Have hard drives improved over the years?

[exdeath]

Hard Drives do that when the OS is paging. That means they don't have enough RAM and the OS is taking storage from the HDD for the system to use. Nothing else. As I'm writing this I have seven open applications and my HDD activity light barely comes on.

You can't really fault an HDD for a problem caused by not having enough RAM.

Nope. We aren't talking about RAM or paging. We are talking about when an application like anti virus starts going nuts, or 70 updates installing in the background, or installing a 300 MB software package, or Lotus Notes compacting and reindexing a 50 GB replica file, or transcoding or compress media files; eg: things that are hitting the raw file system in a random pattern. No amount of RAM in the world is going to help you when the very nature of the task you are waiting on is strictly disk IO bound.

You can have 16 GB of RAM, that's all fine and well, but filling and emptying that RAM becomes your bottleneck when you have to write that data back to the platter at 100 MB sec, or more realistically 10 MB sec due to the drive not being defragged in 3 years and due to the antivirus deciding it wants a piece at the same time, etc.

I work on machines that have anywhere from 2 GB to 16 GB RAM these days. Neither are capable of installing that 300 MB HP all in one printer software package in less than 15 minutes. It has nothing to do with RAM.

 

[dclive]

And here you go again blaming a Hard Drive for a problem it didn't cause.

If you have problems with a system being slow because of OS paging, then you should buy more RAM, which is incredibly cheap nowadays.

What you're offering as a solution is to hide the issue by buying an SSD instead of just buying more RAM and eliminating the problem of paging to begin with.

The SSD handles the situation well, but the dinosaur HDD can't. IOPS. It's quite clear the difference, and the reasoning why the HDD is dying.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Hint: average consumers browse the web, check their email and ebay, and save a couple gigs of mp3s and pictures to their home PC, and play WoW. They don't require 100 TBs of space.

Just to clear something up, we ARE talking about their regular PC, not specialized applications like a home media server containing all their Blu Ray media. These are not "average consumers" either. Obviously I'd recommend a RAID5 with conventional HDDs for something like that and not suggest a 120GB SSD is enough. But these systems are special case and are not interacted with in a random fashion on a daily basis.

Hint: you should tell consumers that that problem is caused by paging, which is caused by not having enough RAM. Instead, you recommend buying an SSD when all it'll do is hide the paging problem. Buy more RAM, which is a lot more cheaper than buying an SSD, and the paging problem disappears.

I never recommended something with tons of storage capacity, which is why I said SSDs will be very popular when they become cheap in 512GB capacities. That's not "100 of TBs" as you say. The average consumer is fine with an HDD capacity of 320GB as of now, but afterwards (in some years) they'll probably have more storage needs, hence 512GB. It's about striking a balance. Now SSDs can't do that. They cost too much for the storage capacity they need.

 

[dclive]

Hint: you should tell consumers that that problem is caused by paging, which is caused by not having enough RAM. Instead, you recommend buying an SSD when all it'll do is hide the paging problem. Buy more RAM, which is a lot more cheaper than buying an SSD, and the paging problem disappears.

I never recommended something with tons of storage capacity, which is why I said SSDs will be very popular when they become cheap in 512GB capacities. That's not "100 of TBs" as you say. The average consumer is fine with an HDD capacity of 320GB as of now, but afterwards (in some years) they'll probably have more storage needs, hence 512GB. It's about striking a balance. Now SSDs can't do that. They cost too much for the storage capacity they need.

SCCM tells folks that the work machines rarely use > 60GB or so. Home machines might use a little more due to MP3s / pics / etc. being saved, but 512GB sounds like quite a stretch.

 

[exdeath]

Hint: you should tell consumers that that problem is caused by paging, which is caused by not having enough RAM. Instead, you recommend buying an SSD when all it'll do is hide the paging problem. Buy more RAM, which is a lot more cheaper than buying an SSD, and the paging problem disappears.

How do I explain to said customer why a 300 MB software package takes 15+ minutes to install even when they have 8 GB RAM?

Hint: it's not RAM or paging, it's ad hoc random filesystem access. It's like you are suggesting that having tons of RAM will cause anti virus to never have to access the disk, and that is just false.

