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How did HDDs regressed that much?

ChuckMaurice

After using SSDs for a while (since 2013 IIRC), I encountered "classic HDDs" brand new laptops recently and was horrified about how long they took to perform basic tasks. I'm not even talking about boot times: OS and every program launch was slow as hell, on multiple laptops. And maybe I'm biased but I'm not sure it was THAT slow before SSDs.

How did hard drives regressed that much in terms of performance? Is it because of the now standard 5400RPM? (why this limit then?). Did Microsoft changed something in Windows to make it slower on HDDs? Is it a sales tactics to make us upgrade to SSDs? I'm at the point where I can't imagine how people are using computers with HDDs and don't throw the damn thing out of the window.

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I believe you are just used to the fast speed of SSDs.

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Actually, it was like that all the time. And yes, it's slow because of 5400 rpm. And it's nothing about microsoft :D In fact, win 8 and higher boots quite fast.

That's why many people tend to replace stock laptop hdd with ssd today.

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A lot of times laptops come with a lot of bloatware (especially if you're HP, ugh) and that slows down all my laptops. A clean install of Windows on a mechanical drive usually makes a computer super fast again. And you're also used to using SSDs (they have spoiled me, and I only have 1!), so there is some bias coming from that. 

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Just now, Jamiec1130 said:

A lot of times laptops come with a lot of bloatware (especially if you're HP, ugh) and that slows down all my laptops. A clean install of Windows on a mechanical drive usually makes a computer super fast again. And you're also used to using SSDs (they have spoiled me, and I only have 1!), so there is some bias coming from that. 

I mean, I know I've been using SSDs since they have good value (2013), and before I was mostly using Linux and MacOS, but was it really THAT slow before? At the point where even launching the browser can take 20+ seconds on a new laptop? 

 

Manufacturers should be ashamed to ship computers with bloatwares and mechanical HDDs at this point.

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Just now, jldjul said:

I mean, I know I've been using SSDs since they have good value (2013), and before I was mostly using Linux and MacOS, but was it really THAT slow before? At the point where even launching the browser can take 20+ seconds on a new laptop? 

 

Manufacturers should be ashamed to ship computers with bloatwares and mechanical HDDs at this point.

It's always been that way. One of the first things I did on my brand new HP Envy (Core i5 5200U, 8GB DDR3) is reinstall Windows. The original installation was so slow that I couldn't even launch Chrome, let alone do anything productive. 

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21 minutes ago, Jamiec1130 said:

A lot of times laptops come with a lot of bloatware (especially if you're HP, ugh) and that slows down all my laptops. A clean install of Windows on a mechanical drive usually makes a computer super fast again. And you're also used to using SSDs (they have spoiled me, and I only have 1!), so there is some bias coming from that. 

true, super clean, fresh, and empty windows 10 will boot fairly fast from mechanical drives, but we are all used to PC's turning on like a lightswitch since SSD's became affordable. 

 

7200rpm drives are about as low as i will go before getting irritated and throwing laptops at walls. 

 

im sure you all have a friend that has kept his 15 year old craptop and updated it all the way to 10, and sits there for 20 minutes watching it boot from an IDE rust spinner.

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22 minutes ago, jldjul said:

Did Microsoft changed something in Windows to make it slower on HDDs?

 

The short answer is these drives are slow because they have physical moving parts. Windows is slow on them because Windows needs program instructions and data pulled off the slow drive. The only intention behind using old slow technology is its cheap price.

 

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Just now, DnFx91 said:

true, super clean, fresh, and empty windows 10 will boot fairly fast from mechanical drives, but we are all used to PC's turning on like a lightswitch since SSD's became affordable. 

 

7200rpm drives are about as low as i will go before getting irritated and throwing laptops at walls. 

 

im sure you all have a friend that has kept his 15 year old craptop and updated it all the way to 10, and sits there for 20 minutes watching it boot from an IDE rust spinner.

Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 were all very fast on mechanical drives to me, and that's going back to the Core Duo days. When I can, I use SSDs (although I only have one, and it's currently in my main laptop-school machine) but HDDs aren't too bad. They're tolerable, as long as you don't load them up with a lot of programs and other shit sitting on the drive not being used. So as long as you take care of the Windows install, mechanical hard drives are fine. 

Main System: Phobos

AMD Ryzen 7 2700 (8C/16T), ASRock B450 Steel Legend, 16GB G.SKILL Aegis DDR4 3000MHz, AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB (XFX), 960GB Crucial M500, 2TB Seagate BarraCuda, Windows 10 Pro for Workstations/macOS Catalina

 

Secondary System: York

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Older File Server: Yet to be named

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19 hours ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 were all very fast on mechanical drives to me, and that's going back to the Core Duo days. When I can, I use SSDs (although I only have one, and it's currently in my main laptop-school machine) but HDDs aren't too bad. They're tolerable, as long as you don't load them up with a lot of programs and other shit sitting on the drive not being used. So as long as you take care of the Windows install, mechanical hard drives are fine. 

I realized that one of the things that bothered me the most is that Windows performance on HDD quickly gets worse over time: it's ok at first, but after 10-15 min of heavy use (like I became used to with SSDs) it becomes slow as hell. Cache management ?

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The keyword here are

Laptop

HDD
Heavy use

 

Seriously what you expect?

High performance on 4200RPM hardrive?

 

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11 minutes ago, Blebekblebek said:

The keyword here are

Laptop

HDD
Heavy use

 

Seriously what you expect?

High performance on 4200RPM hardrive?

 

I expected performance at the level I was used to 10 years ago, when SSDs weren't a thing. When I say "heavy use" it's a bit strong, understand "lot of file modifications, launching apps, installing programs..."

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Just now, jldjul said:

I expected performance at the level I was used to 10 years ago, when SSDs weren't a thing. When I say "heavy use" it's a bit strong, understand "lot of file modifications, launching apps, installing programs..."

The issue is, you already know how the differences between faster & slower so ofcourse it'll be biased.

Harddrive is the least hardware that ever change (if anything) don't change a lot in decades.

 

It was slow

it will always be slow

 

the problem back then

1. There's no other option or

2. The option was too expensive.

 

We are talking about 2.5inch HDD, not regular 3.5
You can strip the hardrive and put it in your desktop, I would say the whole experience would be similar like the laptop for general usage.

2.5inch drive is slow, not only that it also had very low cache (the highest I know only goes up to 16MB on 2TB drive)

 

If laptop could handle 3.5inch hdd, I bet it would ran just fine as regular desktop.

 

 

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