Microsoft wants Windows to boot only on SSDs, reportedly pushing OEMs to get rid of HDD boot drives by 2023

[Redaktion]

Microsoft could be mandating all OEMs to ditch HDDs and opt for SSDs as the primary Windows boot drive by 2023. Currently, Windows 11 can be installed just fine on both SSDs and HDDs but going forward, Microsoft wants all PCs, including budget ones in emerging markets, to transition their boot drives to SSDs given their obvious performance advantages.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-wants-Windows-to-boot-only-on-SSDs-reportedly-pushing-OEMs-to-get-rid-of-HDD-boot-drives-by-2023.626969.0.html

[Hunter2020]

It's all bulls.  MS wants to bloat Windows up even more but don't want people to notice the slowness and decrease performance.  So they mandate the switch to SSDs.  Otherwise, people would quickly pick out how much slower the newer version of Windows compared to the previous one!

[vertigo]

It's all bulls.  MS wants to bloat Windows up even more but don't want people to notice the slowness and decrease performance.  So they mandate the switch to SSDs.  Otherwise, people would quickly pick out how much slower the newer version of Windows compared to the previous one!

That was my first thought as well, and I'm sure it's part of it, but, to be fair, features like instant-on that are becoming more common and in-demand probably rely on faster storage, and Windows doesn't want their OS to be held back and seen as slow because of slow hardware. I *hate* MS with a passion, but Apple somehow avoids criticism for much of the same things MS is trying to do. Apple has complete control over the hardware, and can restrict user options to a much larger degree than MS, which they do *all the time* in order to provide the user with the best performance and reliability (and for money, of course), yet MS catches flak for doing the same with things like this and the Windows 11 requirements.

[Daelos]

Oh the horror! When Apple do this it's all 'about time' and 'Apple is the innovator' but when Microsoft does it it's like it's the worst decision ever.

Get real folks. HHDs just can't keep up with users needs today. Sure they're great for loads of storage but 1TB drives were only really useful to about 20% or the userbase anyway. In any case. With m.2 and NVME, it's dead easy for manufacturers to be able to fit both SSD and HDD in the same device if they want to cheap-out. 

Part of my job involves doing some desktop support for very small companies and the first thing I find out before I quote is the type of drive they use. If it's an SSD I charge for the job. If it's a HHD , I charge by the the hour because a simple 15 min job on an SSD could easily take over an hour on a HDD. HDDs are no longer suitable for anything other than storage. Another part of my job involves buying laptops for companies. There's very few instances where a laptop needed more than 512GB storage. Sure, there's plenty of desktops that need more but by the time you're spending $2000+ on a device, a couple of hundred dollars on SSDs instead of HDDs is practically inconsequential.

Don't get me wrong, I have a NAS and backup server stuffed full of enormous HDDs so they still have as use but for the average home or office user, they're simply not up to the job anymore.

[_MT_]

yet MS catches flak for doing the same with things like this and the Windows 11 requirements.

Exactly because we have the options. Apple gets criticized all the time as well. It's just that their userbase accepts their choices as the only alternative is to not use their product and then you're not part of their userbase. Also, Apple has a reputation of paying attention to user-experience while Microsoft has the opposite.

[_MT_]

There's very few instances where a laptop needed more than 512GB storage. Sure, there's plenty of desktops that need more but by the time you're spending $2000+ on a device, a couple of hundred dollars on SSDs instead of HDDs is practically inconsequential.

A 500 GB SSD costs less than a hundred (even something like 980 Pro can just about squeeze under a hundred). And we're only talking about a boot drive. You can still have HDDs for storage, just not as the system drive. You might be able to go down to something like 120 GB for a pure boot drive but you won't save much over a 240.

[Barebooh]

When it takes 100 Megabytes of memory to display "It's sunny today" on the Taskbar... HDD speeds are the least of your worries.

[Tech Nerd]

Exactly because we have the options. Apple gets criticized all the time as well. It's just that their userbase accepts their choices as the only alternative is to not use their product and then you're not part of their userbase. Also, Apple has a reputation of paying attention to user-experience while Microsoft has the opposite.