I understand what you are trying to say, honestly I do, I'm just saying that at some point it comes down to raw disk access, and HDDs have started to show their age and inability to keep up in the last couple years.

It's like I tell people, floppy disks are slow, but we were only dealing with 1 KB files when we used floppy disks so we didn't care. Imagine if floppy disks were still used and they were 100s of GB in size now, and we were storing GBs of data on them, but their speed only improved 10x. Sure 10 kb/s is faster than 1 kb/sec by a factor of 10, but the data we are trying to write went from 1 kb to 10 GB in the same time span.

It's time for HDDs to die. Our technology as a species will be stuck in the 20th century and not reach the next level if we don't let HDDs die. Flash based SSDs are just a stopgap. What we really need is MRAM/FeRAM and no need for a hard drive AT ALL!

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Nope. We aren't talking about RAM or paging. We are talking about when an application like anti virus starts going nuts, or 70 updates installing in the background, or installing a 300 MB software package, or Lotus Notes compacting and reindexing a 50 GB replica file, or transcoding or compress media files; eg: things that are hitting the raw file system in a random pattern. No amount of RAM in the world is going to help you when the very nature of the task you are waiting on is strictly disk IO bound.

You can have 16 GB of RAM, that's all fine and well, but filling and emptying that RAM becomes your bottleneck when you have to write that data back to the platter at 100 MB sec, or more realistically 10 MB sec due to the drive not being defragged in 3 years and due to the antivirus deciding it wants a piece at the same time, etc.

The average consumer will not be doing many I/O intensive operations at the same time, so your argument fundamentally fails because of that. The average consumer won't notice a big difference in performance when the AV application decides to run a scheduled quick scan while they're web browsing, listening to music and using Windows Live Mail or whatever e-mail application they happen to use.

If we're arguing over people having 10 things open at once, one of them being an AV scanner, one of them being installing an application, they're not an average consumer.

 

[dclive]

The average consumer will not be doing many I/O intensive operations at the same time, so your argument fundamentally fails because of that. The average consumer won't notice a big difference in performance when the AV application decides to run a scheduled quick scan while they're web browsing, listening to music and using Windows Live Mail or whatever e-mail application they happen to use.

If we're arguing over people having 10 things open at once, one of them being an AV scanner, one of them being installing an application, they're not an average consumer.

Wow. That's totally wrong. Part of the entire problem is background processes using precious HDD IOPS, which aren't a problem on an SSD.

So your answer to a 300MB app taking 15 minutes to install is that it's impossible, and a 150MB/s hard drive should be able to install that in 2 seconds, or as fast as it can pull it off the DVD ?

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

How do I explain to said customer why a 300 MB software package takes 15+ minutes to install even when they have 8 GB RAM?

Hint: it's not RAM or paging, it's ad hoc random filesystem access. It's like you are suggesting that having tons of RAM will cause anti virus to never have to access the disk, and that is just false.

Right, and since we're talking about the average consumer, are you saying to me they install 300MB applications every day?

Most of what people do regarding storing on a Hard Drive is download things; that is, media. For that they'll be limited mostly by the speed of their network.

How can you argue for installing 300MB applications every day when a 64GB SSD, which is already too expensive for most, will only be able to hold a couple? You can't get almost anything to it to begin with. People are not gonna limit themselves to only have the most essential programs and almost no media.

 

[dclive]

Right, and since we're talking about the average consumer, are you saying to me they install 300MB applications every day?

Most of what people do regarding storing on a Hard Drive is download things; that is, media. For that they'll be limited mostly by the speed of their network.

How can you argue for installing 300MB applications every day when a 64GB SSD, which is already too expensive for most, will only be able to hold a couple? You can't get almost anything to it to begin with. People are not gonna limit themselves to only have the most essential programs and almost no media.

Please can you answer his question?

 

[exdeath]

The average consumer will not be doing many I/O intensive operations at the same time, so your argument fundamentally fails because of that. The average consumer won't notice a big difference in performance when the AV application decides to run a scheduled quick scan while they're web browsing, listening to music and using Windows Live Mail or whatever e-mail application they happen to use.

