SSD vs HDD - Which Has Better Perforamnce For VMware Workstation

[DEVIOUZ]

Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 2.5" 128GB SATA 6.0Gb/s MLC (SSD)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10000 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" (HDD)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136555

These 2 Drives appear to be the Best SATA 6.0Gb/s Drives around right now, so what I want to know is which Drive will yield the best performance with VMware Workstation..??

My setup is..

Asus P6X58D Premium MB

i7 980X CPU

12GB RAM

Win7 X64 Ultimate

[asatoran]

The catch with MLC type SSDs is that they don't have as good write performance compared to SLC type SSDs. VMs tend to be write intensive. Early MLC SSDs had write performance almost at the level of a fast traditional hard drive. My first SSD was a 32GB IDE in my laptop. Compared to a 7200RPM drive in the same laptop, I didn't get any significant improvement in the boot or general usage of my VMs. That said, current MLC SSDs have improved and so I'm inclined to believe that this SATA SSD should have noticably better performance than my older SSD. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was only a small incremental increase in performance.

Me personally, I use virtual machines for testing mostly, so I'm building a lot of VMs and have a need for a lot of storage. So the traditional hard drive, with it's higher capacity, would be a better fit for me. YMMV, of course, but unless you're only talking about storing just one or two VMs on that drive, then I would think that you'd want the larger capacity traditional HD as well.

[DEVIOUZ]

ehh, so which Drive would work better for running VMware Workstation then..??

[asatoran]

Only you can answer what is "better" for you. Thus the usual caveat of "your mileage may vary", meaning what's best for me is not necessarily the best for you. I need more disk space to store many virtual machines so for me, a 600GB traditional drive is better than a 128GB SSD. However, if you want that last 1% of performance, then the SSD drive may be better for you, but you sacrifice capacity. Do you need the pickup truck that can tow a boat, but only goes 60MPH, or do you need the sports car that while can go 150MPH, can only carry two passengers and costs a lot more $$$.

Now, if you get a SLC SSD instead of a MLC SSD, then write performance is better, so you probably will see an improvement even over a 10,000 RPM drive. But SLC SSDs are even more expensive. Again, only you can decide if that extra expense is justified for a "better" drive. Maybe consider getting multiple non-SSD drives in a RAID0 array. You get a lot more capacity with more performance than a single drive. Maybe not the absolute performance of a SLC SSD, but a lot more bang for the buck.

[DEVIOUZ]

You said "VMs tend to be write intensive".. are those Sustained, Sequential or Random Writes..??

I think I'll just go for the 600GB WD-VR after reading these reviews, and considering the write performance inconsistency issues that the "Crucial RealSSD C300 SSD's" have..

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd6000hlhx-velociraptor-600gb,2600.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/6gb-s-ssd-hdd,2603-2.html

The 600GB WD-VR looks like the best option to me now, until SSD's work out their write performance inconsistency issues and their prices begin to drop..

Or unless I win the lotto and then buy one of these PCI Express SSD bad boys..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150636%201421547726&bop=And&Order=PR...

[asatoran]

You said "VMs tend to be write intensive".. are those Sustained, Sequential or Random Writes..??

I don't know. I believe they are random. Perhaps a suspend will be more sequential, but normal VM operation would be random. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)