What is this?
This is an experiment to see what the experience is like running Windows 11 installed to a hard drive.
Why do this?
This is mostly in response to the conversation that Microsoft wants to forbid having a hard drive be the boot drive for Windows 11 based machines. This is likely to push the performance bar up.
But since I’ve ran Windows since Windows 8 from an SSD on my daily drivers, I wanted to know what it would be like to run the latest version of Windows on a hard drive as a daily driver. I’ve installed Windows 10 on a hard drive before, but this was for a secondary computer that wasn’t really doing much more than being a game server. Once it loaded, it didn't really need to touch the hard drive.
This is also inspired by other my experiences using Windows Vista, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 as the popular opinion are these versions were terrible (They weren’t for me), along with LGR’s video on using Windows Me (which the conclusion is it wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be, but there were quirks and other things that made 98 more preferable)
How am I doing this?
I’m using my daily driver, a computer with the following specs:
As far as its performance goes, well…
When will this experiment last?
I’m planning on doing this for at least one month, covering at least one patch Tuesday cycle. Depending on how things are by then, I’ll stretch it further.
What applications will I be installing/using on the OS drive?
I’m installing the following:
Installing Windows took a lot longer than usual. Give or take it was about 45 minutes to an hour from the time I initiated the install to when I got to the desktop. Though to be fair, I allowed Windows to grab updates.
However, further installing all the drivers and applications too a long time as well. Normally I can get “up and running” within an hour. By the time I was able to finally settle down and use the computer, it took about 3 hours. I did find out that even though the hard drive appeared to be busy, I could install other apps. But I only pushed it to about two installs at once.
Afterwards I did have a Windows update waiting, so I installed that as well. The process took about 10 or so minutes for the update to be staged, then another 5 minutes for the reboot and install process to go through.
As far as the actual usage experience goes, yes it’s clearly noticeable that applications take longer to load and sometimes they have a noticeable amount of time before they’re actually usable. Sometimes they freeze when they show up, but become responsive later. However, once things are up and running, there’s no real appreciable loss of performance. Heck this whole post was typed up in Word just to get some use out of it. The only times the applications do get hiccups or whatnot that people might be expecting with the hard drive experience is if something else is using the hard drive, typically something that’s installing or updating. But essentially, so far I don't feel any aggravating issues doing what I normally do.
But it’s day one, we’ll see how things go after a few weeks.
This is an experiment to see what the experience is like running Windows 11 installed to a hard drive.
Why do this?
This is mostly in response to the conversation that Microsoft wants to forbid having a hard drive be the boot drive for Windows 11 based machines. This is likely to push the performance bar up.
But since I’ve ran Windows since Windows 8 from an SSD on my daily drivers, I wanted to know what it would be like to run the latest version of Windows on a hard drive as a daily driver. I’ve installed Windows 10 on a hard drive before, but this was for a secondary computer that wasn’t really doing much more than being a game server. Once it loaded, it didn't really need to touch the hard drive.
This is also inspired by other my experiences using Windows Vista, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 as the popular opinion are these versions were terrible (They weren’t for me), along with LGR’s video on using Windows Me (which the conclusion is it wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be, but there were quirks and other things that made 98 more preferable)
How am I doing this?
I’m using my daily driver, a computer with the following specs:
- CPU: Ryzen 5600X
- Motherboard: ASRock B550 Steel Legend
- RAM: 4x8GB DDR4-3200 Corsair Vengeance
- GPU: EVGA RTX 2070 Super
- Soundcard: Creative SoundBlasterX AE-5
- Storage:
- 512GB Samsung 970 Evo
- 1TB Crucial MX500
- 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus
As far as its performance goes, well…
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 155.311 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 152.318 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 1.071 MB/s [ 261.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 2.179 MB/s [ 532.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.108 MB/s [ 270.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.430 MB/s [ 593.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.652 MB/s [ 159.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.888 MB/s [ 460.9 IOPS]
When will this experiment last?
I’m planning on doing this for at least one month, covering at least one patch Tuesday cycle. Depending on how things are by then, I’ll stretch it further.
What applications will I be installing/using on the OS drive?
I’m installing the following:
- 7-zip (archive utility)
- BlueStacks (Android emulator)
- Discord (messaging app)
- Firefox (web browser)
- HWiNFO (Computer health monitoring utility)
- Logitech G-HUB (peripheral utility)
- Microsoft Office
- MPC-HC (video play) with MadVR
- MSI Afterburner (Video card tweaking utility)
- NZXT CAM (Fan controller utility)
- Paint.NET (image editor) with BoltBait’s plugin pack
- SoundBlaster Command (sound card utility)
- Speedcrunch (calculator app)
- Steam (Game launcher)
- Visual Studio Code (plain text editor)
- Winamp (music player)
- WinDirStat (storage drive analysis)
- GeForce Experience (I don’t use it)
- Games, though any dependencies they rely on will have to be installed in the C:\ drive.
Installing Windows took a lot longer than usual. Give or take it was about 45 minutes to an hour from the time I initiated the install to when I got to the desktop. Though to be fair, I allowed Windows to grab updates.
However, further installing all the drivers and applications too a long time as well. Normally I can get “up and running” within an hour. By the time I was able to finally settle down and use the computer, it took about 3 hours. I did find out that even though the hard drive appeared to be busy, I could install other apps. But I only pushed it to about two installs at once.
Afterwards I did have a Windows update waiting, so I installed that as well. The process took about 10 or so minutes for the update to be staged, then another 5 minutes for the reboot and install process to go through.
As far as the actual usage experience goes, yes it’s clearly noticeable that applications take longer to load and sometimes they have a noticeable amount of time before they’re actually usable. Sometimes they freeze when they show up, but become responsive later. However, once things are up and running, there’s no real appreciable loss of performance. Heck this whole post was typed up in Word just to get some use out of it. The only times the applications do get hiccups or whatnot that people might be expecting with the hard drive experience is if something else is using the hard drive, typically something that’s installing or updating. But essentially, so far I don't feel any aggravating issues doing what I normally do.
But it’s day one, we’ll see how things go after a few weeks.
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