Besides TPM +PLUTO and all pushed ecrap.. MS will NOT install on HDs...

[PKTKS]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsofts-reportedly-trying-to-kill-hdd-boot-drives-for-windows-11-pcs-by-2023


So they are claiming property de facto of all hardware giving customers no choice.

By default as usual pushing  their crap in retailers..

sick nauseate.

Paul

[PKTKS]

https://www.techpowerup.com/295683/oems-under-pressure-from-microsoft-to-stop-use-of-hdds-as-boot-drives-from-2023

[free_electron]

Disc storage is evolving...
spinning rust is for bulk storage at huge sizes. 4TB and beyond.
Flash is for OS/applications and mobile ( you don't want power hungry spinning drives mobile anyway)
Flash is smaller, consumes less power and is faster.

Even in servers the OS can be stored on an M2 and the real drives are data containers. upgrading the os is as simple as replacing the M2 module with a fresh imaged one. so in large datacenters your downtime is low. power off  , swap module, power on. no sane person will sit there deploying and configuring the OS while that server is down.

so, microsoft has a point.
for consumers : flash as boot , any other drive is data. laptops don't have drives anymore. it's all flash. i could see it being useful for desktops , but we are evolving away from those. and even desktop boards have M2 slots these days. and you can always use a flash sata if needed.
for servers : flash for OS, drives for data.

if i look at my machines. they all use flash as their primary drives and they are all older than 5 years... the workstations have a secondary spinning drive but even then they are mainly going unused .. data lives on the NAS which is all real drives ( think of it : even the nas boots from ... flash... )

so it's only logical. There is a point where you have to let go of legacy. Even linux does that.. they ditched so many processors and devices over the years. Using flash for the OS only has advantages. they can optimize the OS for the features only found in flash memory

[coromonadalix]

+1  with the previous thread

you can find some ways to upgrade legacy stuff   like  ide DOM (disk on module)  kinda like an ssd

Compact flash cards with an adapter  to boot from ...    etc ...


Eventually  yes   

You will have to upgrade,  i'm on pcie 4x gen 4  ssd     damn it's fast, when i install and  ''old hdd''  i want to cry  loll

Piling money to get on the next gen  pcie5  ssd / nvme etc ....  lolll    speeeeed 

[PKTKS]

I see that w/caveats:

- Any soft vendor (OS in particular) enforcing what they deliberately will work with is bad.
  so bad they can actually dump users and force buying it all again at any time.

- and this is going towards flashing the thing into some ROM flash with fuses and proprietary stuff.

That includes putting the  whole FOSS ecosystem on top of it...
locked by firmware flashing and FUSES.

Steps are clearly making this picture

Paul

[SiliconWizard]

Looks rather clear that this is all to hide the fact that Windows is getting increasingly hungry for mass storage bandwidth and using it on HDDs is ALREADY a pain (at least with Win10, and probably worse with Win11). They just don't want people to notice that Windows is constantly accessing your drives. Good thing for them that drive LEDs showing activity have mostly disappeared on modern computers. No LED, no noise, and enough bandwidth that the average Joe will never notice what Windows does with your drives. Nice.

[free_electron]

I see that w/caveats:

- Any soft vendor (OS in particular) enforcing what they deliberately will work with is bad.
  so bad they can actually dump users and force buying it all again at any time.

Apple model. Less legacy to maintain. they control select hardware. so they can focus on that stuff as opposed to endlessly supporting doohickey xyz made by onehunglow and in use by 3 people and a dead donkey in the whole world.

That includes putting the  whole FOSS ecosystem on top of it...

FOSS is too FUSSy to deal with. Microsoft is not FOSS.
You can still install FOSS on that hardware. The TPM and that pluton processor does not stop you from running other Os'ses. It just stops you from running W11 if it is NOT there. so what is your problem ? Dualboot ? will still work .

[james_s]

Looks rather clear that this is all to hide the fact that Windows is getting increasingly hungry for mass storage bandwidth and using it on HDDs is ALREADY a pain (at least with Win10, and probably worse with Win11). They just don't want people to notice that Windows is constantly accessing your drives. Good thing for them that drive LEDs showing activity have mostly disappeared on modern computers. No LED, no noise, and enough bandwidth that the average Joe will never notice what Windows does with your drives. Nice.

