News Microsoft's Reportedly Trying to Kill HDD Boot Drives for Windows 11 PCs by 2023

[jeremyj_83]

The advent of massive quantities of cheap memory has made for very lazy programmers over the years. It's lead to the attitude of "Code's a little bloated? No need to spend any more time optimizing it, just toss another gig of RAM in it and it'll be fine."

As your desktop ages and more patches and updates are done it uses more RAM by default. My current desktop was built with Win 8, then went to 8.1, then 10 and all its updates. I have very few programs launch on startup as well. Even with all that it boots using 8GB RAM. Basically it cannot hurt to have more RAM anyways.

 

[Exploding PSU]

I used to be one of the unbelievers of SSD, and only picked up SSD very recently. My reasoning was simple : for so many years all the way back to XP or even 98 era, I've been using only HDD and it's been working fine. Sure I've heard "SSD speeds things up" but all I hear was "faster game loading times" or "faster booting" which wasn't too relevant for me. Especially the fact that SSD was very expensive compared to HDD that the bang for buck just wasn't there for me.

I did feel Windows 10 was a bit slow compared to Windows 8 (not sure if placebo effect or if it was indeed so), but I blamed that on my laptop getting older. The fact that the HDD was the one that made the laptop unresponsive never crossed my mind.

Until I had the chance to try my colleague's laptop for a bit of work. It wasn't a powerful machine, something like i3 with 8GB of RAM, but it was equipped with SSD. By heaven that thing was fast! Unrealistically fast. I didn't know Windows and apps could actually run that quick.
I remember I explicitly said that it felt like I was using an alien technology, the responsiveness was just mystical for me. That budget i3 machine just felt much faster than my i7 Skylake laptop.

And that sealed it. I immediately ordered a 500 GB NVMe SSD, and since then my life changed for the better. Always used SSD for the boot drive and the most important data ever since. I still have my 8TB HDD for the bulk of my data, which feels like stepping backwards for 10 years everytime I have to fetch something on it.. Even when my dad was looking for a new laptop for simple tasks, I made sure I bought him one with SSD.

SSD was the third time I felt like I was using a futuristic technology. First was Windows Vista, second was Super AMOLED screens, and if I have to guess next time would probably be high refresh rate screens. Man I'm excited to what comes next.

 

[USAFRet]

but all I hear was "faster game loading times" or "faster booting" which wasn't too relevant for me.

Yep...thats what a lot of people said.
But it is so much more.
The whole system is snappier and more responsive.

 

[Joe Shades]

As your desktop ages and more patches and updates are done it uses more RAM by default. My current desktop was built with Win 8, then went to 8.1, then 10 and all its updates. I have very few programs launch on startup as well. Even with all that it boots using 8GB RAM. Basically it cannot hurt to have more RAM anyways.

My Windows 10 pc with 12GB of RAM for 8 years always used the same 6 or so GB when not really using it, never had a problem with not enough RAM even with all the updates

 

[jeremyj_83]

My Windows 10 pc with 12GB of RAM for 8 years always used the same 6 or so GB when not really using it, never had a problem with not enough RAM even with all the updates

You also have a limited on how much Windows will expand into RAM anyways. If you were to have 24 or 36GB RAM your system would use more or boot.

 

[TopHatProductions115]

I use Optane, not on my personal desktop, as write cache drives for our all NVMe VMware vSAN storage array at work. Does that count?

Kinda, since I think Optane was originally meant to act as solid state storage acceleration. It was available for desktops at one point, but something tells me it's being relegated to enterprise/server space now. Not sure how much longer it'll last at this rate...

 

[KyaraM]

You also have a limited on how much Windows will expand into RAM anyways. If you were to have 24 or 36GB RAM your system would use more or boot.

Kinda, yes, but both my old 16GB and new 32GB system use the same amount of RAM, around 6GB... and it's been that way even before I switched the new one to 11. So there does seem to either be a cap, or the old system indeed did pick up fat along the way in terms of RAM use.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Kinda, since I think Optane was originally meant to act as solid state storage acceleration. It was available for desktops at one point, but something tells me it's being relegated to enterprise/server space now. Not sure how much longer it'll last at this rate...

