OEMs Under Pressure from Microsoft to Stop Use of HDDs as Boot Drives from 2023

[Valantar]

Aren't low-end SSDs already way cheaper than the cheapest HDD? BOM costs are a lot lower at least. Sure, capacity is likely half to a quarter of that cheap HDD, but so what? People generally don't want or need terabytes of storage in their PCs these days.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

I just hope this would not lead to soldered on EMMC ssd on laptops like on their lower cost segment, those are rather terrible performance. I would take a laptop with 2.5 inch bay with slow hdd as it could be upgraded in the future

 

[Tomorrow]

Aren't low-end SSDs already way cheaper than the cheapest HDD? BOM costs are a lot lower at least. Sure, capacity is likely half to a quarter of that cheap HDD, but so what? People generally don't want or need terabytes of storage in their PCs these days.

True and true. Cheapest 2,5" HDD is 11€ @ 320GB and cheapest 3,5" HDD is 500GB at 8€ (500GB SSD is 40€) but as you pointed out most people don't need that much anyways for a boot drive. Especially as more and more things are stored in the cloud. Not for enthusiasts but for normies certainly.

 

[FranciscoCL]

No wonder, Windows 10 on HDD is crawling, boot takes ages and work is even worse. Windows 11 on HDD is crawling^2.

Totally true.
I suffer every day at work with a computer with 6c/12t and 16Gb of RAM but with a very slow hard drive.
I turn it on upon arrival and literally start doing other things before I can use it.

 

[Testsubject01]

Problem is the SSDs have stagnated in price and size for a couple of years now...

To shamelessly quote myself from February:

Just out of curiosity checked my Crucial MX500 500 GB that was bought in 2018 for 50€, it is still selling for 50€ as of today.

53,50€ (09.06.2022) I guess counting inflation, it got somewhat cheaper over the years…

On topic: “It's not known how the company will go about enforcing this.”
Easy! Just like modern AAA Games load glacial slow on the average HDD. Customers will either waste time or pay for an upgrade.
Seeing that a lot of OEM / SI businesses still list an SSD boot drive as a “premium”-upgrade option, I also don't see them changing a thing any time soon.

 

[R0H1T]

On topic: “It's not known how the company will go about enforcing this.”

Windows can already detect if you're running an HDD or SSD, so if MS really wants to it can enforce newer(later?) Windows versions to stop installing on an HDD but I seriously doubt they'll do that. Maybe by the end of this card, by when I hope HDD's are relegated to absolute garbage systems!

 

[Ravenmaster]

I haven’t used a HDD since 2014. Good riddens to bad rubbish. SSD’s all the way!

 

[bonehead123]

HDD.... whahdatiz ????? hehehe

Seriously though, I haven't owned any for a long, long time...

 

[zlobby]

I haven’t used a HDD since 2014. Good riddens to bad rubbish. SSD’s all the way!

Good luck filling a NAS or a SAN with SSD for the same amount of capacity and money.

HDD.... whahdatiz ????? hehehe

Seriously though, I haven't owned any for a long, long time...

Long time backups are on SLC (low capacity), tape (exotic and expensive for consumers) or NAS with CMR. How do you backup?
Yeah, cloud is not my thing.

 

[Recus]

I mean. Im sure SSD manufacturers could make a really really cheap ass SSD that performs somewhat on the level of a hard drive for absolute peanuts.

Make it an OEM only part.

Adata XPG SX6000 128GB Lite M.2 28€.

 

[chrcoluk]

Problem is the SSDs have stagnated in price and size for a couple of years now...

This

 

[eidairaman1]

This wont happen lol

True and true. Cheapest 2,5" HDD is 11€ @ 320GB and cheapest 3,5" HDD is 500GB at 8€ (500GB SSD is 40€) but as you pointed out most people don't need that much anyways for a boot drive. Especially as more and more things are stored in the cloud. Not for enthusiasts but for normies certainly.

And cloud can go poof and all your stuff is gone.

256GB is ample for a OS drive to include updates to it, office/adobe etc put everything else on a second drive.

Integrated ssds are bogus

 

[JoniISkandar]

in plus side its finally they ditch slow AF 5400rpm harddrive that making new laptop so useless then core i3 sandybridge

in Bad Side : Microsoft keep making bloatware OS that so heavy with bunch useless feature, that require SSD to run their OS properly, i miss windows 7 simplicity

 

[thegnome]

Good, I've gotten rid of hdd's other than external storage/emergency backup/potential nas. SSD's are so cheap these days you might as well do it. Too bad most boards don't go up higher than 3 m.2 slots at full speed..

