Solved PT 2. Windows 11 feels slow considering my specs (21h2)

Hazel123 · Jan 27, 2023

You'll see after installation there is hardly anything in programs - that's how clean the install is. Yes Microsoft downloads a load of standard apps - they don't usually do any harm. Until they've all finished downloading it can slow things a bit but that's a one off.

Hazel123 · Jan 27, 2023

Meant to say, after hitting new you'll see the partitions - select each one to format it via the format button if you want to format. If that wasn't an actual screenshot then delete any partitions currently there, then select new then format the new partitions (that's one way anyway).

James · Jan 27, 2023

Hazel123 said:
Meant to say, after hitting new you'll see the partitions - select each one to format it via the format button if you want to format. If that wasn't an actual screenshot then delete any partitions currently there, then select new then format the new partitions (that's one way anyway).

I’m not going to format the d drive, however. I’m going to use edge to minimalise clutter and I will download very few programs (if I don’t need them, I won’t download them)

Hazel123 · Jan 27, 2023

I don't understand how Edge minimises clutter? You mean not add another browser? I think it's fine to add another browser. My browser of preference is Firefox. Edge downloads it pretty quick

Windows updates are the first things to do then wait for apps to finish downloading (speed up downloading of later programs):

After Windows Updates I go to Microsoft Store - Library and watch the ~~paint dry~~ apps all finish updating themselves.

Then add programs. If trying to do Windows updates, app updates and program installs all at the time they can all be painfully slow.

It's slightly tedious adding all the basic programs again but I find it weirdly satisfying. My list is usually:

1) Firefox
2) Adobe Reader
3) Office
4) Malwarebytes free
5) Antivirus possibly - unless you just use defender

Your other main ones you use regularly

Others as and when needed (I add paint.net via ninite as don't trust the other download sites for it)

I then uninstall One Drive usually but up to you.

Then there are various things in settings you can turn off to avoid them hogging - I'm sure someone will have a list of settings tweaks - I find there aren't so many these days.

James · Jan 27, 2023

Hazel123 said:
I don't understand how Edge minimises clutter? You mean not add another browser? I think it's fine to add another browser. My browser of preference is Firefox. Edge downloads it pretty quick

Windows updates are the first things to do then wait for apps to finish downloading (speed up downloading of later programs):

After Windows Updates I go to Microsoft Store - Library and watch the ~~paint dry~~ apps all finish updating themselves.

Then add programs. If trying to do Windows updates, app updates and program installs all at the time they can all be painfully slow.

It's slightly tedious adding all the basic programs again but I find it weirdly satisfying. My list is usually:

1) Firefox
2) Adobe Reader
3) Office
4) Malwarebytes free
5) Antivirus possibly - unless you just use defender

Your other main ones you use regularly

Others as and when needed (I add paint.net via ninite as don't trust the other download sites for it)

I then uninstall One Drive usually but up to you.

Then there are various things in settings you can turn off to avoid them hogging - I'm sure someone will have a list of settings tweaks - I find there aren't so many these days.

Thank you! I find edge fast anyway. Might as well use it.. otherwise it’s firefox

TechnoMage2021 · Jan 27, 2023

Both Edge and Firefox have their place, in the greater scheme of things, so why not use them both?

PerpetualCycle · Jan 27, 2023

cereberus said:
Huh - that does not happen same way as HDDs. Some claim you wear drive out quicker when overfilled as you are writing more frequently to reduced space. Leaving it empty 50% is just wasting space.

SSD do slow down on writes the fuller they are. The reason is they can not maintain a pool of free erased blocks for new write if they have a small amount of unused capacity left. They end up having to do erases cycle and consolidation on blocks prior to writing new data, which is time consuming. This can start happening at 50% or greater but really is not that impactful.

PerpetualCycle · Jan 27, 2023

TechnoMage2021 said:
Both Edge and Firefox have their place, in the greater scheme of things, so why not use them both?

Sometimes some sites don't work on one browser but do on another. It is good to have a couple of browsers you are familiar with installed for such cases. My goto is Firefox, my fallback edge.