If we're arguing over people having 10 things open at once, one of them being an AV scanner, one of them being installing an application, they're not an average consumer.

I get complaints all the time how it takes 10+ minutes for their PC to boot and for their email to open... because AV is doing it's start of the day scan, windows update is checking out file versions for 10000s of files, Windows is creating a restore point, i Tunes is checking media inventory and downloading updates of it's own, Windows MRT is running, etc.

The average user isn't even aware of these background tasks and most do not want them disabled even when it's explained to them. All they know is their email window says "Not Responding..." and when they go to browse the web while they wait, the browser window also says "Not Responding..." (random write speed to the temporary internet files folder is a serious bottle neck with modern media rich web pages), they press ctrl alt del to see what's going on (even though it won't show them) and Task Manager says "Not Responding..." and when it does come up it shows the CPU is 99% idle anyway and that the page file isn't even being used.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Wow. That's totally wrong. Part of the entire problem is background processes using precious HDD IOPS, which aren't a problem on an SSD.

So your answer to a 300MB app taking 15 minutes to install is that it's impossible, and a 150MB/s hard drive should be able to install that in 2 seconds, or as fast as it can pull it off the DVD ?

You're great at putting words in people's mouth. Unfortunately, you such at making any decent arguments. People aren't installing 300MB applications all day. Even if they were, your argument for an SSD fails: a 64GB SSD won't be able to hold many of them to begin with.

Since you're talking so much about background processes and what not, why can't you address the fact that most people need at the bare minimum 120GB so they can have a decent amount of media and applications on it to begin with.

With SSDs having such meager capacities, you're not able to take advantage of all those speeds to begin with because you'll run out of space.

 

[dclive]

You're great at putting words in people's mouth. Unfortunately, you such at making any decent arguments. People aren't installing 300MB applications all day. Even if they were, your argument for an SSD fails: a 64GB SSD won't be able to hold many of them to begin with.

Since you're talking so much about background processes and what not, why can't you address the fact that most people need at the bare minimum 120GB so they can have a decent amount of media and applications on it to begin with.

With SSDs having such meager capacities, you're not able to take advantage of all those speeds to begin with because you'll run out of space.

A 64GB SSD? Who's talking about that? If having "only" 34GB of data (I assume we agree on the prior 30GB number?) is a problem that would mean a person could install about 90 300MB applications. That's a lot, thanks.

If people need 120GB SSDs, they should buy them. You're the only one on here arguing about 64GB SSDs that I see. Stop making strawmen.

 

[dclive]

I still await your firewire is a failure response... and your AIO response too ... in fact, any response on how Apple's stuff has been a failure would be interesting. Please don't forget to heavily define "failure".

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I get complaints all the time how it takes 10+ minutes for their PC to boot and for their email to open... because AV is doing it's start of the day scan, windows update is checking out file versions for 10000s of files, Windows is creating a restore point, i Tunes is checking media inventory, etc.

The average user isn't even aware of these background tasks. All they know is their email window says "Not Responding..." and when they go to browse the web while they wait, the browser window also says "Not Responding...", they press ctrl alt del to see what's going on (even though it won't show them) and Task Manager says "Not Responding..." and when it does come up it shows the CPU is 99% idle anyway.

The CPU won't be idle when it's doing all those tasks. That's a fallacy; a horrible one at that.

All those things you say they'll have installed, they won't be able to install to begin with. 64GB is not enough. That, and they'll still have to wait even if they have an SSD. It'll be half the time, but they'll still have to. PCs aren't scanning for viruses every day, either.

Almost all of those problems you mention go back to one thing: not enough RAM, therefore paging.

Just to show how this is wrong, I decided to do what a normal user would: open MSE, select Quick Scan, and open some apps from cold (they weren't in cache). Chrome opened in 4 seconds while it was scanning, and WLM took 8 seconds and was almost immediately responsive. Oh, and the scan took 2 minutes 25 seconds, on a computer with a 320GB 7200RPM HDD with "only" 49GB free. Issue not found.

 

[dclive]

The CPU won't be idle when it's doing all those tasks. That's a fallacy; a horrible one at that.