 

[chrcoluk]

This is fair enough, I agree as well bottom end kingston SSD's are usually cheaper than the cheapest HDD's.

People buying bargain basement laptops probably dont need more space than a 128/256 gig SSD anyway. Especially now we also have cloud storage service.

 

[kapone32]

This is fair enough, I agree as well bottom end kingston SSD's are usually cheaper than the cheapest HDD's.

People buying bargain basement laptops probably dont need more space than a 128/256 gig SSD anyway. Especially now we also have cloud storage service.

This sentiment has merit as the type of Gamers on here would buy a Modern Gaming Laptop that comes with NVME and NVME expansion as well as some SSD storage. The cloud will make more sense when APUs that can do 1080P Gaming if there is a small boot drive installed in something like an ultrabook.

 

[AusWolf]

OEMs still use HDDs as boot drives? Holy S!

 

[JC Denton]

I remember when SSDs first came out, a 120GB OCZ with SLC would set you $600. Now you can pick one up second hand for $10.

I've slowly been taking advantage of SSDs over the years. Where there was a hard drive, there's now an SSD.

I'm no longer getting hard

 

[somethinggeneric]

I'm going to miss being able to troubleshoot laptops by touch:
*turns on user laptop*
*doesnt feel vibrations or feels/hears faint clicking*
Yup the hard drive is bad

 

[maxli86]

Latest OS like Windows 10/11 will crawl on HDD except older OS like Windows 7 or 8.1 and older.
Win 10/11 is resource hungry so hard disk will have difficulty to catch up with lots of background task unlike Win 7 or Win 8.1.
However hard disk price per gigabyte is better than SSD so I find it contradicting for OEM to come out with such statement.

Some laptop/PC build either comes with HDD or crappy SSD and the PC itself is a pain to use.
I rather OEM use a good small SSD just for boot drive to save on cost than using hard disk.

 

[DoLlyBirD]

SATA3 550MB/s 240GB drive, cheap as chips $20 there's no reason not to IMO, HDD's are still fine for storage and program drives IMO even most games pre 2020

 

[Tomorrow]

This wont happen lol

And cloud can go poof and all your stuff is gone.
256GB is ample for a OS drive to include updates to it, office/adobe etc put everything else on a second drive.
Integrated ssds are bogus

Like i implied in my post - normies.
They don't care. Literally. Most only care about their cat pictures that are nowadays in their phone anyway.
Enthusiasts are a different thing. I have to backup a ton of of stuff and restore bunch of programs if a do a clean install.
I remember doing these monthly when i was younger and wanted to test out things (plus VM's were not really a thing back then).
Now i do it only as a last resort.

 

[JC Denton]

SATA3 550MB/s 240GB drive, cheap as chips $20 there's no reason not to IMO, HDD's are still fine for storage and program drives IMO even most games pre 2020

As long as that $20 SSD has a DRAM cache and doesn't have QLC, I won't see a problem. Hard drives struggle with loading small files in large quantities, such as updating windows or installing a game. Even launching Steam off a hard drive takes an extra minute. An SSD in 2022 is a must have as a boot drive, but just make sure it's from a reliable company. Hard drives are perfectly ok for movies as they are larger files that hard drives don't have to work so hard to launch

 

[DoLlyBirD]

As long as that $20 SSD has a DRAM cache and doesn't have QLC, I won't see a problem. Hard drives struggle with loading small files in large quantities, such as updating windows or installing a game. Even launching Steam off a hard drive takes an extra minute. An SSD in 2022 is a must have as a boot drive, but just make sure it's from a reliable company. Hard drives are perfectly ok for movies as they are larger files that hard drives don't have to work so hard to launch

Before DRAM cached drives, when there was 120/240/480GB SATA3 550MBs QLC drives that were most prominent, not sure the lack of DRAM was an issue for SSD's, Windows will work perfectly fine off a slow SATA3 low capacity SSD just fine and still perform 10x better than the best of HDD's, if you want better performance then you pay for it, same as with everything.. you can't demand the latest and greatest of technology whilst also demanding rock bottom prices

 

[lemonadesoda]

Oh i see what they are up to… Windows on a chip. On the mainboard. Like firmware. Only bigger. Then they‘ll „lock it“, so you cant install any other OS. Wasnt WindowsCE like this?