The one thing they have yet to address: performance

[Luigi Lop]

I'm wondering if windows 10 will have reduced hard drive thrashing, faster update/boot/shutdown time, less memory and hd footprint and so on. It would be nice for a change to see a system drive going to sleep after 2 or 3 minutes of inactivity.

 

[rhapdog]

Compared to previous versions of Windows, 8.1 is way out in front of the others on this already. Not sure how much more can be optimized. 8/8.1 was an incremental step toward this over a long plan, so much of it has already been done I think. I've not heard from any of the previewers about that particular information, though.

 

[Ma Rio]

To be honest, I don't think we'll see anything revolutionary.
Talkin about boot up time, 8.1 adressed it, but it wasn't a real improvement but a workaround magic trick.
I can asure you that it won't be any worse than 8.1, because - logic. And that is good enough for me.
But yes, there's always room for improvement. Everywhere.
Hard drive use optimisation would also come in hand. Everytime I open the Task Manager and check out the performance tab I see the HDD going nuts (while not in idle state).
I know a part of the problem is the HDD, but I guess they can make improvements on the software part as well.

 

[Harrie-S]

If you really want improvements than change to a SSD this really is an improvement and the SSD's are becoming more and more affordable.
And now software improvement can match this improvement.

 

[Luigi Lop]

you guys need to keep in mind the broad picture. People buy 240€ laptops. And it's very painful even with 8.1; they have all the necessary processing power(bay trail is quite impressive on that front) but the hds are very slow, and the constant grinding windows does is not helping the idea of the slowness of the devices. I am an it consultant, so i have to plan and buy/resell a lot of pcs. Windows update is the most painful thing that was ever created.

 

[dkediger]

Well, on one end you have $300 laptops, on the other you have SP3's and even beyond. There will pretty much always be a correlation between cost and performance. Part of your job as an IT consultant is to provide balanced assessments of different classes of equipment - as well as long term expectations. A low initial cost can be quickly offset by poor performance and shortened life expectancy. Again, IT, at least for businesses, is not a one time expense, its an ongoing investment that the business should expect reasonable returns (efficiency, increased reach and visibility, etc) on.

 

[dkediger]

I agree.
Now is the beginning of the end for hard drives.

Over the last year, at least a third, probably closer to half more recently, of the equipment I have ordered I spec'd with SSDs. Also putting them in as an effective upgrade in select 2-3 year old machines.

 

[Wevenhuis]

I have a hunch that windows 10 will do a lot to improve performance and lesson the burden of hard disk thrashing. However I think there will come a line of what you want as and end user, performance or frugality. People want their windows design for work, entertainment, gaming and social. I think it will be inevitable that thrashing will ever go away. There is also the increased advantage of ssd, that don't really have physically moving parts in de sense of regular harddrives. Thrashing, I would suppose, is then less of an issue.

 

[link68759]

Holy crap, are you kidding?



8.1 can boot within seconds, if you have an SSD and a UEFI motherboard. The limiting factor here is old hardware- one cannot simply make older hardware move faster. If you want that boot time you MUST upgrade to an SSD, it MUST be partitioned with GPT, and your motherboard MUST support UEFI. These are the things that were created to improve boot time (among other things), they're here, go get them.

So boot time has already been solved by 8, what about performance? My 1GB of memory, 800Mhz CPU device (which is BELOW 8's minimum spec requirement) runs 8.1 very fast- much faster than Vista or 7 because of the performance optimizations and lower memory usage. So 8.1 is the lightest, fastest Windows since XP SP3 (also infinitely more stable and less prone to slowing down)- what exactly hasn't been optimized here?

Other things of note- sleeping a hdd doesn't prolong it's life, it just might save electricity (if that's your goal, get an SSD). The "thrashing" of an HDD happens for a few hours after the initial install of Windows while it takes care of things in the background. Otherwise hdd is accessed for caching and library purposes while you're using Windows and if you want to get rid of that you must also get rid of speedy boot times and general performance...

 

[Harrie-S]

The limiting factor here is old hardware- one cannot simply make older hardware move faster.
?

Yes you can by throwing it out the window. ;-)

 

[Luigi Lop]

... even the heavy ubuntu can boot faster on a mechanical drive than windows 8.1 , and xubuntu boots up on my ssd in about 7 seconds, compared to the 25-30 required by a fresh w8.1 install /w10 install. And for the average user once installed it provides everything they might need- chrome, firefox, thunderbird, libreoffice, vlc, torrent client.

Also the last time i had to format my laptop i had to start from w8, and it was not pretty- i3 3110m(2,4ghz) and ssd, 8 gb of ram, between updates, 8.1, updates it took 7 hours. Now i just crack w8.1 because i will never go to that ordeal again to use my legitimate license.

Let's not talk about system wearing over time and update speed. I wish that it would use multi-threading to update while rebooting. (tested in vms, it does not)

 

[Luigi Lop]

Holy crap, are you kidding?



