Windows 7 - Is SDD faster than HDD

I have a SATA 3 WD 1TB HDD that is 6Gb/s and if I buy a SSD it is also rated at 6Gb/s however the SSD cost 10 times more for each byte so what am I missing?

That is not the story at all. The 6Gb/sec pertains to the channel, but the HDD can only do 1Gb/sec at the very best. An SSD can do up to 6 times better.

But the real story is access time. A HDD has 15ms access time on average. An SSD has 0.1ms - that is 150 times faster. And access time is all that counts for the OS. Boot times of under 10 seconds you can only achieve with an SSD and instant program loading too.

Try a 60GB SSD for the OS from a good vendor (Crucial, Intel, OCZ) and you will be amazed how snappy your system will become. Even older systems come back to life.

I have 5 systems with SSDs and just bought Nr.6 (a Crucial M4).. I would not want to live without SSDs.

+1 on that! All my computers bar my server are now running SSD's.

Its the single best upgrade you can do to make a computer faster, and a lot faster at that. My gaming rig boots to desktop in the time it takes me to press the on button, sit down, and grab my head phones it often beats me to it

**edit**
The main advantage is an SSD has no moving parts, no disk to spin and no header/actuator arm to move.
In a laptop it makes them near silent, improves battery performance and adds shock resistance as no moving parts to damage.

In a laptop they also reduce heat. I fixed a bad heatproblem in a HP laptop by installing an SSD.

i only put an SSD in my macbook yesterday, its battery life gained over an hour (estimated by osx) and is silent! i can only hear the CPU fan if i put it to my ear.
Id recommend an SSD over a mechanical drive any day.

Now obviously size is a major issue, unless your rich an SSD is going to be around 1/10th the size of your current drive.
It doesnt effect me as i have a NAS system and a server to keep data flowing so i dont have to have large amounts on my mac.
My gaming rig is almost full with only Bf3, skyrim, red orchestra 2 and saints row the 3rd installed. but playing games through a network wouldnt be the best of ideas, so i guess ill have to stick in another SSD or 2 for now

SSD's are very noticeably faster... I have two raid 0's set up currently on my main system (Have 6 at the moment)

Boot drive is two Vertex 3 120 gb raid 0 (and keep in mind, this is on a sata 2 controller, not sata 3)


My data drive is 4 Western Digital black 1tb in raid 0 (also sata 2)



So even tho I'm using sata 3 drives on my Intel sata 2 controller, it is plenty fast... My motherboard has sata 3 but it's a Marvell controller, and with all the problems they're known for, I just use it for my sata Dvd burner since I'm using all my 6 intel sata 2 ports for my drives...

To answer your question more directly, here is a test of my SSD and a 6 Gb/s Western digital Black

SSD


WD 1TB FAEX

Steve, this is a good example to demonstrate the case. Since the system reads and writes mostly 4K blocks, the speed difference is really significant (15 to 40+ times faster for the SSD) - not to speak of access times.

Thanks WHS, I was hoping he would get that out of the example. Just because a drive is 'rated' as 6GB/s does not mean you get 6GB/s. Like you said earlier it is the acess times that are most critical for an OS drive.

Thanks everyone. I now have a better idea and understanding and will read each post serveral times. I am going to get a 60 Gig SSD for my OS. Now all I have to do is transfer it from my HDD to my futhure SSD but thats another story. Thanks again.