Transfer rates aren’t the only measurements that are important to consider when evaluating a storage device. We must also consider the access time of the storage unit. This is the time taken for the storage device to start delivering data after the computer has requested it. So, the shorter the access time, the better. It is measured using milliseconds (ms, which is equal to 0.001 s).

While mechanical hard disk drives tend to have access times in the tens of milliseconds, the access times of solid state drives are much closer to zero as the components are 100% electronic. We recorded access times of 0.1ms for both drives in DiskSpeed32 and HD Tune.