Frequently it is. It's not as if the disk is waiting on the CPU; it's the other way around. With a HDD, at least.

All those things you say they'll have installed, they won't be able to install to begin with. 64GB is not enough. That, and they'll still have to wait even if they have an SSD. It'll be half the time, but they'll still have to. PCs aren't scanning for viruses every day, either.

If 64GB SSDs cause you anguish, assume we're talking about 120GB SSDs.

Net net, the fact is with SSDs there's vastly less waiting, IOPS are far better, and the user has a far better experience all around. The HDD is a dinosaur problem that hasn't been fixed until now.

 

[exdeath]

The CPU won't be idle when it's doing all those tasks. That's a fallacy; a horrible one at that.

All those things you say they'll have installed, they won't be able to install to begin with. 64GB is not enough. That, and they'll still have to wait even if they have an SSD. It'll be half the time, but they'll still have to. PCs aren't scanning for viruses every day, either.

The CPU is idle because it's a 3 GHz quad core and every outstanding operating is pending disk IO. Perhaps you've never used Process Explorer and seen for yourself when the CPU is 99% idle with maybe a 1-5% jump here and there in random processes from time to time, yet there is 20+ MB/sec IO scattered all over the place?

All these things and more I have witnessed with only 20-30 GB of space used on 320+ GB HDDs. A 64 GB SSD would be more than enough, let alone 120 GB.

There are certain model laptops at work that have 80-120 GB SSDs. People love these because they are so much faster than their old machine. And these aren't just typical home users browsing the web, these are corporate users with 20 GB of Lotus Notes archives and such that would be MORE prone to running out of space than typical home users, and they've not once complained about 80 GB of space being a problem.

 

[exdeath]

The CPU won't be idle when it's doing all those tasks. That's a fallacy; a horrible one at that.

All those things you say they'll have installed, they won't be able to install to begin with. 64GB is not enough. That, and they'll still have to wait even if they have an SSD. It'll be half the time, but they'll still have to. PCs aren't scanning for viruses every day, either.

Almost all of those problems you mention go back to one thing: not enough RAM, therefore paging.

Just to show how this is wrong, I decided to do what a normal user would: open MSE, select Quick Scan, and open some apps from cold (they weren't in cache). Chrome opened in 4 seconds while it was scanning, and WLM took 8 seconds and was almost immediately responsive. Oh, and the scan took 2 minutes 25 seconds, on a computer with a 320GB 7200RPM HDD with "only" 49GB free. Issue not found.

I've already explained that RAM is not the problem. Getting things in and out of RAM fast enough when the nature of the task at hand is random file system access is the problem.

The fact that the basis of your argument is that we need lots of RAM to cache things to begin with indicates a serious problem.

When my Raptor RAID0 is chugging along and filling the house with the sounds of ripping burlap to crunch large data sets, the pagefile isn't being touched at all. When the nature of the operation is lots of read-modify-write to actual files on the disk, RAM has nothing to do with it.

Just give me 128 GB of directly addressible zero wait state non volatile 1:1 CPU:RAM MRAM and get rid of DRAM and HDD altogether. The only reason we even have DRAM is because HDDs are slow, and the only reason we even have HDDs is because DRAM is volatile. Had we continued down the path of developing higher density semiconductor based magnetic core memory instead of DRAM, we wouldn't be in the boat we are in today. But this industry always takes the cheap easy and immediately profitable way out.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I still await your firewire is a failure response... and your AIO response too ... in fact, any response on how Apple's stuff has been a failure would be interesting. Please don't forget to heavily define "failure".

You're trolling. It couldn't be clearer. I already answered this TWICE. It was a failure because it failed to meet their expectations, which was for it to be an industry standard. They were hoping that people would go for it because it was faster than USB 1, and they used video as an example of advantages it had and how it could be well implemented there. It didn't become an industry standard. Nor did all-it-ones, which they were saying would be the future.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

The CPU is idle because it's a 3 GHz quad core and every outstanding operating is pending disk IO. Perhaps you've never used Process Explorer and seen for yourself when the CPU is 99% idle with maybe a 1-5% jump here and there in random processes from time to time, yet there is 20+ MB/sec IO scattered all over the place?