For example, today a banking site I have to access didn't work on Firefox, which I recently upgraded. It could have been the site as well. But it worked with edge (and I have experienced the inverse).

James · Jan 28, 2023

geneo said:
Sometimes some sites don't work on one browser but do on another. It is good to have a couple of browsers you are familiar with installed for such cases. My goto is Firefox, my fallback edge.

For example, today a banking site I have to access didn't work on Firefox, which I recently upgraded. It could have been the site as well. But it worked with edge (and I have experienced the inverse).

Firefox will probably be the choice, I’ll use ghot’s taming the beast thread, and besides I have just come from Firefox, with an account etc.

cereberus · Jan 28, 2023

geneo said:
SSD do slow down on writes the fuller they are. The reason is they can not maintain a pool of free erased blocks for new write if they have a small amount of unused capacity left. They end up having to do erases cycle and consolidation on blocks prior to writing new data, which is time consuming. This can start happening at 50% or greater but really is not that impactful.

emphasis on small but not 50% !

I have filled ssds to 90% with no discernible impact. I never go beyond that to leave space for temporary files. By the time I reach 90%, time to clear out crap or buy new larger ssd.

Hazel123 · Jan 28, 2023

Me being over cautious then

Re the SSD. I believe I read somewhere that an SSD is faster if only 50% full. If the SSD only has the OS on and a couple of programs it shouldn't be an issue anyway with a large HDD for the rest.

How's it going? Is everything installed and updated and running ok - re Windows 11?

Winuser · Jan 28, 2023

Hazel123 said:
Me being over cautious then Re the SSD. I believe I read somewhere that an SSD is faster if only 50% full. If the SSD only has the OS on and a couple of programs it shouldn't be an issue anyway with a large HDD for the rest.

How's it going? Is everything installed and updated and running ok - re Windows 11?

From what I read on the internet a SSD starts slowing down around 70%. This article explains why. Why solid-state drive (SSD) performance slows down as it becomes full - Pureinfotech

cereberus · Jan 28, 2023

Winuser said:
From what I read on the internet a SSD starts slowing down around 70%. This article explains why. Why solid-state drive (SSD) performance slows down as it becomes full - Pureinfotech

Yeah but this article is only regurgitating historical anecdotal stuff. It doers not provide any benchmarking to support the statements. The internet is full of wannabe journalists who just regurgitate what somebody else wrote before.

It states 70% rule of thumb which was possibly true for 1st gen ssds with limited capacity.

It kind of implies Rule of Thumb is fact which is pure bovine excrement - a Rule of Thumb is simply a guess based on very limited historical/empirical experience.

Modern ssds have far more capacity and most data is static anyway. 10% of a modern 1 TB ssd is far more working space than 30% of a 64GB SD.

These so called technical experts should do some proper systematic benchmarking (%full, %performance loss under different situations) to support their airy fairy statements.

I used to have a 128 GB SSD and I never noticed any loss of performance until nearly 90% full, and that was more due to temporary files have inadequate space I suspect.

BrianS · Jan 28, 2023

Am I missing something here? Surely Task manager will give you a quick view of processes hogging resources - like Antimalware SE - well known - you cant disable it only pause.

In the same vein of slow down, when I first ug to W11 I experienced a lot of problems with jerky unstable mouse operation, tried all sorst, wirless/wired which were all ok on my old W8.1 . I never ever experienced before). All the horsedung on the web blamed the mouse - they were wrong. Mysteriously my mouse problem has completly gone away now. Dont know why - W updates? At the same time I bought a new Logitech 185 mouse and yes its a much nicer feel and its invisible, no annoying flashing red light.
I cant say that solved the problem cos the other mice started to behave ok as well. A mystery. Others have reported this problem

Winuser · Jan 28, 2023

cereberus said:
Yeah but this article is only regurgitating historical anecdotal stuff. It doers not provide any benchmarking to support the statements. The internet is full of wannabe journalists who just regurgitate what somebody else wrote before.

It states 70% rule of thumb which was possibly true for 1st gen ssds with limited capacity.

