Benchmarking a HDD to SSD Upgrade (Lenovo T440 Laptop)

The following benchmarks are by no means thorough and all encompassing. I carried out these quick benchmark tests to get a general idea of the performance gains I hope to see after upgrading my Lenovo T440 laptop to use a SSD. Maybe this will inspire you to invest in some better performance as well?

The Test Subjects

Firstly, lets introduce the test subjects: HGST Travelstar Z7K500 (500GB) and Samsung 840 (250GB). The HGST HDD came stock standard with my Lenovo T440 laptop. In contrast, I purchased a pair of Samsung SSDs over a year ago and operated them in RAID 0 in my desktop computer until now. I've split the two Samsung SSDs up so that one remains in my desktop computer and the other, as shown in Figure 1, can be installed into my laptop.

Figure 1. The test subjects.

Testing Method

Gnome Disks is the tool of choice for benchmarking on this occasion. When configuring a benchmark test in Gnome Disks the following window (Figure 2) is given. I have also listed how I configured both tests I performed on both hard drives in the table below.

Figure 2. Gnome disks benchmark settings. 

	Test 1	Test 2
Number of Samples	100	100
Sample Size	10MiB	100MiB
Perform write-benchmark	Enabled	Enabled
Number of Samples	1000	1000

The Scores are In...

Test 1

Figure 3. Test 1 benchmark results for HGST Travelstar Z7K500 (500GB).

Figure 4. Test 1 benchmark for Samsung 840 (250GB).

Test 2

Figure 5. Test 2 benchmark results for HGST Travelstar Z7K500 (500GB).

Figure 6. Test 2 benchmark for Samsung 840 (250GB).

Final Words

As expected, the SSD has reasonably consistent read/write rates and access times (closely packed around 0.05ms) over all memory locations on the hard drive. Whereas, the HDD's read/ write rates diminishes when moving away from the centre platters and access times can be quite variable (ranges between 10-25ms in most cases). Compared to the HDD, the SSD's average read rate and average write rate was approximately 5 times and 2.3-2.9 times greater respectively. In addition, the SSD's access time is over 300 times faster than the HDD on average.

Overall, a healthy performance boost indeed. You may expect to see even further benefits on more current SSDs such as the Samsung 840 Pro or Evo versions, for instance. Either way, as you can see, a HDD to SSD upgrade is a worth while investment for any computer especially given the continually decreasing prices and increasing storage capacities.