All these things and more I have witnessed with only 20-30 GB of space used on 320+ GB HDDs. A 64 GB SSD would be more than enough, let alone 120 GB.

There are certain model laptops at work that have 80-120 GB SSDs. People love these because they are so much faster than their old machine. And these aren't just typical home users browsing the web, these are corporate users with 20 GB of Lotus Notes archives and such that would be MORE prone to running out of space than typical home users, and they've not once complained about 80 GB of space being a problem.

*sigh*

I don't think I need to repeat myself. HDDs are clearly enough for the average consumer. If not, they'd be flocking for SSDs, even if they were 64GB. But we know most people want to have media, productivity apps, perhaps some casual games on them.

If it's not paging, the problem could be that he has tons of bloated applications in the background.

General slowness is not a problem for anyone I know except some people in the uni officies. They have complains of everything taking forever to load. Most of them have Dell Windows XP computers with 512MB of RAM and Pentium 4s. They told me the technicians wouldn't do anything about it, told the director (who is my aunt) of the office that they should upgrade RAM on the computers, and then she asked me for more info on what exactly to order. Long story short, we made an order amounting to almost $200 from CompUSA to max them out with 2GB DDR2 RAM, and the computers take up around 3x less to boot up and they're much more responsive.

 

[exdeath]

*sigh*

I don't think I need to repeat myself. HDDs are clearly enough for the average consumer. If not, they'd be flocking for SSDs, even if they were 64GB. But we know most people want to have media, productivity apps, perhaps some casual games on them.

Most are not aware of the cause of the actual problem in the first place, let alone what a SSD vs HDD is or that an SSD can resolve it.

Believe me I'm doing my part to create awareness and educate every customer I work with by getting through to them what it would be like to have a PC that installs Windows in 4 minutes, boots in 3 seconds, shuts down instantly, and launches all applications instantaneously whether it's notepad or Adobe Photoshop, and how you will never NEVER have to wait 2-5 seconds for a context menu to pop regardless of what the PC is currently doing.

I don't care how much RAM you have, a HDD will *never* do that. The change in experience of that magnitude hasn't been experienced since going from floppy/casette to HDD.

:awe:

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Most are not aware of the cause actual problem, let alone that an SSD can resolve it.

I'm doing my part to educate every customer I work with by getting through to them what it would be like to have a PC that installs Windows in 4 minutes, boots in 3 seconds, shuts down instantly, and launches all applications instantaneously whether it's notepad or Adobe Photoshop.

I don't care how much RAM you have, a HDD will never do that.

:awe:

I think you may have slightly unrealistic expectations. Windows won't boot in three seconds. And if this problem was a huge as you're saying, again, people would be flocking to SSDs, even the 64GB ones. You say storage capacity isn't a problem and that they're much faster, yet the average consumer seems to be just fine with a Hard Drive, and they're not flocking to SSDs. If SSDs were perfect, people would be buying them in huge quantities. The reality is: they're not. Your average Joe is gonna have a problem with you recommending he spend $120 on a drive in which he'll only be able to install some things. If you tell him he'll be able to store a good amount of things, including some media on one that costs $200, he'll either make an extremely weird facial expression, or tell you you're crazy, or tell you he doesn't have that kind of money to spend, or tell you to go to hell. Like I said, most people have a budget of $50-75 for these things. Anything more is out of their comfort zone, and recommending spending $50 more to get just 64GB is not gonna fly.

I dealt with more than 30 computers between August last year and December. It's the first time I hear of someone having the huge problem you're mentioning.

 

[exdeath]

When I get personal requests to build gaming machines, it's almost always for something like WoW. I explain that they don't need a crazy CPU or GPU for WoW because it's a super old game, but lots of RAM and a SSD. I tell them that despite a quad core and GTX560, 1/3rd or more the cost of their new PC is going to be the SSD alone. They don't care that it's only 120 GB.

When they tell me they come from a machine with only a 80 GB HDD in the first place, and will keep their existing 1280x1024 LCD, I know right away that even the cheapest CPU/GPU will get the job done and I'm going to focus on the most dramatic improvement in day to day response time and bend over backwards getting an SSD in that build.