For the enterprise space I hope Optane SSD doesn't go away. While you can use any SSD as you write cache, nothing else has the same performance as Optane especially at low queue depths.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I have a couple of conjectures as to why Windows apparently uses more RAM when more is available:

• The size of the page table increases because there's more pages of memory to keep track of. Though Windows has mechanisms to make sparse page table entries to keep them compact as possible.
• The mantra of "free RAM is wasted RAM." So if there's more free RAM, I wouldn't put it past Windows to feel obligated to allocate or use more of it for various reasons. After all, the reason why OSes will give more memory than the application requested is because book keeping of memory is easier if there's already space for the application.

 

[GregL65]

Not needed.
A 250GB SSD is just fine for a lot of people. My spouse, for instance.
No need for the extra "2TB".

I see, so if your spouse doesn't need it, no one does?

 

[USAFRet]

I see, so if your spouse doesn't need it, no one does?

No, not at all.
Just that not everyone needs a larger drive.
And that was in reply to a "hybrid" with 100 or 200GB SSD cache portion, and a 2TB HDD portion.
Many many people would not need that 2TB spinning space.

Me personally? A 1TB OS+application drive is just right.
Adding 5x other 1TB SSDs in the system for actual data (photo/video/CAD/etc), and off we go.

 

[GregL65]

people think Windows Vista is somehow a piece of crap even though I daily drove the thing while it was still relevant with almost no issues.

The problem with Vista was with hardware that was new to Vista and designed to take advantage of its new features, especially Aero. At the time I was running older hardware and had no problem at all with Vista.

But a few years later I picked up a used Dell Precision M6300, which had been new with Vista. It had two video drivers available, one from Dell and one from the graphics card provider, and neither one worked right. The generic driver worked fine but that's dog slow. The original owner of that laptop had probably reverted to Windows XP at the time, which would have worked fine. But by the time I owned it, XP was too old and I was running Windows 7. It had the same video drivers problem with Windows 7 as with Vista. I finally moved on to an M6400 just to be rid of the intractable video behavior problem.

Before that I had been scratching my head at all the complaints about Vista. But now I fully understand how people were angry about that after paying $thousands for a nice new state-of-the art laptop.

 

[GregL65]

No, not at all.
Just that not everyone needs a larger drive.
And that was in reply to a "hybrid" with 100 or 200GB SSD cache portion, and a 2TB HDD portion.
Many many people would not need that 2TB spinning space.

Me personally? A 1TB OS+application drive is just right.
Adding 5x other 1TB SSDs in the system for actual data (photo/video/CAD/etc), and off we go.

If anyone is saying that "everyone needs a larger drive", I have no idea who it is. I certainly didn't say that.

You seem to be making the point that if you (or your spouse) don't need something, then no one does or should. Just because you and your spouse don't need something doesn't mean no none does or should.

 

[USAFRet]

You seem to be making the point that if you (or your spouse) don't need something, then no one does or should. Just because you and your spouse don't need something doesn't mean no none does or should.

I did not make that point. At all.
Indeed, just the opposite.

Some people do, some people don't.

 

[Viking2121]

Honestly Im alright with this, idk how many hours I have sit to repair PC's with the main drive has a HDD and ya know windows and its lovely caching and updates take a long time as I can't just off load the PC to them and expect them to finish the updates...

Plus 120GB SSD's are pretty cheap, as low as 20 bucks for the lower end ones which is plenty, so idk why most of these OEM's still insist on putting 1TB slow HDD's in entry low end laptops that can maybe watch youtube at no more than 720p. Just throw in a SSD, no one is going to need a 1TB in something like that in most cases.

Mid range sure, but then again a 120GB M.2 is also cheap, and would leave room for a HDD if space is needed.

I personally think this is a good move in a sense to get these lazy OEM's to actually use SSD's, just hopefully not that MMC crap... But I can also see software developers getting lazy and wont allow their software to be installed on a HDD because its so unoptimized that it needs storage speed.

I guess we will see as time goes.

 

[Eximo]

And while I can't say the same with Windows Me, LGR did a video on that and it seems like Me wasn't that bad.

