Discussion What is the most frustratingly slow PC you have used?

[Order 66]

Mine is my old school laptop that had an Intel Celeron N3350, 4GB of DDR3, and intel HD 500 graphics. Even when I wasn't trying to game on it, it was still frustratingly slow. The 4GB of RAM meant that I couldn't have more than a few browser tabs open at any one time.

 

[Eximo]

Systems with 99.997% full drives. I've run into that many times. Some people just don't know any better. If they see an error about the disk being full, they just assume that isn't their problem and carry on. Business professionals with full hard drives relying solely on network storage while their computer struggled along without a swap file.

I facilitated a training group once. 3 of them had drives so full that I could not install the java runtime they needed for the tool they were being trained on. Had to sit with them and backup their stuff to DVDs so they could actually participate.

Another time a database backup had gone overboard and filled up a point of sale system. Took several minutes just to open files and folders.

 

[Order 66]

Systems with 99.997% full drives. I've run into that many times. Some people just don't know any better. If they see an error about the disk being full, they just assume that isn't their problem and carry on. Business professionals with full hard drives relying solely on network storage while their computer struggled along without a swap file back.

I facilitated a training group once. 3 of them had drives so full that I could not install the java runtime they needed for the tool they were being trained on. Had to sit with them and backup their stuff to DVDs so they could actually participate.

Another time a database backup had gone overboard and filled up a point of sale system. Took several minutes just to open files and folders.

What exactly about full drives slows performance so much? I understand that on, say, a hard drive, seek time could increase the fuller the drive gets, but what about an SSD?

 

[Eximo]

What exactly about full drives slows performance so much? I understand that on, say, a hard drive, seek time could increase the fuller the drive gets, but what about an SSD?

Systems have many layers of memory.

L1-L4 cache is possible. Some CPUs have onboard DRAM cache. Then there is system memory. Then virtual memory on the hosts permanent storage device.

That last one can be any drive type. SSD, SSHD, Optane + HDD, Hard drive, other types of flash like compact flash or an SD card.

Operating systems prioritize what needs to go where in order of how often it is needed. More recent versions of Windows actively avoid using virtual memory and will instead consume more system memory if it is available. When you run out, active memory is then stored on the local drive. So any retrieval is limited to the speed of the drive and its connection.

A full drive is likely be very fragmented with no space for cleanup/defrag which would have poor seek times for files. The inability to load all required code into memory means that the CPU has to waste cycles unloading, and loading things constantly.

Even full SSDs are not immune to this. They have limited performance because SLC cache is no longer an option and all TRIM functions have limited or no space to operate in. So if the system memory is full and the SSD is full your system will crawl to a halt as it has to unload and load things from the drive to function.

 

[Order 66]

Systems have many layers of memory.

L1-L4 cache is possible. Some CPUs have onboard DRAM cache. Then there is system memory. Then virtual memory on the hosts permanent storage device.

That last one can be any drive type. SSD, SSHD, Optane + HDD, Hard drive, other types of flash like compact flash or an SD card.

Operating systems prioritize what needs to go where in order of how often it is needed. More recent versions of Windows actively avoid using virtual memory and will instead consume more system memory if it is available. When you run out, active memory is then stored on the local drive. So any retrieval is limited to the speed of the drive and its connection.

A full drive is likely be very fragmented with no space for cleanup/defrag which would have poor seek times for files. The inability to load all required code into memory means that the CPU has to waste cycles unloading, and loading things constantly.

Even full SSDs are not immune to this. They have limited performance because SLC cache is no longer an option and all TRIM functions have limited or no space to operate in. So if the system memory is full and the SSD is full your system will crawl to a halt as it has to unload and load things from the drive to function.

I'm sure that had something to do with why my old laptop was so slow. Windows took up nearly the entire 64GB so there wasn't even much I could delete to free up space.