Question Do smaller HDD's make for faster OS?

[rscheetah30]

I have the exact same(cloned) OS/partition on 2 different HDD's, one on a 160GB old Samsung HDD and the other is on a bigger Samsung 500GB drive. They're both the exact same Windows 7 system and I noticed right away that the one on the smaller HDD is quite faster than the one on the larger one.

So, are smaller HDD's in general best for a faster OS than larger ones?

 

[USAFRet]

No. Being smaller is not the determinant of being faster.
There is something else going on.

How are you measuring this speed difference?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

just to clarify, these are HDD's not SSD's right?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

and if they are the HDD's from Samsung, it could possibly be that the 160GB is 7200rpm while the 500GB is 5400rpm and that would make it slower than the smaller one.

 

[rscheetah30]

Both HDD's are 7200rpm and I'm measuring their speed by the time they take to load up their identical Windows 7 systems/partitions, on the smaller 160GB HDD it takes 5-10 seconds less to completely load up.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

is the cache on one of them more than the other?

 

[USAFRet]

Both HDD's are 7200rpm and I'm measuring their speed by the time they take to load up their identical Windows 7 systems/partitions, on the smaller 160GB HDD it takes 5-10 seconds less to completely load up.

Since there are presumably two completely discreet drives, are you doing this with only the one drive connected?
Reduce as many variables as possible.

"5-10 seconds", out of how much total time?

 

[rscheetah30]

is the cache on one of them more than the other?

I don't know, is there a software that can tell me that?

Since there are presumably two completely discreet drives, are you doing this with only the one drive connected?
Reduce as many variables as possible.

"5-10 seconds", out of how much total time?

You mean taking out one at a time and measuring the load time on each one separately? If so, that's a good test for me to do.

5-10 seconds out of about 1m48s total load up time from the moment I pick the OS on the smaller HDD from the boot menu(EasyBCD). Add about 5-10 seconds for the larger 500GB drive.

 

[jsmithepa]

Fragmentation will have something to do with it, data on outer tracks will have a slight performance advantage.

Everything being equal, denser HD should have advantage but there are other factors like last paragraph.

 

[rscheetah30]

Ok, I timed both HDD's on their OS loading time and here are the results:

From boot menu to desktop:

160GB=>24 seconds
500GB=>27 seconds