ME wasn't that bad. OEM implementation was, they pushed it out before drivers were ready and that is what most people ended up with.

I worked on several machines at the time. Almost all complaints were solved by hitting up the manufacturer's website and getting new drivers.

Keep in mind this was dial-up days for most of the US, so people really couldn't download everything.

 

[GoofyOne]

I think it should be up to the end user where they want ot store their operating system. It can be handy to boot up from a HDD in emergencies, ie: when the SSD fails.

I do seem to recall several HDD boot drives that I would have liked to 'KILL' in the past. 😒😒😒🤢🤔

{GoofyOne's 2c worth}

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I have a couple of conjectures as to why Windows apparently uses more RAM when more is available:

• The size of the page table increases because there's more pages of memory to keep track of. Though Windows has mechanisms to make sparse page table entries to keep them compact as possible.
• The mantra of "free RAM is wasted RAM." So if there's more free RAM, I wouldn't put it past Windows to feel obligated to allocate or use more of it for various reasons. After all, the reason why OSes will give more memory than the application requested is because book keeping of memory is easier if there's already space for the application.

Nope, it’s mostly running all kinds of BS that you don’t need. When you de-bloat windows after a reboot with nothing extra running it’s only 2.1 GB. They waste tons of RAM by running tons of crap that you don’t need and don’t want. Like telemetry

At 2.1 gb for os I can run more VMs

 

[hotaru.hino]

Nope, it’s mostly running all kinds of BS that you don’t need. When you de-bloat windows after a reboot with nothing extra running it’s only 2.1 GB. They waste tons of RAM by running tons of crap that you don’t need and don’t want. Like telemetry

At 2.1 gb for os I can run more VMs

So let's see how much changes when you adjust how much memory is being used:


Okay so a few hundred megabytes here and there doesn't seem like much, but I'd argue this is a measurable difference.

Oh, and just out of curiosity, I fired up a VM with Windows 10 21H2 with only 2GB of RAM. While it did spike up to 1.7GB, it eventually settled down to this:

While this would obviously become unusable quickly if I launched a web browser, this still convinces me that Windows is aware of what it has and will work around it. But just for fun I made basically the same VM but with 16GB of RAM


So how is it that, only changing the amount of RAM between the VMs (I did not use 1 VM and adjusted the RAM amount between runs, these are 2 separate VMs), Windows somehow ends up with a different amount of RAM usage and curiously, different amount of processes?

As for what's taking most of the RAM, by far the winners are:

• Windows Explorer
• Windows Defender
• Search
• Superfetch (it was renamed to SysMain)
• DWM

So while yes, I'll agree there is a general increase of RAM usage over time due to feature creep, I'm under the belief Windows will try to adjust itself based on the machine it thinks it's running on.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Lol. My vms are win10 with 2gb dev and test vms. They run pretty fast and I use msbuild and visual studio for builds. If you have trouble running a browser than something is wrong

but yeah they adjust. But I still prefer to disable the things that I don’t like because then I have higher performance in my virtual machines due to less waste

 

[TopHatProductions115]

Nope, it’s mostly running all kinds of BS that you don’t need. When you de-bloat windows after a reboot with nothing extra running it’s only 2.1 GB. They waste tons of RAM by running tons of crap that you don’t need and don’t want. Like telemetry

At 2.1 gb for os I can run more VMs

While debloating Windows helps a little, most of the observed memory usage is going to be from core system components. I've observed this when upgrading the RAM for at least 2 different workstations running Windows 10. The only difference(s) in configuration was the amount of RAM in the systems. Windows will eat more if it sees more. The real question is whether it's good system design to do so, which is a matter of opinion I suppose. How do macOS and Linux handle RAM upgrades?

 

[drtweak]

Those bean counters who still know nothing about computers are annoying. "$30 more for a system that boots to a useable desktop in a fraction of the time? No, I hate my employees, give em an HDD and the bare minimum RAM so their page file is required just to run Notepad!"

HAHA right? like some people just want to save 30-50 bucks only to have to come back and pay full price for a drive vs getting it with the PC and then labor of me cloning it over.