I really miss drive activity LEDs on newer laptops. Even with SSDs it's quite a useful feature. Is the system locked up or is it busy accessing the disc? Is there some malware running in the background accessing the drive heavily? Who knows anymore.

[Bud]

We should thank MS for not mandating booting from the cloud.
Yet.

[PKTKS]

We should thank MS for not mandating booting from the cloud.
Yet.

I would not bet a single cent on that..

Things add up:
- UEFI now can boot anything via simple http (builtin stack)
- removal of storage LED activity
- removal and constrained allowable install
- required "processor" (who guess what for)  for supervision
- solid state storage as we know it in portable gizmos is used to lock in

So.. the net end result reasonably points to a full locked flashed ROM OS
probably controlled by these pushed chips and locked fuses..

bottom line a closed and fully censored device.

Pushed onto OEM - their default M.O.  as always

Paul

[PKTKS]

Interesting  facts opinions on trends of whole buz

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/06/09/2118249/i-love-the-linux-desktop-but-that-doesnt-mean-i-dont-see-its-problems-all-too-well?utm_source=rss0.9mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

I can not agree more despite the fact IMHO MS should FUCKOFF from IT at all


Besides over 200 distros, there are 21 different desktop interfaces and over half-a-dozen different major ways to install software such as the Debian Package Management System (DPKG), Red Hat Package Manager (RPM), Pacman, Zypper, and all too many others. Then there are all the newer containerized ways to install programs including Flatpak, Snap, and AppImage. I can barely keep them all straight and that's part of my job! How can you expect ordinary users to make sense of it all? You can't. None of the major Linux distributors -- Canonical, Red Hat, and SUSE -- really care about the Linux desktop. Sure, they have them. They're also major desktop influencers. But their cash comes from servers, containers, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT). The desktop? Please. We should just be glad they spend as many resources as they do on them.

Now, all this said, I don't want you to get the impression that I don't think the conventional Linux desktop is important. I do. In fact, I think it's critical. Microsoft, you see, is abandoning the traditional PC-based desktop. In its crystal ball, Microsoft sees Azure-based Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) as its future. [...] That means that the future of a true desktop operating system will lie in the hands of Apple with macOS and us with Linux. As someone who remembers the transition from centrally controlled mainframes and minicomputers to individually empowered PCs, I do not want to return to a world where all power belongs to Microsoft or any other company.
"The Linux desktop will never be as big as Windows once was," writes Vaughan-Nichols in closing. "Between DaaS's rise and the fall of the desktop to smartphones, it can't be. But it may yet, by default, become the most popular true conventional desktop."



Their gizmos will probably Do only Daas  fully locked

Paul

[Monkeh]

Ahh, more amazing leaps.

Microsoft do not want their product sold on machines which will compromise its performance. OEMs get special deals on the OS, and these can come with certain terms. This does not mean it will not install on an HDD, it means junk machines will possibly become slightly less junky.

Looks rather clear that this is all to hide the fact that Windows is getting increasingly hungry for mass storage bandwidth and using it on HDDs is ALREADY a pain (at least with Win10, and probably worse with Win11). They just don't want people to notice that Windows is constantly accessing your drives. Good thing for them that drive LEDs showing activity have mostly disappeared on modern computers. No LED, no noise, and enough bandwidth that the average Joe will never notice what Windows does with your drives. Nice.

I really miss drive activity LEDs on newer laptops. Even with SSDs it's quite a useful feature. Is the system locked up or is it busy accessing the disc? Is there some malware running in the background accessing the drive heavily? Who knows anymore.

The OS helpfully provides you with a per-process breakdown of disk activity, memory usage, CPU usage, network usage.. but you want a blinking light saying 'hurr, something happen'?

[madires]

We should thank MS for not mandating booting from the cloud.
Yet.

Emphasis on 'yet'. About 15 to 20 years ago there was a trend for thin clients (mostly Citrix and RDP). Now MS offers Windows 365. And you know, most companies love subscription based services.

BTW, inexpensive notebooks come with an eMMC (soldered!) instead of a HDD/SSD nowadays.

[PKTKS]

We should thank MS for not mandating booting from the cloud.
Yet.

Emphasis on 'yet'. About 15 to 20 years ago there was a trend for thin clients (mostly Citrix and RDP). Now MS offers Windows 365. And you know, most companies love subscription based services.

