[popo]

Ok, I was not aware of that. In hardware terms it sounds exactly like a WD dual drive. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7682/the-wd-black2-review

 

In functionality as far as the user is concerned, it is more like a SSHD. The minor difference in how things are stored will be managed by the OS not solely the drive firmware. I can see that having possible benefits in some situations, but still it is no pure SSD and a compromise between performance, capacity and cost.

 

To correct myself earlier, the Seagate SSHD I have actually has 8 GB of SSD, not the 2GB that I stated.

 

And back to Reinier's problem, I wouldn't think a WD green 2TB would be that much of a bottleneck. I have had several of these myself. It isn't the fastest disk, but not slow enough to make a difference. I suspect something else is going on here, and to move forward we have to work out what that is. Actually, we can quickly confirm or rule out the disk. Save the file to disk, and also SSD. Do you notice a difference in speed? If not, the bottleneck is elsewhere.

[JJ_SO]

Of course, it's no pure SSD, but faster than a HD. In theory. I have some doubts about reliability and dependancy of the controller. I reckon if the SSD part is damaged it might be difficult to get the data out of it - but who is working without backup?

 

Edit: Reinier, from which application you're savon you're files? You're not running a 32 bit Photoshop on your 64 bit Machine? Also it could be helpful to read which files, filesize and time to save we're talking about?

[Guest]

The green drive is a little slower (slower rotation) but again I would time how long saves/loads are actually taking to help determine if the perform is strictly the disk. The processor is quite decent and ram is fine. To put things into perspective your drive is a 5400 rpm; the normal speed hard disk is 7200rpm and you can find 10,000 rpm drives. For large objects you should see near linear performance improvement with rotational speed as long as you maintain the same platter density. (Some of the smaller drives like raptor 10k are actually slower for large objects because the platters are less dense).

[JJ_SO]

you2, "intellipower" doesn't mean only 5400 rpm - I could not verfiy, but I recall the drive spins between 5400 and 7200 rpm. They go slow if nothing happens, but when I need them, they're quickly up to max. speed. I think, I have around 7 or 8 of them and had never noticed any speed problems. Of course, it takes time to save 100...300 MB TIF but not remarkably more than with my office PC which is specified around yours.

[Guest]

The rotational speed is invariable; but the precise speed is trade secret and rumour is slightly different between models - generally estimated to be between 5400 and 5900 based on performance testing. I suspect 'intellipower' refers more to shutting down (stop spinning) when idle.

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Performance between 5400 and 7200 for a contiguous large object is measurable but unless you time it you might not notice the difference and for general work load (lots of small objects) it is noticeable but again not night and day. I myself use an array of 4+2 7200 rpm drive and writing/reading a large object off of four disks in parallel is very noticeable (compare to a single green drive) but prior to building the array I had one segate green drive (i forget if it was 5400 or 5900) and one non-green drive and there is some difference but not night and day. In practice measuring these things is tricky since outside track performance greater variance (compared to inside track) than 5400 vs 7200 (i.e, 5400 on the outside track can be faster than 7200rpm drive on the inside track). Again these comments are for contiguous large object. If the object is small or fragmented then disregard these comments.

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[Reinier]

Hi Guys,

 

I am using Photoshop CS5 64 bit in Windows 7 64 bit. I don't know how long it will take to save a file. I have to measure it, but don't have a stopwatch and I don't know how to do it on the computer itself.

 

The problem is also that the size varies with a lot of images. I have RAW -files from my previous 5D I, from my 550D, which I process and save them as Tiff. But I have also slide which I have scanned which are a staggering 200mb.

 

Is there a way to measure the speed? I am not that technical concerning computers.

 

Kind regards,


Reinier

[JJ_SO]

On windows, you can doubleclick on the system watch in the task bar, then you should see a more analogue looking clock with a seconds hand. Prepare a big file for saving and type STRG + S when the seconds hand passes a certain point. 

[popo]

There are free timer/stopwatch apps for mobile phone too.

[Guest]

If your watch has a second hand that should be sufficient. It is not necessary to be precise to the nearest milliesecond. The question is more along the lines is it taking 10's of seconds or 100's of seconds. For a 200MB object you should not be shocked if it took 40 seconds to load. In any event making the system super fast can be expensive and even if you spend the money it is not clear how much faster it will be become beacause the software itself might not be particularly optimized.

[chrismiller]

Film the screen - that will give pretty good timing. Certainly for the software development I do, disc speed is critical for builds etc.