Has an SSD become essential in Windows due to poor performing services?

Scougar · 14 Aug 2020 at 03:13

I'm not going to sugar coat it. Performance in Windows 10 with an HDD is awful. It takes forever to start up, it is unresponsive trash. Plug in an SSD as your main drive, all the issues disappear.

So... is an SSD just band-aiding Windows 10?

Rroff · 14 Aug 2020 at 03:18

Bit of both really - HDDs have been left behind really for modern computing demands and Windows 10 has far to much going on in the background, etc. and generally not an optimal OS from almost any angle.

One thing you will find with 10 as well is not infrequently it will do background preparation work for the next lot of updates, etc. or other maintenance, telemetry or profiling tasks which on slower systems and/or HDDs can result in the system grinding away for 10-40 minutes after booting up depending on how fast your CPU and HDD is.

Basically both are trash in 2020.

darael · 14 Aug 2020 at 06:54

I actually think SSDs became popular at just the right time. But I do agree, I couldn't bear the idea of running Windows 10 from a hard drive on my system now. Apart from the other obvious reduction in access times, the gains in burst speed from M.2 drives are worth the few minutes a day I actually need it to transfer large files.

Semple · 14 Aug 2020 at 08:01

There's also the point that with SSDs being exceptionally cheap these days (remember you wouldn't really need any more than 128gb)why would anyone consider running w10 without one.

skyripper · 14 Aug 2020 at 08:07

SSDs have been around for consumers for over 10 years now. Why anyone would use a HDD for their OS in 2020 is beyond me.

Pottsey · 14 Aug 2020 at 08:10

Scougar said:
I'm not going to sugar coat it. Performance in Windows 10 with an HDD is awful. It takes forever to start up, it is unresponsive trash. Plug in an SSD as your main drive, all the issues disappear.

So... is an SSD just band-aiding Windows 10?

HDD have always been like that even in the Win 7, Vista and Win 8 days. Modern SSD's made a massive difference from day 1 when they first came out. Performance has always been awful without them.

Its not that the SSD is band-aiding. Its that an SSD is that good its the cheapest best upgrade you can do to a computer.

Rroff · 14 Aug 2020 at 08:12

Pottsey said:
HDD have always been like that even in the Win 7, Vista and Win 8 days. Modern SSD's made a massive difference from day 1 when they first came out. Performance has always been awful without them.

Yeah even on a basic SSD Windows 7 boots a clear 3x faster than a fast HDD.

d_brennen · 14 Aug 2020 at 08:14

Pottsey said:
HDD have always been like that even in the Win 7, Vista and Win 8 days. Modern SSD's made a massive difference from day 1 when they first came out. Performance has always been awful without them.

Its not that the SSD is band-aiding. Its that an SSD is that good its the cheapest best upgrade you can do to a computer.

To an extent but Windows has increased disk usage exponentially. Vista was famous for grinding the hard disk incessantly, especially on low RAM systems. Speaking of which, the amount of RAM available to the average system has rocketed at the same rate as SSDs have become popular.

As someone who uses various flavours of Linux as well, Windows' handling of storage and memory is junk for what it's actually achieving IMO

Terminal_Boy · 14 Aug 2020 at 08:40

They’ve been essential on both Windows and Mac OS since they became affordable as boot/load times are horrible using HDDs.

Nasher · 14 Aug 2020 at 10:07

The only reason companies are still using HDDs is cost. You get a lot more space for the money.

Once the price drops enough they will vanish from SANs as well.

andy_mk3 · 14 Aug 2020 at 10:10

Nasher said:
The only reason companies are still using HDDs is cost. You get a lot more space for the money.

Once the price drops enough they will vanish from SANs as well.

Yes a lot of people still think a laptop with 1TB is better than one with 256/512GB despite that being HDD vs SSD.

I recently swapped out the 1TB HDD in my in-laws laptop for a 256GB SSD, and they're not using more than 30% of that SSD, the 1TB was a complete waste

Quartz · 14 Aug 2020 at 11:29

Scougar said:
So... is an SSD just band-aiding Windows 10?

I don't think so; we've just become used to the performance levels of SSDs. The trick to having Windows on a HDD is to just leave your PC on. Let it do its stuff when you're not there. Lock it when you leave, but don't shut it down.

But SSDs are going to replace HDDs. They are better in every way except price. An 8 TB SATA drive costs £800. That's three times the price of 8 TB HDDs, but the SSD is 2.5" rather than 3.5". Economies of scale will kick in in due course.

vince77 · 18 Aug 2020 at 09:47

I have a laptop about 5 years old windows 10 installed and it has 1 TB HDD. It works perfectly fine but I am thinking of upgrading it to SSD because I don't want my hard drive to crash. Should I go for it? if yes then 128 GB SSD would be good to go right?

TheVoice · 18 Aug 2020 at 13:42

The fact that upgrading one single component can make such a massive difference to performance and system responsiveness would suggest that the blame lies largely with how slow HDDs are, not Windows.

SinaiSound · 18 Aug 2020 at 15:21

Ran an SSD since OcUK had those Samsungs in 2009

Never looked back

Vince · 18 Aug 2020 at 15:28

Rroff said:
Bit of both really - HDDs have been left behind really for modern computing demands and Windows 10 has far to much going on in the background, etc. and generally not an optimal OS from almost any angle.

One thing you will find with 10 as well is not infrequently it will do background preparation work for the next lot of updates, etc. or other maintenance, telemetry or profiling tasks which on slower systems and/or HDDs can result in the system grinding away for 10-40 minutes after booting up depending on how fast your CPU and HDD is.

Basically both are trash in 2020.

Oi... dont hate on the windows 10.. best windows since vista imo.. and yes I liked Vista!

Sparx · 21 Aug 2020 at 21:46

Nothing to do with Windows being awful imo. Just highlighted how bad and awful those metal clunky HDDs were.

They were ready to ascend into SSDs. Just a great technological advancement

Scougar · 22 Aug 2020 at 00:37

Rroff said:
Yeah even on a basic SSD Windows 7 boots a clear 3x faster than a fast HDD.

I'm not talking about boot speed and getting into windows. I'm talking about PC being usable once in. My daughters Ryzen 1600 with 16GB's of ram (my old machine) is atrocious with an HDD. It isn't even the same machine at that point. It's a horrible experience. Slap in a cloned SSD, and it's fast, and actually operates like a computer and not having to wait for menu's to load up for basic things like explorer.

darael · 22 Aug 2020 at 11:00

Scougar said:
I'm not talking about boot speed and getting into windows. I'm talking about PC being usable once in. My daughters Ryzen 1600 with 16GB's of ram (my old machine) is atrocious with an HDD. It isn't even the same machine at that point. It's a horrible experience. Slap in a cloned SSD, and it's fast, and actually operates like a computer and not having to wait for menu's to load up for basic things like explorer.

I think the only use for spinning rust is for storage and archival, using an SSD for the operating system and software. It's what has worked best for me for some time now.

james.miller · 22 Aug 2020 at 11:25

I was late to the SSD party and IVE been using an SSD boot drive for 8 years now. I dont think you can really use a slow, outdated storage device as a means to gauge the OS performance. Things have moved on.