How much will a SSD help my boot times?

[DominionSeraph]

$350 Dell in 2006. This is the best I can do with the Caviar Blue it came with.

So, RevoDrive? Or do I need to shell out for one of Ruby's arrays?

 

[Veliko]

Read the FAQ answer about boot times:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=29731862&postcount=6

 

[DominionSeraph]

.

You missed something... :sneaky:

 

[COPOHawk]

You have more options that the two you listed...

The problem is that the nice graph doesn't tell us anything about the processor, RAM, your usage, etc. Also, the budget computer purchased 5 years ago won't have the best mainboard to allow SSD communication at it fullest.

I can tell you that you will notice an increase in speed...and a reduction in boot times, from your HDD...

 

[Arsynic]

Boot time depends on what applications you have installed. If you're using Windows and have any services set to automatic, that will affect your boot up time. I'm measuring boot up time from POST to login prompt. The more stuff you install, the slower your bootup time will be.

 

[corkyg]

Being one of those that runs 24/7 - boot time is not very important. Read and write have more significance.

 

[mnewsham]

If i am reading that right you are booting in slightly over 12 seconds?

 

[taltamir]

$350 Dell in 2006. This is the best I can do with the Caviar Blue it came with.

So, RevoDrive? Or do I need to shell out for one of Ruby's arrays?

Are you seriously considering dumping all that upgrade money into an SSD for a 350$ dell from 2006?

 

[tweakboy]

There was a nice app I got that tells you exact load times. I did it in 55 seconds once

SSD probably takes that 55 make it 25 or 30 seconds.

Once again using a SSD to improve boot time and app load time ,,, read and saving files to drive.

 

[DominionSeraph]

If i am reading that right you are booting in slightly over 12 seconds?

.....
yup
.....

12.68 seconds from NTLDR. ~18 seconds from power-on.

I don't thing reality's supposed to work this way.

 

[taltamir]

what mobo are you using?

 

[DominionSeraph]

what mobo are you using?

Dell 0UW457. That'd be a nForce 4.

 

[mnewsham]

.....
yup
.....

12.68 seconds from NTLDR. ~18 seconds from power-on.

I don't thing reality's supposed to work this way.

I boot in just under 23 seconds with my Samsung 470 series in my laptop.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I boot in just under 23 seconds with my Samsung 470 series in my laptop.

My grandmother's stock Dimension 2400: (Northwood Celeron/512MB DDR)

~5 second POST.
And that's with a 6 year old install.


Me and XP get along very well.

 

[Rubycon]

Not sure what this fascination is with boot times.
Do you sit in a car, twist the ignition key and say wow that starts up fast?
Then repeat it over and over until the starter is fried or battery too low?

How about build a stable system that can run without booting for weeks even years and work with it?

 

[OS]

for us old timers, esp those of us who have built and reinstalled OS, we've probably wasted enough of our lives waiting for a computer to reboot several times over.

plus if you have a laptop they have to be constantly turned on and off.

 

[Rubycon]

The difference is seconds only.
Did you know the average person spends approximately six months of their life...sitting at stop lights?
Good thing I don't drive!

Worrying whether it's 42 seconds or 29 to get to the logon screen is silly. Again IMHO.

 

[mnewsham]

Mine went from 64 secs to 23 a savings of 41 seconds EVERY time i boot. If i am booting 5 times a day that is 3 and half mins or so, that is 20 hours per year in savings. Well worth it IMHO for the price of the SSD and that is in boot time only the savings in other things (while not as much) will add more time per year i save.

 

[john3850]

When my daughters would never ever shut down there pcs I set the pcs to sleep.
So why not set your 2006 dell to sleep.
It will make difference.
Only downside is if there is black out you may have trouble restarting it.

 

[Rubycon]

Hibernate writes memory to a file (hiberfil.sys) and shuts the computer down. As long as the hdd has no issues with this file your computer should resume fine. As a matter of fact you can leave 100 documents open, hibernate, take the pc completely apart, ship the parts across the world, re-assemble and after powering on resume back to where you left off!

As long as nothing gets damaged and there are no system changes this does work!

 

[taltamir]

Only downside is if there is black out you may have trouble restarting it.

Hibernate writes memory to a file (hiberfil.sys) and shuts the computer down. As long as the hdd has no issues with this file your computer should resume fine. As a matter of fact you can leave 100 documents open, hibernate, take the pc completely apart, ship the parts across the world, re-assemble and after powering on resume back to where you left off!

As long as nothing gets damaged and there are no system changes this does work!

What she said, are you sure you don't mean "sleep"?
Sleep mode (S3 at least) "pauses" computations, keeps everything on ram, and shuts down all other components of the PC. The CPU is off, the GPU is off, their fans are off, the HDD is off... the RAM is on and keeps your data. If there is a power outage the data in the ram is lost.
Windows 7 solves this with hybrid sleep, it creates a hibernate file and then suspends to ram. If power is terminated it will restore from hibernate on next boot as if nothing happened, I tested it to verify it works correctly.

 

[OS]

The difference is seconds only.
Did you know the average person spends approximately six months of their life...sitting at stop lights?
Good thing I don't drive!

Worrying whether it's 42 seconds or 29 to get to the logon screen is silly. Again IMHO.

thats for a modern computer, they did not always have multicores, ssd, etc.

if no one complained, we might still be waiting minutes at every boot.

and just cause i waste time in other places does not mean i want to waste more here..

 

[Rubycon]

thats for a modern computer, they did not always have multicores, ssd, etc.

if no one complained, we might still be waiting minutes at every boot.

and just cause i waste time in other places does not mean i want to waste more here..

Different strokes for different folks I suppose but I stand by my word of trying to wring every last second out of boot time being a waste.

Consider two scenarios I deal with. I have a notebook with 16GB RAM and two SSDs. It boots into Win7 in perhaps 9 seconds or so. Yeah that's fast!

My workstation needs 24 seconds just for its serial attached scsi raid controller to check cache, ssd status, etc. Machine probably takes 90 seconds from POST to logon. HOWEVER the workstation doing actual WORK is so much faster there is no comparison. None, nada, zip.

While the laptop may boot super fast and all I'd much rather wait a little bit and then be able to work - truly multitask. Why? Because I'm spoiled, that's why!

If I had a computer that NEEDED to be restarted five times a day I would throw it in the ocean. I would. It's only about 65 feet below my window. :biggrin:

 

[taltamir]

My workstation needs 24 seconds just for its serial attached scsi raid controller to check cache, ssd status, etc. Machine probably takes 90 seconds from POST to logon. HOWEVER the workstation doing actual WORK is so much faster there is no comparison. None, nada, zip.

Ah, that is a different issue. Sacrificing work performance for faster boot is indeed a waste. But the people making that generalization are often looking at situations where a fast boot also translates to faster daily operations (aka, spindle HDD vs SSD)

If I had a computer that NEEDED to be restarted five times a day I would throw it in the ocean. I would. It's only about 65 feet below my window. :biggrin:

What, like a sheer cliff drop into the ocean? those things are so scary! what if your house falls into the sea! (it happens, those cliffs are constantly being eroded)

 

[OS]

my work computer boots especially slow as it loads company control and spyware, it takes maybe 3 minutes to boot on the conservative side

there are atleast 10K office workers at this site, if there are 200 working days/year, we are talking something like 100,000 hours/year employee time wasted waiting for bootup