Why do traditional hard disks appear to be so slow?

zagubov

I had an early mac that ran Mac OS6 and could only read half-density floppy disks - the small ones that held 720kb. One of my floppy disks had Photoshop on it. Another had an early office suite on it *clarisworks" I think.

The hard drive mas a massive 20Mb but you could use "Disk Doubler" to shrink your files so you could store more.

I had windows 3 machines that needed 1.44 Mb floppies to run games like Sim City that needed special config.sys and autoexec.bat programmes that you had to replace with the original versions when you finished.

onomatopoeia99

I can remember booting from ROM.

zagubov wrote: »

I had windows 3 machines that needed 1.44 Mb floppies to run games like Sim City that needed special config.sys and autoexec.bat programmes that you had to replace with the original versions when you finished.

That was the 640KB real mode RAM limit (actually 1024KB but the way the IBM PC structured its memory meant the other 384KB was much more difficult to use ).

DoaM

that wrote: »

8", 5" or 3"?

Let's get it right ... 8", 5¼" and 3½"



(There were some 3" and 2" disks but they were non-standard).

DoaM

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

That was the 640KB real mode RAM limit ...

You mean like when Bill Gates (allegedly) announced that 640KB of RAM should be more than enough for anyone?

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/

bap98189

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

I can remember booting from floppy ...

I remember getting my first floppy disk drive. It was for my Spectrum and meant a game could be loaded in about 30 seconds rather than 5+ minutes from tape. That seemed like lightning at the time.

toshi

Tarambor wrote: »

It is purely down to reason 1. The seek time of mechanical drives alone leaves them at a massive disadvantage.

SSD:
Typical seek time is 0.1ms

Yes Yes No Moving parts = (virtually) no seek-time.

For non-technical people.

The CD player (!) has a seek-time as a pickup has to move from Track 1 to track 5. (seek-time delay) The smartphone (flash memory) has no seek-time to play your music. Imagine how many times the hard disk pick up has to move during Windows Update, for instance...

anewhope wrote: »

I no longer use mechanical drives since the price of SSDs tumbled.

Yes, yes. at 2018 SSD finally is kicking off to a mass market. Like Tarambor, all of my computers (2008 to 2015) have SSDs.

Crucial MX500 is a decent Samsung EVO860 alternative with 5 years warranty. (enthusiast / business oriented model) This became my standard SSD at 2018.

Crucial MX500 500 GB £89.99 (5 years warranty)
Crucial MX500 250 GB £58.49 (5 years warranty)

Still Expensive ? How about Kingston A400 ? £42.96 (3 years warranty)

I bought this model for my farther in law around £60.00 (last year's black Friday) Gosh, already nearly 30 % cheaper. This is a 2 channel (not 4 channel) budget model, but actually great performance for general computing, and still much much faster than your old hard disk.

You really don't need a new computer, just get an SSD.Happy SSD computing

S0litaire

DoaM wrote: »

Let's get it right ... 8", 5¼" and 3½"



(There were some 3" and 2" disks but they were non-standard).

My old Amstrad PCW (glorified All-in-one Word processor with a green screen!) used those 3" floppies.

Owain_Moneysaver

S0litaire wrote: »

My old Amstrad PCW (glorified All-in-one Word processor with a green screen!) used those 3" floppies.

Only 'cause Alan Sugar got a job lot cheap.

S0litaire

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

Only 'cause Alan Sugar got a job lot cheap.

But those 3" disks were solidly built!


I can still remember stepping on them in my bare feet first thing in the morning after a long night of typing up essays and homework and not having them brake.

While the 3.5" seemed to brake or have the recording disk get damaged just by looking at them wrongly lol

Robisere

23 Floppies to load Windows 3.1.

Having my first 8 GB PC, with a Cyrix CPU. Zip Disks, I managed to format and unload those when I read about the 'Click Of Death', before they died. Transferred all data to a larger Spinner, can't recall the size.
Windows 95, then 98 SE, from a CD, magic!
Missed ME, missed out Vista, went to XP, more magic!
Finally, Windows 7, which I still run and love,does everything I need.


Before support finally ends, it will be goodbye 7 and this desktop, hello Windows 10 Pro on a new laptop. I will be even longer in the tooth by then, hoping all my marbles will still be in their bag.


It's been an interesting ride, Mr. Gates... and successors.