Has anyone actually fixed long loading issues?

I've done quite a bit of research on this and found many posts saying "I have long loading screens, what is the problem?"

There are many theories as to how to fix them. (Typically pointing to the Hard Drive.)

However I'd love to hear from someone who actually did have the problem and resolved it... What did you do?

My PC runs the game fantastically, 7k+ Benchmark on Max Settings.

CPU: AMD FX-8120 3.1GHz 8-Core Processor
GPU: GeForce GTX 750 Ti
Ram: 16 MB DDR3 1333MHz
Western Digital Blue: WDC WD50 7200 RPM 500GB HDD

My connection is solid: 18MB down, very consistant ping, never lag during actual gameplay.

Yet my loading screens are about 1 minute long and NPCs can take 20 - 30 seconds to load on screen when I approach their location. Finally I do not experience this issue in any other games or applications. The problem has always existed, this is not new.

If there's any other information I can provide, let me know.

2 things factor the long loading.

1. I'm on SSD, loading takes 2-3 sec every maps, but sometime I hit 10-15s because of the game handshaking with the server it's taking time to respond.

2. Your Western Digital Blue: WDC WD50 7200 RPM 500GB HDD (not a performance drive btw very low IOPS.). Game is 1-1.5GB usage on your ram, those who said game load up into your VRAM / RAM entirely. Good luck thinking a 12GB of game files into RAM/VRAM.

What is IOPS? -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS

Try alt+tabbing to windows while loading, it helps me sometimes when the loading takes more than 10 seconds.

Guys I think I figured it out, I have had this problem since patch 2.3

Can I just ask you something, those of you with low loading screen do you have more than one character?
I have 3.

I backed up my settings going into the game login client, clicking settings and backup.
Then I removed every file except screenshots and downloads in My documents -> My games -> Final fantasy xiv folder
I had to change my settings ingame like graphics and stuff but now teleporting to mist took me 5-10 seconds instead of 30-40 seconds

so I finally fixed it :D I hope you guys have the same issue and can fix it the same way

Thanks MiniTofu best answer yet... after doing a little research (iops) among other things... This makes me feel much better about knowing a new HDD will improve this situation. It was saddening to upgrade my GPU and CPU with little to no results in this department. Thankfully dodging became a little easier so it wasn't a total loss.