Jo22 wrote on 2022-06-09, 19:02:

does that mean that the boot process nolonger will be optimized?

I feel like that's the development in general...
limitations always bred optimizations
the faster PCs got the less optimized stuff became, just look at the internet, pages used to load faster 10+ years ago before everything got bloated with javascript and giant convoluted pages with lots of redundant and unnecessary code.
same goes for games... and I guess operating systems.

The current builds of win10 have been unusable on a HDD for several years now. That optimization is long gone

Many systems already relied on a small SSD and a larger mechanical storage drive several years ago. I'd assume the large OEMs will just start doing this more often if it were to become obligatory.

I also don't see why this would need to become obligatory, movement is already going in that direction so why promote it further?

Windows 10 seeming having trouble with HDDs might have something to do with it. It seems like a marketing thingy mostly from what I can see of it.

FWIW, HDD performance can be still "optimized" by adding a SSD for caching use (mainly on desktop computers, see Intel Optane Memory where Smart Response Technology was its predecessor and SSHDs) and this technique appeared way before Windows 10 was released.

People should be happy with a warning instead of removing the option to install in the HDD

SSDs have been vital at compensating for "modern OS" bloat since at least Windows 7...

If you buy a computer with a pre-installed HD and/or memory then you deserve what you get.

Agreed that when I switched to an SDD with 7 the difference was considerable, couldn't stand HD after that except for backups, servers and game drives, nowadays only use hds for servers and backups.

I'd rather they mandate encryption, although the big question is why MS has a say at all but I guess MS has to find some way to keep itself relevant.

May as well just merge an ssd the size of the os with the cpu with just enough space to last 3yrs so you have to buy a new machine.....

I assume Microsoft won't prevent you from installing to spinning rust, they'll just make an SSD boot drive part of the OEM licensing agreement like they do other things. And fair enough too - HP, etc, don't seem to care if their low end machines are actually usable. If it will boot to the desktop eventually that's good enough for them. My mother a year or two back bought some budget laptop and it actually feels like its 15 years old when you're using it its that slow. The CPU is fine, RAM a bit on the low side, but it should never had a mechanical boot drive. The fact HP, etc, are selling hardware that was obsolete a decade ago in new machines is, IMO, pretty inexcusable. Like laptops with a 1366x768 panel - that resolution was unacceptable 5 years ago, why are HP, etc, still putting such garbage out there!? They're practically manufacturing and selling e-waste.

DosFreak wrote on 2022-06-09, 20:15:

May as well just merge an ssd the size of the os with the cpu with just enough space to last 3yrs so you have to buy a new machine.....

Considering what passes as IC design these days, that's probably just around the corner for all kinds of computing devices.

I still boot 10 from a spinning disk, but I have a couple of unused SSDs - what's the best way to use them?

Spinning disk drives are one of the legacy technologies I do not miss in modern computers.

I miss having a normal BIOS, I miss simple I/O, etc., but SSDs and faster disk controller interfaces have been an unequivocal improvement, to the point that I use them in my vintage computers.

Having the spinning disk is fun in my opinion only for very old machines, running DOS, in which you run one program at a time from the command line and it's not doing very much. I have one in my 286, for example. It's a big beast, sounds like a jet engine, and makes distinct clicking noises, but only when you are actually doing something, since DOS is not a multitasking OS running dozens of processes in the background and thrashing your disk.

leileilol wrote on 2022-06-09, 20:04:

SSDs have been vital at compensating for "modern OS" bloat since at least Windows 7...

Yes. I still remember my Windows 7 install needing roughly 3 minutes before having loaded the desktop.
But it makes me wonder why MS is doing this now, with Win11, if this has been a problem for years.
Is it just because they can? This is why it seems mostly just like a marketing thingy to me, because I don't really see why they would have to try to enforce this now.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-06-09, 20:50:

DosFreak wrote on 2022-06-09, 20:15:

May as well just merge an ssd the size of the os with the cpu with just enough space to last 3yrs so you have to buy a new machine.....

Considering what passes as IC design these days, that's probably just around the corner for all kinds of computing devices.

I hope it never comes to this -_-

keenmaster486 wrote on 2022-06-09, 21:19:

Having the spinning disk is fun in my opinion only for very old machines

They are also good as secondary drives for non performance essential storage, simply because they cost about a third of SSD with the same capacity.
Recently I bought an 8TB HDD specifically for this purpose.

Tetrium wrote on 2022-06-09, 22:27:

Yes. I still remember my Windows 7 install needing roughly 3 minutes before having loaded the desktop. But it makes me wonder wh […]
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leileilol wrote on 2022-06-09, 20:04:

SSDs have been vital at compensating for "modern OS" bloat since at least Windows 7...

Yes. I still remember my Windows 7 install needing roughly 3 minutes before having loaded the desktop.
But it makes me wonder why MS is doing this now, with Win11, if this has been a problem for years.
Is it just because they can? This is why it seems mostly just like a marketing thingy to me, because I don't really see why they would have to try to enforce this now.

Probably they reason they didn't do it ages ago is because SSDs were still kind of slightly more expensive premium things. But I think for a few years now they've been cheap enough and large enough that there has really been no excuse to keep using mechanical boot drives at any price point. Microsoft has probably decided that the garbage some companies are selling at the low end is only harming consumers who don't know better and the abysmal performance of these things is just making Windows PCs look bad.

Azarien wrote on 2022-06-09, 22:55:

They are also good as secondary drives for non performance essential storage, simply because they cost about a third of SSD with the same capacity.
Recently I bought an 8TB HDD specifically for this purpose.

You are right about this. I have a 4TB RAID array for long term network storage.

Still will never use one as a boot drive ever again if I can help it.

If Microsoft required ECC for memory modules, I'll be glad since this prevents row hammer vulnerability.

Cheers,

Ah good, finally! And, it's not as if much is going to change at Best Buy computer aisles; even the cheapest consumer-grade devices come with some form of solid state storage. Even eMMC is miles ahead of the best spinners in terms of random I/O. It seems that the only machines equipped with HDDs these days are entry-level business desktops.

I recently picked up a Lenovo netbook-like device at a garage sale for $25. It has a shitty Atom-based Celeron, 11.6" 768p screen with worse viewing angles than a 1996 Toshiba, and...a 128GB SSD. No, not eMMC, but an honest-to-goodness M.2 (albeit using the SATA protocol) SSD. And despite having a mere 4GB of RAM, it actually feels quite responsive for such a low powered device. Of course, as soon as I subject the poor little Celeron CPU to script-heavy websites, any initial responsiveness goes right out the window. But that's another thing entirely.

Requiring OEMs to install Windows on SSDs (without actually adding SSDs to the base OS requirements for DIYers) is a great move, and will ensure that people don't blame sluggish startups & plodding program launches on Microsoft.

NVME is already so fast even on basic systems that trying to optimise the boot process is pointless, HDDs were the bottleneck and now MS wants them gone and I dont blame them. Even SATA as a standard is going to be phased out as they migrate that to being fully done via NVME. With PCIe 5 and 6 they wont need to dedicate 4 lanes to NVME drives they can just use one heck SATA over NVME can share one lane with 4 devices and still have room to spare, NVME is such a good standard.

SSDs must be available to OEMs for extremely cheap these days. The one issue I see is that the ubiquitous 1TB HDD is probably going to be hard to replace in those budget machines with 1TB SSDs and I am sure a lot of people judge a PC by storage capacity. And what is the lowest most terrible custom SSD (or EMMC?) the OEMs can come up with to maximize profits? 😁