You should see the look on their face when I describe how they will be able to click on a character on the select screen and be fully loaded in Orgrimmar in 3 seconds on a first boot.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

When I get personal requests to build gaming machines, it's almost always for something like WoW. I explain that they don't need a crazy CPU or GPU for WoW because it's a super old game, but lots of RAM and a SSD. I tell them that despite a quad core and GTX560, 1/3rd or more the cost of their new PC is going to be the SSD alone. They don't care that it's only 120 GB.

When they tell me they come from a machine with only a 80 GB HDD in the first place, and will keep their existing 1280x1024 LCD, I know right away that even the cheapest CPU/GPU will get the job done and I'm going to focus on the most dramatic improvement in day to day response time and bend over backwards getting an SSD in that build.

You should see the look on their face when I describe how they will be able to click on a character on the select screen and be fully loaded in Orgrimmar in 3 seconds on a first boot.

That's fine and all, but in my case people want something that is future proof, so I get a good Hard Drive for builds (pretty much always the Spinpoint F3 1TB if the budget allows; if not, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB), and something like an Athlon II X4. That way, when (if) they do tell me they want more speed 2 years later, I can just get an SSD for them for cheap and it'll be even more responsive. The lowest-end I will go for a build these days is an Athlon II X3. I don't want people to be stuck with dual-cores since computing is advancing and they could use their computer for more in the future.

You can have an SSD with a dual-core all you want, but in the future it may not be enough and you'll need to replace the CPU and the motherboard to get a recent platform.

If someone has a budget of around $800, like the people you mention, you'll have no problems. However, most of the builds I make are ~$400-500, and I want to get them something that will last them for at least five years with minimal upgrades (perhaps an SSD if they need it). If I get these people a 64GB SSD as a sole drive, they'll either laugh at me or ask me if I'm serious. 120GB could be enough; 64GB just isn't. I'm not gonna spend half their budget on a 120GB SSD to then get a comparably crappy Intel Celeron E3400 instead of an Athlon II X4 640. In three years I don't want them to tell me the dual-core is not enough and for me to make a completely new system again.

EDIT: 336 posts. :awe:

 

[exdeath]

That's fine and all, but in my case people want something that is future proof, so I get a good Hard Drive for builds (pretty much always the Spinpoint F3 1TB if the budget allows; if not, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB), and something like an Athlon II X4. That way, when (if) they do tell me they want more speed 2 years later, I can just get an SSD for them for cheap and it'll be even more responsive. The lowest-end I will go for a build these days is an Athlon II X3. I don't want people to be stuck with dual-cores since computing is advancing and they could use their computer for more in the future.

You can have an SSD with a dual-core all you want, but in the future it may not be enough and you'll need to replace the CPU and the motherboard to get a recent platform.

If someone has a budget of around $800, like the people you mention, you'll have no problems. However, most of the builds I make are ~$400-500, and I want to get them something that will last them for at least five years with minimal upgrades (perhaps an SSD if they need it). If I get these people a 64GB SSD as a sole drive, they'll either laugh at me or ask me if I'm serious. 120GB could be enough; 64GB just isn't. I'm not gonna spend half their budget on a 120GB SSD to then get a comparably crappy Intel Celeron E3400 instead of an Athlon II X4 640. In three years I don't want them to tell me the dual-core is not enough and for me to make a completely new system again.

EDIT: 336 posts. :awe:

Who said anything about a dual core? You can get a quad core for less than $150 these days.

 

[pitz]

I got a 320 gig seagate 7200 rpm from around 5 years ago. Will a modern 500 gig to 1 tb drive be noticeably faster?

Probably not. The limiting factor for HDDs is transactions per second, or IOs per second (IOPS), and modern drives are no faster than older ones. In fact, you probably get similar IOPS numbers out of a contemporary 7200rpm drive as you would get out of a 7200rpm drive from the mid 1990s (ie: Seagate Barracuda).

SSD is where its at. Or RAID-1. The aim of HDD manufacturers on 7200rpm drives has been to reduce unit cost in the past few years, not improve performance. Even 10k / 15krpm drives are soon to lose market share or die out as SSDs take their place, especially in the enterprise.