BTW, inexpensive notebooks come with an eMMC (soldered!) instead of a HDD/SSD nowadays.

Some do some don't

EL CHEAPOS  do come with custom SSD so they have an optional portfolio

THE KUUUUUUU  el cheapo  if more thin client than this... it will bend

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001953863570.html


BTW this ENE  class of programmable SuperI/O is a pile of shit to replace... (as some ITEs)
Paul

[SiliconWizard]

We should thank MS for not mandating booting from the cloud.
Yet.

Yet, indeed.

My biggest "fear" is not that a private company would pull this off. If they do, good for them. I wouldn't use their product. (Heck, I still use Win 7 and have no definite plan for ever upgrading unless MS changes their model entirely. Which is not very likely.)

It is that it would eventually get mandated by law. For alleged security reasons and whatever.

[PKTKS]

We should thank MS for not mandating booting from the cloud.
Yet.

Yet, indeed.

My biggest "fear" is not that a private company would pull this off. If they do, good for them. I wouldn't use their product. (Heck, I still use Win 7 and have no definite plan for ever upgrading unless MS changes their model entirely. Which is not very likely.)

It is that it would eventually get mandated by law. For alleged security reasons and whatever.

I would not  take that as security ...
they have big pockets ... they can actually pay for such mandated legislation..
so they will got back that on prices charged for their bundled chips and licenses....

bottom line as have being they are the nasty business man in IT.
nothing beyond that.

I hope they just find some other niche to milk
and keep their hands out my tools my PC my life...

Paul

[Halcyon]

We should thank MS for not mandating booting from the cloud.
Yet.

It's almost that bad already. Some versions of Windows 10 and newer force you to have a Microsoft account (don't get that confused with a corporate Azure or M365 account, that's different again) and there is no way you can bypass it if you want to use your computer with a fresh install.

It's shit like this that makes me thank every day that I bothered to learn and switch to Linux. And it's only going to get worse...

[bd139]

I'm actually with Microsoft here. A lot of the implants that are done are EFI and pre-boot now. They can be used trivially to bypass bitlocker.

The point is to have a fully secure boot chain. As yourself which scenario is better for the industry:

1. Someone leaves a corporate laptop on a train by accident and someone malicious extracts data from it through a pre-boot attack.
2. Someone leaves a corporate laptop on a train by accident and someone malicious can't execute a pre-boot attack and the laptop is useless.

You can't un-exfiltrate data.

No one really gives a shit about the freedom and control side of this other than the tech press because it sells a good story and some paranoid folk. Why?  Because the only thing that is important to most people is the data and this is a mandatory step to allow the owner or organisation to control the data on the computer safely. There had to be a compromise somewhere and people, me included, want it to be this way.

For reference, this won't be mandated by law. It's entirely a security demand by the organisations buying oodles of windows machines.

[Ranayna]

The rumours of Windows 11 Pro requiring a MS Account and internet access to install are what finally drove me to move to Linux. Gaming on Linux has gone a loooooong way, and works significantly better now.

Mind you, while the account is required for the insider version of Windows 11 22H2, it is still not finally confirmed if that is true for the official release as well.
As least the system requirements page has not yet been updated. I still don't believe that this will be in the final released version, since that would open up MS to lawsuits due to significant changes in system requirements. Something similar did not turn out so well for Sony, when they removed Linux compatibility from the Playstation 3.

But the HDD thing is a good thing. You do not want to use Windows on an HDD. It is soooo damn slow to boot.
And this change does *not* mean that you can't install Windows on an HDD anymore. It is just a change to the MS certification of complete systems. To get the sticker, you now need an SSD. And that is a good thing as that requirement weeds out a lot of the crap.

[PKTKS]

(..)
And this change does *not* mean that you can't install Windows on an HDD anymore. It is just a change to the MS certification of complete systems. To get the sticker, you now need an SSD. And that is a good thing as that requirement weeds out a lot of the crap.

I haven't   seen this so superior performance SSDxHDD

Carefully chosen HDs still outperform a wide range of SSD.. at least the average joe consumer seen.

On the other side of the coin.. these new solid state sticks are  clearly paving the way to soldered flash ROMs on gizmos... crappy corporate kiosks  and alike..

