Firefox loads quickly after upgrading my HDD to SSD. Why?

Version info:

[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 6.4.15-200.fc38.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Sep  7 00:25:01 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ 
[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora release 38 (Thirty Eight)

My HP Omen laptop has the following specs:

256GB NVME SSD drive
2 TB SSD Hard drive

Its a dual boot configuration: Fedora 38 and Windows 10

The laptop originally came with 1TB Mechanical SATA disk drive (2.5 inch internal HDD). I upgraded it to a Sandisk 2TB SSD (2.5 inch) Hard drive.

For faster performance, both Fedora and Windows OS are installed in the NVME drive.
Fedora OS runs from /dev/mapper/fedora_rootvg-root which is created NVME partition /dev/nvme0n1p7 as shown below.

To store my personal data, I use the 2 TB drive. Fedora assigned the name /dev/sda for this drive.
Now, /dev/sda is an SSD but it used to be a mechanical disk based HDD.
For my personal data, I created the LV /dev/mapper/fedora_homevg-home which is created from /dev/sda3 as shown below.

/dev/mapper/fedora_homevg-home is mounted on mount point /home .

[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ lsblk
NAME                   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda                      8:0    0   1.8T  0 disk 
├─sda1                   8:1    0 398.8G  0 part 
├─sda2                   8:2    0  11.1G  0 part 
└─sda3                   8:3    0   1.3T  0 part 
  ├─fedora_homevg-home 253:1    0   1.3T  0 lvm  /home
  └─fedora_homevg-tmp  253:2    0     8G  0 lvm  /tmp
zram0                  252:0    0     8G  0 disk [SWAP]
nvme0n1                259:0    0 238.5G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1            259:1    0   260M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p2            259:2    0    16M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p3            259:3    0 132.2G  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p4            259:4    0   980M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p5            259:5    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p6            259:6    0     1G  0 part /boot
└─nvme0n1p7            259:7    0   102G  0 part 
  └─fedora_rootvg-root 253:0    0   102G  0 lvm  /
[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ 



[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ df -Th
Filesystem                     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs                       devtmpfs  4.0M     0  4.0M   0% /dev
tmpfs                          tmpfs      16G  7.7M   16G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                          tmpfs     6.3G  2.1M  6.3G   1% /run
/dev/mapper/fedora_rootvg-root ext4      100G   39G   57G  41% /
/dev/nvme0n1p6                 ext4      974M  281M  626M  31% /boot
/dev/mapper/fedora_homevg-tmp  ext4      7.8G   58M  7.4G   1% /tmp
/dev/nvme0n1p5                 vfat      511M   18M  494M   4% /boot/efi
/dev/mapper/fedora_homevg-home ext4      1.3T  555G  688G  45% /home
tmpfs                          tmpfs     3.2G  3.8M  3.2G   1% /run/user/1000
[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$

My question:

When I was using 1TB Mechanical SATA disk drive and when I launch Firefox browser, it took roughly 1 minute to load.
But, when I upgraded the HDD to a 2TB SSD, the firefox browser starts almost immediately. Its fast.

I presume all softwares like firefox was always installed in the following filesystem which is created from a NVME partition.
So, how did an upgrade from mechanical disk to SSD make loading for Firefox browser faster ?

[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ df -TH /
Filesystem                     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/fedora_rootvg-root ext4  108G   42G   61G  41% /
[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$

Firefox profiles are normally loaded from your home directory.

2 Likes

Becuase SSD are a lot faster then HDD by design.
No seek time, very fast data transfer.