily as fast, if not faster than the HD install. I did no benchmarking, but my impression was that the USB ran faster too, apps opened quicker etc.  Been wanting to play around with this, my next build will definitely include a USB 3 compatible mobo.

[Was_Just19]

Compare the read/write specs of both ......  I suspect the HDD will be faster in sustained used, particularly for writing.

[Dragynn]

Compare the read/write specs of both ......  I suspect the HDD will be faster in sustained used, particularly for writing.

Yep, and I should mention that for my test, I didn't really do any writing to the stick, I stored any extra files on the HD. Also, the HD used is old, PATA in fact.

[Roc4fun]

I have an install of XBMC I run from a memory stick in my HTPC.  It seems very fast to me.

Dave

[Crow]

I like this, seems like a good compromise:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-7200RPM-Hybrid-ST95005620AS-Bare/dp/B003NSBF32

[Archie]

Tex mentioned in one of his replies that if I wanted to boot PCLinuxOS in 10 seconds, Solid State HD is the way to go.

[T6]

it depends on the hard disk and the usb device you are going to use

i personally prefer a hard disk over any usb device because the hard disk is connected internally so i don't have to worry with unplugging the wrong device, this can sound not important but many times i end using 4 or more usb sticks and sometimes two are physically identical

a usb 2.0 at best will give you 30 Megabytes per second(reading, good brand), a sata should give you the same but lots of gbs more

a ssd will give you 80 megabytes or more

price vs performance is what you need to consider

[Texstar]

Got this today for the dual core build server.

Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive

The Seagate Momentus XT drive is a solid state hybrid with Adaptive Memory technology, enabling the drive to deliver SSD-like performance along with higher capacity. The Momentus XT drive is designed for all standard laptop PCs and is OS-, driver- and software-independent, making this drive easy to integrate and easy to use. Adaptive Memory technology enables the drive to tailor performance to the user. Whether you are gaming, editing digital media or crunching numbers, performance is optimized and ready for your next move.

It came with the old firmware so the first thing I did was to download their firmware update iso and flashed it to the latest version. I installed KDE4 2010.12 on it then did a full update. After that I added the 2.6.38.2 kernel. I rebooted numerous times and each time it got faster. It now boots from grub to the KDE4 desktop with autologin in about 14 seconds which is about 2-3 seconds slower than the SSD drive on the same system. Everything is very snappy and applications load almost as fast as the SSD.

The SSD is 128G and cost 214 USD at Christmas. The Momentus XT is 500G and cost 99 USD. I kinda wish I had known about this drive earlier. I could have gotten 1TB for the same price I paid for 128G SSD.

Gotta go dig in my closet for a laptop to desktop drive bay converter.

[Klinux]

And what about PClinuxOS Live CD vs PClinuxOS Live USB which should be faster?

[Was_Just19]

Price equivalent here for the Momentus is $161  plus delivery 

And what about PClinuxOS Live CD vs PClinuxOS Live USB which should be faster?

USB is much faster than CD

[Texstar]

And what about PClinuxOS Live CD vs PClinuxOS Live USB which should be faster?

The LiveUSB is always going to be faster than the LIVECD. LiveUSB disk has faster seek times and storage access. You aren't going to get the performance of a SSD drive because the data going through a usb port is going to be slower than data going through a sata connection.

[T6]

liveusb should be faster

a cd usually runs at 8Mbs per second, a  usb stick can do easily 16Mbs

random read is another story

" It now boots from grub to the KDE4 desktop with autologin in about 14 seconds which is about 2-3 seconds slower than the SSD drive on the same system"

and i was happy with 1 minute 15 seconds of boot time  

[pags]

Hi,
I know that SSD harddrives are much (and I say much) faster than traditional mechanical harddisks.
So I was wondering myself a USB stick is also an SSD drive.
Will PClinuxOS boot faster on a USB stick rather than a harddrive?

Thanks

USB sticks vary wildly in quality.  Over USB 2.0, I find I get much better perceived performance from an old 20 GB mechanical HDD than I do from any flash-based installs I've tried (and I find the mechanical HDD, even over USB, handle swap partitions well).  I'm running my wife's EeePC 701 from a 16 GB SD card, but no swap, /tmp in RAM (bumped it to 2 GB), logging turn off...anything to reduce writing to the device helps improve performance...

Now, LiveUSB is phenomenal!  No size issues...the design inherently preclude writing to the media anyway, basically, it's just a win-win all around!

[Village Idiot]

Got this today for the dual core build server.

Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive

-snip-

It'll be interesting to see how it going after a few weeks and how well it handles cat hair.