Except that Apple really only gets criticised by PC users and media that caters to PC users, or media outlets like LTT. Apple's userbase doesn't really accept their choices because the alternative is not being a part of their userbase, it's because most blindly accept the concept that "Apple knows best"...newsflash...they don't!! I completely disagree with you on Apple's reputation for paying attention to UX and MS doesn't. It's just perception. Apple dictates to their customers and their customers generally follow the " Apple knows best" concept. Sure Apple will occassionally give in to pressure from media when it hits headlines like when the intentionally slowed older iPhone down on newer iOS versions without telling the user or giving them the option. Nothing about the new Apple Silicon architecture is really new or innovative, sure it marginally has faster performance, albeit in a far lower TDP, but at the cost of overall UX and assumed expectations, integrating the SSD/SSD controller and the RAM onto the CPU (or in the case of the Studio just the RAM and SSD controller and having non-swapable/non-upgradeable proprietary SSD modules) using proprietary  parts instead of off the shelf standards compliant parts (even in the 80s the difference was mostly the peripheral bus, not the physical drive interface, even RAM and ROM chips typically were somewhat standard between platforms). The inability to service your own Mac, upgrade it, replace parts after the warranty ends if you need to is totally anti-user, it also goes against Right To Repair, and Apple has done very little to address this despite their new parts and tools availability program that launched in the US recently. This behaviour didn't cost Apple because of how their userbase idolizes them, but it has caused other PC mfgs to copy these moves (soldered CPUs, soldered RAM, soldered SSDs, lack of parts for servicing systems, lack of schematics, etc. Ok, maybe some of it was driven by greed and the latter by intellectual property lawyers. Or well those IP lawyers may have encouraged these anti-user practices.
In my view, MS has a reputation for passing off segments of their userbase, but they listen considerably more than Apple, plus they go out of their way to maintain backwards compatibility, imagine if Apple made macOS multi-CPU architecture compatible and backwards compatible over several decades, maybe they would have the dominant OS.

In my experience supporting Mac and Windows users, Windows is far more pleasant to work with despite all the perceived problems, than anything from Apple. Try to do an on-demand remote support session on the last 4 or 5 versions of MacOS, download the app, run it, it runs, can't see the users screen yet, and there's a pop up for the user telling them they have to go to Sys Prefs/Security to add screen recording permissions, accessibility permissions, and sometimes full disk access. Multiple apps from different vendors are like this. It's a nightmare to have to walk a client through this over the phone, most users,ac or Windows, get scared by this type of thing, they just don't get it. I presume since multiple remote support apps have similar UX designs for getting the permissions it can't be as simple as a pop up message box telling the user "The App XYZ needs permissions "ABC" to run, it has requested these permissions, please click accept or cancel" Accept prompts for the admin or user password if needed, and that's it, one or two clicks instead of 10-15. Microsoft generally would never do things this way, even when they want to lock down the system, even if the message was way to technical, something so simple would be done in a simple manner even if the verbiage wasn't simple. Apple tens to dumb things down too much, Apple doesn't seem to have the concept of error codes it seems (maybe buried deep in BSD style log files, but not easily accessible and not documented enough to find on Google.

Ok rant over. Also, even here in Canada, a 256GB SATA SSD is cheaper (maybe $50 CAD) than a 1TB SATA HDD (maybe $65 CAD), a 512GB SATA SSD is about $70 CAD, ok, cheaper drives and retail pricing but the point is the same, can likely equate a 512GB SSD with a 1TB HDD.

[Tech Nerd]

It's all bulls.  MS wants to bloat Windows up even more but don't want people to notice the slowness and decrease performance.  So they mandate the switch to SSDs.  Otherwise, people would quickly pick out how much slower the newer version of Windows compared to the previous one!

It may be somewhat BS, but they are optimizing code to take advantage of the performance of the SSD and designing the system to expect that performance. When that threshold isn't met, things get out of sync and bogged down.
Microsoft isn't alone. Apple has done this on MacOS. The last 3 or 4 versions are very slow on HDDs, but quite performant once upgraded to an SSD. I've been recommending to clients of mine with Macs that have HDDs to either not upgrade to the Mojave or Big Sur because of this, or they need to upgrade to an SSD. In fact one client got so frustrated with this because the performance tanked on their 2017 iMacs after upgrading to Mojave, 1 of their 4 iMacs I had previously upgraded to an SSD for them, so it was fine. But 3 of the 4 crashed during automatic updates, I had to boot to recovery, erase all the volumes/partitions/APFS containers, then reformat the drive before I could reinstall the OS, the only one without a problem was the SSD system. I've recently replaced the iMacs with Windows business all in one systems, yes with SSDs, but the client is ecstatic!

So it isn't just Microsoft optimizing for SSDs.