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Patrick Smacchia [MVP C#] » Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
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Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity

 
I just got a new laptop with Solid State Drive and here are some benchmark results against my desktop which is quite a massive machine. See the results for some of frequent developer activities ; they are quite instructive:

 

Laptop: Dell Latitude E4300, Intel Core Duo SP9400 2.4GHz 32bits, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD with Windows XP.

 

Desktop: ASUS Intel Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz 64 bits, 16GB RAM, 465GB RAID 7200 RPM HD with Windows Vista Ultimate.

 
Note that I never had a 10.000 RPM HD in hand and don't know how SSD and 10.000 RPM HD compare.

  

  • Full Build Process of community and professional editions of NDepend 2.11 with obfuscation with dotfuscator (but without automatic tests):   Laptop: 2:53  Desktop:5:07

 

  • Compilation of NDepend Professional Debug : Laptop: 7s  Desktop:11s

 

  • NDepend analyzing its own code base:  Laptop: 8s   Desktop:13s

 

  • Starting VisualStudio 2008 SP1 and Resharper 4.1 on the main NDepend solution: Laptop: 9s   Desktop:11s

 

  • Run of 1846 NUnit tests: Laptop: 9.5s   Desktop:26s 

 

  • Run of 1846 NUnit tests with NCover 2.1   : Laptop: 5:39   Desktop:4 :05  (I did the test 2 times, the only result where the desktop is faster, I don’t know why ?!) 

 

  • Uncompress a rar archive of 149MB (7245 files) with winrar:   Laptop: 37s   Desktop:2 :40

  • Duplication (Copy/Paste) of the149MB file:   Laptop: 4s   Desktop: 11s


  • Delete all the 7245 files  (727MB) :   Laptop: between one and two seconds   Desktop: 9s

 

Also the SSD Laptop doesn’t do any noise (I cannot hear if it is on or off), doesn’t produce much warm and weights 1.5Kg (3.3 lb). IMHO SSD is an excellent way to enhance my productivity, as getting several monitors.


 



 

Posted Thu, Dec 4 2008 10:42 PM by Patrick Smacchia

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Comments

Victor Kornov wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Thu, Dec 4 2008 6:55 PM

I wonder how long SSD will last. Compilation is very DD intesive, small reads&writes.

Torkel wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Fri, Dec 5 2008 1:33 AM

Wow, that is very impressive!

I need to talk by boss into buying one for me :)

Casey wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Fri, Dec 5 2008 2:47 AM

I'm waiting on the Samsung 250Gb to drop in price ... (don;t know the initial price yet, but it won;t be pretty :)

Bunter wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Fri, Dec 5 2008 5:47 AM

Not a fair comparison, your desktop was running Vista, infamous for really poor disk speeds.

Patrick Smacchia wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Fri, Dec 5 2008 6:39 AM

Bunter, I partly agree with you and part of the enhancement might be due to Vista slowing down disk access. This is why btw, I asked Dell to install XP by default.

However I am positive that I never seen any HD providing such performances.

Dew Drop - December 5, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew wrote Dew Drop - December 5, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew
on Fri, Dec 5 2008 9:47 AM

Pingback from  Dew Drop - December 5, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

domsparks wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Fri, Dec 5 2008 9:49 AM

I toyed with this idea myself, but without enough cash for a solid state drive I just opted for use of a Ram Disk.  With a full build of my java project it slashed the build time by 30-40%, maybe even more.  This was running Vista (natively) on a 2.5Ghz Macbook Pro.  I have my source code on the hard disk (of course) but all class files and other temporary stuff is created on the ramdisk, so it makes a BIG difference.

I'd recommend that anyone thinking of the SSD route try a Ram Disk first; you may have to be 30$ or so for a non-trial version, but that's significantly cheaper than even a small SSD, and maybe more realistic than a hardware upgrade.

rai wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Fri, Dec 5 2008 8:56 PM

What's the model of your SSD?

Patrick Smacchia wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Sat, Dec 6 2008 5:13 AM

I don't know rai, it is not written on the bill.

It is the one that comes by default with the Dell Latitude E4300.

Fabrice wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Sat, Dec 6 2008 12:24 PM

As already noticed, Vista vs XP can make a difference. Also, I guess that your Windows installation on the laptop is brand new while the one on the desktop may date a bit. This also makes a big difference. After a while and slowly day after day, Windows is getting slower and slower. a fresh install is always much faster. You may want to rerun the comparison in a few months and see if there is a difference with this one.

Patrick Smacchia wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Sun, Dec 7 2008 5:20 AM

Here also I partly agree with you Fabrice, but my Vista x64 has really not gotten much slower than the first day. Each time my Window gets slower I take the time to re-install it.

Steve Strong's Blog wrote Weekly digest of interesting stuff
on Wed, Dec 10 2008 4:17 PM

Weekly digest of interesting stuff

Terrorist Fist Jab » Blog Archive » Scraping the Bottom of the “Developer Productivity” Barrel wrote Terrorist Fist Jab » Blog Archive » Scraping the Bottom of the “Developer Productivity” Barrel
on Fri, Dec 12 2008 6:12 AM

Pingback from  Terrorist Fist Jab  » Blog Archive   » Scraping the Bottom of the “Developer Productivity” Barrel

Triple Shot Links # 11 | Caffeinated Coder wrote Triple Shot Links # 11 | Caffeinated Coder
on Fri, Dec 19 2008 10:41 AM

Pingback from  Triple Shot Links # 11 | Caffeinated Coder

F.D.Castel wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Mon, Dec 22 2008 4:57 PM

Sorry but you are comparing two things absolutely distinct (OS, Processor, RAM, RAID, manufacturers...). Why do you think the SSD drive gives you the lead? The laptop has a newer and faster processor. Also, what is the RAID configuration on desktop (0, 1?) and memory speed/latency on both computers? If you want a fair comparison, test it again on the same laptop with a conventional HDD drive (tip: don't expect too much)

DosPecesCreations: Some Initial Thoughts on Building My First Rails App | Caffeinated Coder wrote DosPecesCreations: Some Initial Thoughts on Building My First Rails App | Caffeinated Coder
on Wed, Dec 24 2008 4:12 AM

Pingback from  DosPecesCreations: Some Initial Thoughts on Building My First Rails App | Caffeinated Coder

Scraping the Bottom of the “Developer Productivity” Barrel - jBoxer wrote Scraping the Bottom of the “Developer Productivity” Barrel - jBoxer
on Sun, Mar 15 2009 6:19 PM

Pingback from  Scraping the Bottom of the “Developer Productivity” Barrel - jBoxer

Patrick Smacchia [MVP C#] wrote Do we need Micro-Optimization?
on Sun, Apr 19 2009 1:35 PM

I just posted some micro-optimization tricks I found efficient and I got the following question: Khaja

Vaibhav wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Mon, Jul 20 2009 1:27 PM

Very interesting. I recently did a lot of R&D when trying to decide between an SSD and a regular hard drive. I decided SSD - still have to order it though.

You should see even better benefits when you install Windows 7 on that laptop: www.theregister.co.uk/.../win_7_ssd

Vaibhav wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Mon, Jul 20 2009 1:27 PM

Awesome Captcha, by the way :)

Mike Marshall wrote re: Solid State Drive: Enhance developers' productivity
on Mon, Jul 20 2009 2:00 PM

Thanks for this, more ammunition that I can use to push the beancounters into letting me have a new machine.

Technicals and Technicalities wrote VPC + VS08SP1 = no work
on Thu, Aug 20 2009 6:15 AM

My GOD! It seems like the only thing I CAN do on my machine right now is write a blog post. Several non

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