Ultimately my guess that given the large consumer base for these corporate kiosks..  that soldered flash will be norm...  leading SSDs and HDs to the void  as "insecure" or outperformed..

Truth is:  business as usual they give  a crap to consumers - the need of cash prevails.

We will see how fast  the soldered solid state - NO VISIBLE LED - is pushed to OEMs

Paul

[bd139]

(..)
And this change does *not* mean that you can't install Windows on an HDD anymore. It is just a change to the MS certification of complete systems. To get the sticker, you now need an SSD. And that is a good thing as that requirement weeds out a lot of the crap.

I haven't   seen this so superior performance SSDxHDD

Carefully chosen HDs still outperform a wide range of SSD.. at least the average joe consumer seen.

That is quite frankly the most ridiculous load of bollocks I've ever heard in the history of my existence. There isn't a single hard disk on the market that can actually touch even a crap consumer SSD on any metric at the moment other than storage cost.

I have an absolute ton of data on this going back over a decade of managing a very large data centre with proper expensive enterprise mechanical disks in it. The answer is they don't exist any more and have been replaced by SSD storage. In fact they don't even exist now either because we rent the SSDs from Amazon.

Find me a laptop disk that can do this 

On the other side of the coin.. these new solid state sticks are  clearly paving the way to soldered flash ROMs on gizmos... crappy corporate kiosks  and alike..

Ultimately my guess that given the large consumer base for these corporate kiosks..  that soldered flash will be norm...  leading SSDs and HDs to the void  as "insecure" or outperformed..

Truth is:  business as usual they give  a crap to consumers - the need of cash prevails.

We will see how fast  the soldered solid state - NO VISIBLE LED - is pushed to OEMs

Paul

And that's the second most ridiculous load of bollocks I've ever heard.

Literally you are anti progress paranoid and that's fine but please acknowledge it for what it is.

[PKTKS]

Not at all..

Spent last years upgrading a lot of HDs to SSDs...
Including my NAS .. some NVRs...

Some SSDs struggle to achieve SATA speeds... (cable.. host... firmware..)
HDS usually perform at best requiring no tweaks.. no firmware time waste...

Unavoidable miniaturization and trends in cell phone  and tablets like devices just point into that direction...

As uncle did with Android  and the iFoolnes..  piece of cake to solder flash and lock the OS into..

I  have already started a quest to replace x86 which i consider to be doomed in the next steps..

Paul

[Monkeh]

Some SSDs struggle to achieve SATA speeds... (cable.. host... firmware..)
HDS usually perform at best requiring no tweaks.. no firmware time waste...

Yes, an HDD can perform at its 'best' of 150MiB/s or so read speed for completely physically contiguous reads with extremely variable seek time and absolutely no idea when it'll go off into the weeds on a remapped sector it doesn't tell you exists.. Just wait until you guys catch up to SMR drives..

While a low cost SSD may not be able to fully saturate a SATA interface in all circumstances, their read speeds are generally very consistent and 2-3x higher than an HDD with near to zero seek time - which immediately provides a giant performance advantage in all read scenarios.

Please stop assuming all hardware around the world from proper OEMs is the floor scrapings you keep buying down there.

[eugene]

It's shit like this that makes me thank every day that I bothered to learn and switch to Linux. And it's only going to get worse...

I agree. What worries me in the long run is that MS will require manufacturers to build machines that will only boot Windows X, so installing linux will become difficult. No doubt there will be work arounds for a long time. People install Ubuntu on their phones and Android on their laptops (not sure why) but it could become difficult.

[Ranayna]

I agree that there are some really shitty SSDs.
There are also many places where an SSD simply does not make sense. Why put an SSD into an NVR? A good NVR that can properly create a single datastream from the cameras and keeps fragmentation low does not need an SSD.
As long as a NAS has just a single, or two, gigabit connections, putting SSDs as main storage drives into a NAS is also somewhat pointless. The network connection will cap the SSD speed, and the added latency of the OS and the network will also reduce the seek time advantage considerably.

But as boot drive for an ordinary PC? The performance boost that an SSD gives is just too large to not use one. For normal private workloads, the throughput of an SSD is not the important part. You will likely not really notice the difference between a good SATA SSD with 500 MByte/s throughput and a PCIe NVMe drive with 5.000 MByte/s throughput.
The seek times for random access are way more important.