It kind of implies Rule of Thumb is fact which is pure bovine excrement - a Rule of Thumb is simply a guess based on very limited historical/empirical experience.

Modern ssds have far more capacity and most data is static anyway. 10% of a modern 1 TB ssd is far more working space than 30% of a 64GB SD.

These so called technical experts should do some proper systematic benchmarking (%full, %performance loss under different situations) to support their airy fairy statements.

I used to have a 128 GB SSD and I never noticed any loss of performance until nearly 90% full, and that was more due to temporary files have inadequate space I suspect.

I only posted the link to show the reason why an SSD will slow down after reaching a certain percentage of capacity. If the article is wrong about the reason why and not just the 70%, I'll delete my post.

Hazel123 · Jan 28, 2023

Yes it probably does depend on different ssd's as well. And also the size of the SSD. Off the top of my head I think it's supposed to affect smaller ssd's more than larger ones? Eg half the space for a 60gb ssd. 70% for a 500gb ssd, 80 to 90% for a 1tb - but that is not scientific just something I picked up somewhere and from trial with small ssd's.

cereberus · Jan 28, 2023

Hazel123 said:
Yes it probably does depend on different ssd's as well. And also the size of the SSD. Off the top of my head I think it's supposed to affect smaller ssd's more than larger ones? Eg half the space for a 60gb ssd. 70% for a 500gb ssd, 80 to 90% for a 1tb - but that is not scientific just something I picked up somewhere and from trial with small ssd's.

What you say makes directional sense - a flat 70% is just ridiculous. At least your perception is based on some personal experience that sort of mirrors my experience.

Even then, it must depend on how drive is being used,

A drive has static data written once only (rarely if ever changing) and ever changing dynamic data (updated OS files, work in progress, temporary files).

The free space is more to manage the dynamic data. So you would expect you would generally need more spare space on an OS drive, than a pure data drive.

I just do not listen to these simplistic rules of thumb that wannabe journalist regurgitate. I do my own benchmarks.

I might do a simple trial i.e. fill up my data nvme until 70% full, run a reflect backup, fill drive to 80%, repeat, fill to 90% etc and see if I get any major loss in performance.

cereberus · Jan 28, 2023

Just done a simple test ok - not the most scientific but interesting nonetheless, Data drive is 1TB NVME drive (931 GB to be more precise).

Data hard drive 40% full - Reflect backup (40GB on OS drive) - 1 min 56 seconds
Data hard drive 75% full - Reflect backup (40GB on OS drive) - 1 min 58 seconds
Data hard drive 90% full - Reflect backup (40GB on OS drive) - 1 min 54 seconds
Data hard drive 95% full - Reflect backup (40GB on OS drive) - 1 min 57 seconds

There is always a minor time difference simply due to impact of variable temporary files at any point in time (Reflect ignores these but they will marginally affect Reflect performance)

Even at 95% full, working free space is around 46 GB.

I could not detect any significant variation in time the backup took (and the time it took to copy a dummy 100 GB file to fill up space).

When I am totally bored, I might try more rigorous benchmarking - large files, lots of small files etc.

However, results do suggest the 70% rule of thumb is either garbage or just does not apply these days.

Hazel123 · Jan 28, 2023

That's helpful

. Is the time macrium takes comparable to how the disk speed seems in use? If that makes sense. A rule of thumb can be useful for people who don't know that much about computers and ssd's though. Most laptops come with Nvme ssd's now and I bet some people don't understand why things have slowed down when the disk is nearly full.

BrianS · Jan 28, 2023

cereberus said:
However, results do suggest the 70% rule of thumb is either garbage or just does not apply these days.

Years ago when I first looked at SSDs there was concern that these nands get "worn out" from prolonged switching? Therefore they were considered ok for relatively static ROM type storage but would fail quickly under the stress of running an OS. Clearly this cant be the case now as most laptops have SSDs. Has all this average life time hours to failure been solved making them at least as reliable as HDDs. I gather that 5 years is a generic lifetime ie ca 50,000hrs on power. Would that be right?
OBTW I have tried out the WD and Seagate tools for disc health - good stuff?