News Upgrading and Testing the Steam Deck's SSD

[mitch074]

They will always work as long as there is an Enterprise edition of that version of windows. Cloud = just another mans datacenter, no actual technology changes happen, you just shift the burden to another set of people.

Hate to be that "but actually" guy, but actually Windows 10/11 both install perfectly fine without ever requiring any account details. What is asking for those accounts is something called Out Of the Box Experience (OOBE), it's a wizard responsible for setting up the system on the first run. Since the people that pay for Enterprise licenses do not have users doing end point management, every version must have an OOBE mode that allows for this. The only thing these "workarounds" are doing is changing the OOBE mode to work the same as Enterprise customers.

MS already has a "cloud" version of AD called AzureAD, it's an IDentity Provider (IDP) that has stuff you can setup onprem/local that links your AD servers to Azure for seamless authentication. This is how Office365, MS Team, Sharepoint Online and various other MS products work. Of course this is just one IDP and many places now end up supporting multiple like Okta. This is what I mean when I said IDP Architecture, different products, very expensive products don't support every IDP. One of our financial products is provided as a SaaS solution and they do not use AzureAD, licensing this product costs several million USD per year.

And just to break your brain even further, there is something called Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). This is where the end point is just a WYSE client or web browser that connects to a portal and then spins up a new VM based on predefined profiles and application stacks. It's containerization for desktops, meaning every time a user logs in they get a brand new fresh install of Windows with all their required applications installed and patched to the latest. When they log out that instance is destroyed with only their profile being persisted. This is where those custom OOBE settings really come into play because there is absolutely no way that "enter MS account" will work with that kind of end point architecture.

Right. Kevin & Aunt Marge VS Azure AD + VDI. For a game app store.
Current versions of Win10 and Win11 bypass the account wizard if no Internet. First release of Win11 didn't allow you to bypass it, that was "fixed" later due to public outcry. Like the fact that you couldn't change the default browser (now, nobody cares that Windows reverts to Edge as default on every major update because "your default app associations were broken")
Win12 will require Internet access at first log in, some people will protest. Microsoft will allow you to create a local user on the second release, but make your life so difficult than when Win13 comes around, no one will complain about the requirements of having a MS account, and no one will bat an eye at the fact that you can't install your preferred app store on a "vanilla" Home release of Windows.

 

[GhostGreyWolf]

For a Tom's article, this is missing some things that would really make it stand out.

1. The SSD controller chip wasn't specified for any of the drives. EDIT: It was for some, but a comparison chart really helps break things down, as is done in most THG articles, and this was not present for that, or #2.
2. There were no specs to tell us how many channels the NAND has, or how many PCIe channels the SSDs have, or whether they're TLC or QLC. I'm also assuming all are DRAMless, but that wasn't clear to me either.
3. Most importantly, there are numerous high-quality OEM drives that would have made really good sense to test against these third parties. The WD SN740, SK Hynix BC711, Samsung PM991a, Micron 2450, and Kioxia BG4 are all such examples. OEM drives may not provide the same warranty, but are usually built for heavy-duty use. These are all available on eBay, the 1TB models as new pulls usually go for $75-110.

I'm disappointed, I usually see a higher caliber of article with more detail on the technical aspects of compared products, and observances of what production quality seems to be like.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

For a Tom's article, this is missing some things that would really make it stand out.

1. The SSD controller chip wasn't specified for any of the drives. EDIT: It was for some, but a comparison chart really helps break things down, as is done in most THG articles, and this was not present for that, or #2.
2. There were no specs to tell us how many channels the NAND has, or how many PCIe channels the SSDs have, or whether they're TLC or QLC. I'm also assuming all are DRAMless, but that wasn't clear to me either.
3. Most importantly, there are numerous high-quality OEM drives that would have made really good sense to test against these third parties. The WD SN740, SK Hynix BC711, Samsung PM991a, Micron 2450, and Kioxia BG4 are all such examples. OEM drives may not provide the same warranty, but are usually built for heavy-duty use. These are all available on eBay, the 1TB models as new pulls usually go for $75-110.

I'm disappointed, I usually see a higher caliber of article with more detail on the technical aspects of compared products, and observances of what production quality seems to be like.

The individual 2230 SSD reviews will contain all of the information about the particular drives. This was intended as a pure roundup of how they work inside the Steam Deck. I think they may all have been Phison controllers, but some are E19 and some are E21.