8.1 can boot within seconds, if you have an SSD and a UEFI motherboard. The limiting factor here is old hardware- one cannot simply make older hardware move faster. If you want that boot time you MUST upgrade to an SSD, it MUST be partitioned with GPT, and your motherboard MUST support UEFI. These are the things that were created to improve boot time (among other things), they're here, go get them.

So boot time has already been solved by 8, what about performance? My 1GB of memory, 800Mhz CPU device (which is BELOW 8's minimum spec requirement) runs 8.1 very fast- much faster than Vista or 7 because of the performance optimizations and lower memory usage. So 8.1 is the lightest, fastest Windows since XP SP3 (also infinitely more stable and less prone to slowing down)- what exactly hasn't been optimized here?

Other things of note- sleeping a hdd doesn't prolong it's life, it just might save electricity (if that's your goal, get an SSD). The "thrashing" of an HDD happens for a few hours after the initial install of Windows while it takes care of things in the background. Otherwise hdd is accessed for caching and library purposes while you're using Windows and if you want to get rid of that you must also get rid of speedy boot times and general performance...

points 1 and 2 are very fair. But for point 3, thrashing is happening constantly. On a laptop, it might be disastrous. And my main computer, fresh install- about 3 months, w8.1, still requires more than a 2 minutes on a mechanical drive to boot up from hybrid shutdown, because there is a difference between boot to desktop and "ok now i can use my pc cause the thrashing has subsided"

 

[link68759]

points 1 and 2 are very fair. But for point 3, thrashing is happening constantly. On a laptop, it might be disastrous. And my main computer, fresh install- about 3 months, w8.1, still requires more than a 2 minutes on a mechanical drive to boot up from hybrid shutdown, because there is a difference between boot to desktop and "ok now i can use my pc cause the thrashing has subsided"

I would run the manufacture's diagnostics application for your hard drive over night and then when you find out what's wrong with it, email support and ask about the warranty in the drive.

If it's a desktop and you can't prove that the drive is broken (it certainly sounds like SOMETHING is wrong, I assure you Windows doesn't normally behave that way) buy an SSD for 100USD, move your Windows install to it and continue storing large files on the HDD.

 

[Luigi Lop]

lol. First, not all people or clients can do that. Second, there is no point of explaining how hard does windows decide that it has to "load something" straight out of the boot sequence even after all services and startup programs are up. I have been installing windows since i was 12 years old, and now i'm 28; i assure you, that is how windows behaves all the time on a pc, you dont see it because you know how to keep your machine nice and tidy. But nothing justifies how w10 thrashes on my laptop making everything laggy for the first 20-30 seconds after booting the desktop on an ssd that can boot xubuntu within 7 seconds of grub. And it's a FRESH INSTALL.

 

[link68759]

you dont see it because you know how to keep your machine nice and tidy.

Then we agree third party software is to blame?
A fresh install of Windows does thrash the hdd while the indexing service caches everything, but if you let the computer idle for some hours it will eventually finish.
I too have installed many, many, many copies of Windows on many devices, and I had gone around putting 8 on ancient hardware with ancient HDDs, I have not experienced any prolonged thrashing nor an interrupted boot sequence due to said thrashing. Either your install medium is corrupted, or your device is failing in some way, or you have an uncannily slow HDD.

 

[dkediger]

For the OP - Are low end HDDs an appropriate device for hybrid sleep - which does create/restore a system state file like hibernation? In the entry level devices the OP references, the HDD subsystem is going to be less than robust. And don't forget...all of W10 is beta, with lots of unoptimized code and services, as well as telematics for Microsoft's use, running.

 

[Luigi Lop]

i think you are misunderstanding the machines i'm referring to.

Hybrid sleep is referred on a machine, z87, i5 4690k, 8g 2133 ram, wd caviar blue.

And it's preferable to read a long defragmented file than a lot of smaller ones in any case- it's going to stress less the heads of the drive.

 

[dkediger]

Well, to be honest, you've referenced 3 different sets of configs in this thread. But the Blue series WDs are their entry level models.

Also, what is the system state being hibernated - apps open, files open, pages open, etc? There is an equilibrium point if that hibernation file reaches multi gb size versus cold booting. My 2 year old Lenovo M93 desktop with W8.1/hdd/4GB and on a domain network just took under a minute to cold boot, log in, process group policies, start Outlook, and load Chrome.

 

[link68759]

There is an equilibrium point if that hibernation file reaches multi gb size versus cold booting.

I am fairly certain the hiberfile.sys is the size of your available RAM at all times- the state of the system will not affect this.

 

[Luigi Lop]

Well, to be honest, you've referenced 3 different sets of configs in this thread. But the Blue series WDs are their entry level models.

Also, what is the system state being hibernated - apps open, files open, pages open, etc? There is an equilibrium point if that hibernation file reaches multi gb size versus cold booting. My 2 year old Lenovo M93 desktop with W8.1/hdd/4GB and on a domain network just took under a minute to cold boot, log in, process group policies, start Outlook, and load Chrome.

i'm fairly sure you don't understand how hybrid start/shutdown works.
It kills everything up to the kernel, and only saves that. To make it simpler, think of it as going in hibernation just before the logon screen. Of course standard hibernation is way faster and resumes the system correctly.