this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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On Windows Vista and every subsequent version of Windows, if I search for a file and include the entire C:\ drive, I might very well have time to make tea or a sandwich while the search results come in. On Windows XP, using the search dialog with the animated dog, I can search the entire C:\ drive and expect it to be done in a minute or two, if not in seconds.

It can't just be nostalgia; I can replicate these results on period-accurate hardware today. What changed with Vista to make file searching so much slower, even with indexing enabled?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Of course SSDs are still much faster reading massive amounts of tiny files than HDDs are. Obviously random read speeds are much, much better, but even sequential reads of tiny files are a lot faster.

If you disagree, please provide numbers or references.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

I love the “you’re wrong and if you disagree provide sources” while not providing any sources yourself lol. Amazing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

This is like asking for a source for common sense statements.

HDDs are pretty terrible at random IO, which is what reading many small files tends to be. This is because they have a literal mechanical arm with a tiny magnet on the end that needs to move around to read sectors on a spinning platter. The physical limitations of how quickly the read right head can traverse limits it's random I/O capabilities.

This makes hard drives, abysmal, at random I/O. And why defragmenting is a thing.

This is common knowledge for anyone in it and easy knowledge to obtain by reading a Wikipedia page.

SSDs are great at random I/O. They do not have physical components that need to move in order to read from random locations they generally perform equally as well from reading any location. Meaning their random I/O capabilities are significantly better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 31 minutes ago

The difference isn’t significant in this situation. You’re acting like HDDs are floppy disks lol. Their random IO is not “pretty terrible”.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's fairly common knowledge that SSDs outperform HDDs in both sequential and random reads, and while the file size & number of files have an impact, it doesn't negate this difference.

A quick search confirmed that SSDs perform better in your scenario than HDDs. I don't care enough to spend time finding proper references, because again - this is simply common knowledge.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Still no sources. Interesting.

Moving/copying/reading/deleting tonnes of tiny files isn’t significantly faster on an ssd because the requirements for doing so are not limited by HDDs in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Moving/copying/reading/deleting tonnes of tiny files isn’t significantly faster on an ssd because the requirements for doing so are not limited by HDDs in the first place.

You mean the physical actuator moving a read/write head over a spinning platter? Which limits its traversal speed over its physical media? Which severely hampers its ability to read data from random locations?

You mean that kind of limitation? The kind of limitation that is A core part of how a hard drive works?

That?

I would highly recommend that you learn what a hard drive is before you start commenting about its its performance characteristics. 🤦🤦🤦


For everyone else in the thread, remember that arguing with an idiot is always a losing battle because they will drag you down to their level and win with experience.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Again - there’s no significant real world difference between an SSD and a HDD in the scenario I’m describing. Neither drive types are the limiting factor in speed of the operation. You act like HDDs take a long time to seek data lol.

I can pretty much guarantee you I’ve got more experience with data and drives than you do. Theoretical speeds and performance are just that - theoretical. The only way you ever get close to them are transferring a single huge file.

Your last little pot shot is ironic and hilarious.