6 ms·

> It takes several minutes before it has completely booted, it runs Windows 7 on what is a perfectly fine machine for that OS. > Probably if I installed 64G of

> It takes several minutes before it has completely booted, it runs Windows 7 on what is a perfectly fine machine for that OS. > Probably if I installed 64G of RAM and an SSD... You're complaining about boot times, but using an OS that has been deprecated for years and using a mechanical HDD? SSDs have been the norm for a long, long time. Complaining about boot times of deprecated operating systems on outdated hardware that virtually nobody uses in new builds is very misleading. I hope you can see the irony of complaining about modern boot times by benchmarking things against a completely outdated system.

jacquesm 4y ago
That machine shipped with Windows 7 and a mechanical HDD. It has 4G of RAM which should be plenty for the purpose. As for 'new builds', yes, SSDs are faster. But the speed gain from an SSD is negated to some degree by the amount of bloat present in a typical OS and if not for that you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'sleep' and 'cold boot', in fact 'cold boot' should be faster (but it really isn't). As for the complaint: take it with a grain of humor. It was mostly a contrast between booting say my 1980's BBC Micro (you couldn't move your hand from the powerswitch faster than that the prompt appeared) to the times that we have come to accept. SSDs have cut that time to something more acceptable but I fully expect that advantage to be eroded again over the years because that's what happens with software: it always becomes larger and slower, never smaller and faster. On identical hardware a newer release of any OS is invariably slower than whatever came before.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  One of the features of Windows 8 was decreased boot times. I don't think its the only OS to do that either. SSDs make a massive difference even for Windows 7 too.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Interesting, if I ever decide to risk the stability of that box I may try an upgrade. To give you an idea of what it does: this box is the interface to my Tascam mix deck and the firewire support is something that you really don't want to mess with if you don't have to . It runs a very large number of audio channels through that firewire interface and even the slightest change to that configuration risks a never ending nightmare of drop-outs and crashes, usually when you really don't need them. With Firewire having been deprecated and this mix deck and the windows machine joined at the hip I take the nuisance for granted and just work my way around it. I was lucky to find a card and driver that worked, I must have tried more than 10 different combinations before I found one that worked reliably. Adding an SSD may well upset that balance and would require a complete re-install anyway and that risks ending up with an unstable or unusable system, so that's why that route is closed, though, maybe if I were to copy the image of the current HD to an SSD I could make it work without upsetting things too much.
    - goosedragons 4y ago
      I think you could probably just clone the HDD to an SSD using a Linux live CD and "pv" or whatever and have no issues. I've done that for Windows installs in the past with very little trouble. Only issue I had was expanding the partition on the new drive with the recovery partition in the way.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Yes, I see that as one possible avenue. The possible issue with that approach is that the SSD is able to interrupt the OS at a much higher rate than an SSD, which may well increase the throughput of the system as a whole but cause latency issues substantial enough to cause drop outs. These cards run with very small output buffers to reduce their latency and any kind of delay will deplete the buffer resulting in a buffer underrun condition and that manifests as a drop-out in the audio stream. Another alternative is to get rid of the whole kaboodle and do it all in software, that's definitely a possibility with present day gear but I'm kind of partial to this old rig, it sounds great and is very comfortable to work with, much nicer than any pure software solution that I've seen so far.
        password4321 4y ago
        Maybe swap out the drive and see what happens? You should be able to swap back pretty quickly...
        jacquesm 4y ago
        I may just do that. If anything this thread has given me the push to go and do something about it because the irritation is definitely there.
        eropple 4y ago
        > Yes, I see that as one possible avenue. The possible issue with that approach is that the SSD is able to interrupt the OS at a much higher rate than an SSD, which may well increase the throughput of the system as a whole but cause latency issues substantial enough to cause drop outs. If this is a thing, you are already in burn-it-down territory with your hardware. I've been doing audio for a pretty long time, and I struggle to conceive of a system so marginally-fit-for-purpose-but-still-extant where drive interrupts will threaten audio timings.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

jacquesm 4y ago

That machine shipped with Windows 7 and a mechanical HDD. It has 4G of RAM which should be plenty for the purpose. As for 'new builds', yes, SSDs are faster. But the speed gain from an SSD is negated to some degree by the amount of bloat present in a typical OS and if not for that you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'sleep' and 'cold boot', in fact 'cold boot' should be faster (but it really isn't). As for the complaint: take it with a grain of humor. It was mostly a contrast between booting say my 1980's BBC Micro (you couldn't move your hand from the powerswitch faster than that the prompt appeared) to the times that we have come to accept. SSDs have cut that time to something more acceptable but I fully expect that advantage to be eroded again over the years because that's what happens with software: it always becomes larger and slower, never smaller and faster. On identical hardware a newer release of any OS is invariably slower than whatever came before.

goosedragons 4y ago
One of the features of Windows 8 was decreased boot times. I don't think its the only OS to do that either. SSDs make a massive difference even for Windows 7 too.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Interesting, if I ever decide to risk the stability of that box I may try an upgrade. To give you an idea of what it does: this box is the interface to my Tascam mix deck and the firewire support is something that you really don't want to mess with if you don't have to . It runs a very large number of audio channels through that firewire interface and even the slightest change to that configuration risks a never ending nightmare of drop-outs and crashes, usually when you really don't need them. With Firewire having been deprecated and this mix deck and the windows machine joined at the hip I take the nuisance for granted and just work my way around it. I was lucky to find a card and driver that worked, I must have tried more than 10 different combinations before I found one that worked reliably. Adding an SSD may well upset that balance and would require a complete re-install anyway and that risks ending up with an unstable or unusable system, so that's why that route is closed, though, maybe if I were to copy the image of the current HD to an SSD I could make it work without upsetting things too much.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    I think you could probably just clone the HDD to an SSD using a Linux live CD and "pv" or whatever and have no issues. I've done that for Windows installs in the past with very little trouble. Only issue I had was expanding the partition on the new drive with the recovery partition in the way.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Yes, I see that as one possible avenue. The possible issue with that approach is that the SSD is able to interrupt the OS at a much higher rate than an SSD, which may well increase the throughput of the system as a whole but cause latency issues substantial enough to cause drop outs. These cards run with very small output buffers to reduce their latency and any kind of delay will deplete the buffer resulting in a buffer underrun condition and that manifests as a drop-out in the audio stream. Another alternative is to get rid of the whole kaboodle and do it all in software, that's definitely a possibility with present day gear but I'm kind of partial to this old rig, it sounds great and is very comfortable to work with, much nicer than any pure software solution that I've seen so far.
      - password4321 4y ago
        Maybe swap out the drive and see what happens? You should be able to swap back pretty quickly...
        jacquesm 4y ago
        I may just do that. If anything this thread has given me the push to go and do something about it because the irritation is definitely there.
      - eropple 4y ago
        > Yes, I see that as one possible avenue. The possible issue with that approach is that the SSD is able to interrupt the OS at a much higher rate than an SSD, which may well increase the throughput of the system as a whole but cause latency issues substantial enough to cause drop outs. If this is a thing, you are already in burn-it-down territory with your hardware. I've been doing audio for a pretty long time, and I struggle to conceive of a system so marginally-fit-for-purpose-but-still-extant where drive interrupts will threaten audio timings.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]