Bootcamp + Windows 8.1 + Apple Macbook 2011 Recently I installed Windows 8.1 64bit on my Macbook Pro (2011). Everything went fine and I am able to duel boot using Bootcamp.

Only issue I am facing is poor performance in Windows. Its taking around 1-1.5 minute to boot, while another laptop of dell with i3 processor and 4gb ram is able to boot in 4-6 seconds in same OS. 

My macbook configuration is not latest but it with 2nd gen core i5 and 4 GB ram it should be faster (OS X boots in 13-16 seconds). 

Also when running Visual Studio in Windows noticed that my disk i/o goes to 100% utilization and that time macbook goes terribly slow. So somewhere it seems related to hard disk speed. However I want to be sure before investing in new hard disk. 

So if getting a new 7200 RPM hard disk with 16MB cache can solve the issue or if its due to Bootcamp virtualization and for disk i/o Windows has to go through bootcamp drivers and thus making process slow. I already tried specifying Pagefile size in Windows with no noticeable change. 

Yet if adding memory instead of HDD can solve issue then I would go for memory route.

So please suggest me, how to determine exactly what is not correct for Windows 8.1 on Macbook pro and what sort of upgrade can solve the issue. 

Thanks

[Update]

I tried ReadyBoost option with no luck. I found a 16 GB brand new USB stick, dedicated that entirely for ReadyBoost in Windows 8.1 and yet facing similar performance (or might be even slower). 

Also looking at task manager, it seems plenty of RAM is free for Windows but HDD is active 100% for most of the time and average response time is 810ms (doesn't sound good to me, yet not sure on that). CPU usage seems fair.
I can say it's not memory. I have a new MBP since 1 week, with a SSD under WIN64 8.1 and 16 GB of memory and exactly the same behavior, instead maybe it's not permanently, maybe 100 % during 10 s every 5 or 10 minutes.