> So you're a "programmer" who willingly and knowingly uses hardware with terrible random access performance. Why are you complaining about bad performance stemming from terrible random access performance, then? You get what you pay for. You made your bed, you may now lay in it.

It's still a bed laid by Microsoft. I remember a time when Windows was quick and snappy on worse hardware. I wrote a fiction book in Corel WordPerfect on Windows XP using a machine from before 2000. I never realized computers could be slow during that experience.

And let's do some math, shall we?

The ISO of the current edition of Windows 10, as downloaded by me just now, is 5.5 GB. Let's assume that during an update, Windows replaces all of that 5.5 GB. Let's make this double pessimistic and say that the previous data must also be overwritten with zeroes, so that Windows has to write 11 GB of data to disk over the course of an update.

Let's be triple pessimistic and assume also that my 7200 RPM disk uses 512-byte sectors. (It doesn't; it uses 4096-byte sectors.)

Let's be quadruple pessimistic and assume that it's not just random access, but fully pessimistic access: the disk has to spin one full rotation for every access.

Let's be quintuple pessimistic and assume that there are not contiguous sectors written; every single sector written requires a full rotation.

In this, let's assume that a sector is written at SATA's usual 6.0 Gb/s.

How long does it take to write the 11 GB to disk in those terrible conditions?

The disk takes 8.333 milliseconds to spin to a new spot, and 6.0 Gb/s divided by 4096 (512 times 8 bits) seconds, which is 682.666 nanoseconds to write a sector. There are 21.48 million sectors in 11 GB. 21.48 million times the time it takes to spin to a new sector and write it is 179051 seconds or about 50 hours.

Yikes.

That's the exact worse case. Let's see how long it would take at full tilt (no extra spinning): 14.666 seconds.

What you're saying is that it's not Microsoft's job to get an update as close to 15 seconds as possible; it's my fault that it takes longer than that.

Really? Should I just be grateful that the update does not take 50 hours? I paid for this software!

> Unjustifiable as it may be for Microsoft to optimize Windows for SSD system drives, a 1TB SSD can be had for ~$100 and a 500GB SSD can be had for ~$50. The age of exorbitantly expensive SSDs is long over, they have become accessible to the commons at large; so it makes some amount of sense for Microsoft to optimize for hardware resources that are widely available.

Are HDD's not widely available anymore? That's news to me because I thought they were widely available. Which by your argument means that it makes sense for Microsoft to optimize for it.

> You clearly haven't, because updates and other background tasks that built up during downtime got in your way. Even Windows 10/11 will still let you disable Windows Update if you have Professional or above.

I clicked "Update and Shutdown" when I shut down because I'm not a complete idiot. Don't assume.

> If you are using Home (because you're "cheap", as you put it yourself), why are you complaining again? You get what you pay for. You made your bed, you may now lay in it.

I'm cheap with hardware that I don't stress. I'm not cheap with privacy. I have Professional. Don't assume.

> To put it bluntly, you don't come across as someone worth respecting beyond that of common courtesy. You don't know what you're talking about, and you complain about situations that you willingly put yourself in. If you want to earn respect, please act the part.

Ah, I see.

Well, if I don't deserve respect, can you paste your CV here for me? Otherwise, you don't deserve that respect either because I don't know if you really know what you're talking about with Windows and hard drives. I mean, you're assuming a lot, and you're talking as though you know, but how do I know?

> Anyone who knows about HDDs would quote the drive's SMART data in addition to any tests and other diagnostic data they might have.

I'm not going to quote my disk's SMART data to you! That would be just like putting the full `uname` of my Linux install in my blog post, which I didn't do on purpose!

> They would also know SMART and other diagnostic data are only broadly useful guesstimates about a drive's health and whether it might be on its way out.

I also ran `ntfsfix`. Don't assume.

> You don't appear to even know any of that, despite being a "programmer". And you have the gall to say Windows "will die" because you just don't know what you're doing? Give me a break.

This appearance is based entirely off of things you assume.

I'm okay with appearing like a stupid programmer to you; I can't fight assumptions. I'll spend my time "earning" respect from people who don't make assumptions.