Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Boot Time

For this test we used disk imaging software to create an exact copy of the same windows Vista Home Premium install on every hard disk drive before recording the time taken to boot from the BIOS logo screen and a working Vista desktop, using the Windows Vista welcome centre as the chequered flag.

Other than the Vista welcome centre, all other start-up processes were disabled prior to the imaging process. The boot time was recorded using a standard hand held stopwatch, with the test repeated five times and an average taken from the middle three results to produce the figures below.


While we knew the increased data density from the Samsumg F1's three 334GB platters would improve performance, we hadn't imagined it would have such a noticeable real world effect as we saw in our boot time testing. With an identical install of Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, the Samsung booted to desktop a full 12 seconds faster than the competing Seagate 1TB and whole thirty seconds faster than a budget 250GB hard drive. While still far from the pace of even the somewhat affordable G.Skill and Patriot 128GB SSDs, it's still a phenomenal result, especially in comparison to the other mechanical drives we've tested.


While not as impressive as the boot time performance, the F1 is still a good three seconds clear of the Seagate 1TB in loading our Crysis benchmark timedemo and even manages to outpace the 10,000RPM Western Digital 150GB Raptor.