Linode doesn't use SSDs (yet) - the founder has been spotted on their IRC channel in the relatively recent past mentioning the cost/performance isn't where they

Linode doesn't use SSDs (yet) - the founder has been spotted on their IRC channel in the relatively recent past mentioning the cost/performance isn't where they want it yet. hdparm only does sequential reads, so don't expect a night-and-day difference between SSDs and rotating disks. Plus that benchmark reads out of the disk (buffer) cache, so you might really testing your memory speed.