I've noticed after installing the latest Windows 11 on an HDD laptop it significantly reduced disk usage and it was a bit usable. So I've been thinking is 21H1 Windows 10 better on HDDs now? Is LTSC 2021 based on 21h1 and since it's very debloated would work better on HDD based systems? I used LTSC 2019 on older HDD laptop and disk usage was 100% all the time making multitasking unusable
If the disk usage is 100% all the time, there is something wrong with the disk or something is running in the background that is constantly doing something to the disk. It would be wise to check.
For HDD & SSD win10 LTSB 2016 is the best & last os to be installed. all next builds for win10 as well as win11 are worst.
disk usage is mainly caused by Windows Update. Turning on Notification Mode for Windows Update Code: cmd as admin (not supported on Home/Core edition : reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU /v AUOptions /t REG_DWORD /d 2 /f it help because you choose when you want to stress your Windows disk.
This happened when I installed all updates when the laptop was on idle it was hitting low usage numbers!
I don't say I don't agree! But some people don't want to invest on an SSD upgrade or the laptop disassembly is too complicated for me to do. I've noticed LTSB 2015 works just like a Windows 7/8.1 on a HDD. But it was strange seeing only 30% HDD usage in Windows 11 after I've done the updates
Main problem starts with WDDM 2.0 GPU video memory pagination. This is one of the reasons it becomes slow... Best is: w10 1507 (10240) (aka LTSB 2015) w10 1511 (10586) I don't know about w10 1607 (14393) (aka LTSB 2016) but sure all versions after 1511 (or 1607 if it's ok) get worse on HDD I don't know about LTSC 2021 As @LiteOS says it's better to use Server converted to workstation or LTSB versions
I don't fully believe that Windows Update will cause the HDD to run slowly. Usually, such services as SysMain and Windows Search will also cause this situation.
Personally, I don't think all versions of windows 10 are suitable for HDD. Once the computer I used was configured as Celeron E1600 + 80GB HDD + 2GB RAM, and it runs very smoothly on Windows 8.1 system.
If you have 4gb or more just use ltsb 2015/6 x32 and PAEpatch. The 3GB limit was a problem already solved on WinNT4 days
Do you tried it? Also, the problem i think is with programs. A lot of companies will stop x32 software. I think 2016 x64 with 4gb ram is better option. Maybe i am wrong But yeah i think laptops/desktop with 2core 2 threads 2016 x32 is the ultimate option.
I use it since the stone age, BTW there are some VGA drivers (especially Intel) that are buggy and not working with PAE (no matter if official from MS or patched) so people with Intel integrated Graphics are out of luck, aside that no problems. The world is plenty of idiots, x86 is not just useful for old/underpowered PCs, but is invaluable when you have dozens of virtualized machines, which are 1.6x larger in x64 flavors (both as storage taken and RAM used). x86 is also faster even on newer machines, except for specific, number crunching, tasks like file compression, video transcoding and alike, Phasing out x86 is just a way to force people to buy more storage, more powerful PCs and so on. That said we have updated Browsers that works not just on x86 but also on old x86 OSes, like Win2000 or Leopard MacOS. If you use win 10 x86 you loose really only the things that were never built for x86 from the beginning (Hyper-V, WSL, WSA, Deduplication), everything else is still available, at least until the Win11 crap will really assimilate most of the world (Win 11 x86 exist but was never released publicly on purpose) One more thing.... Thanks God native vhds exist since 2009, You can have as many OS yow want in multiple boot with a couple of mouse clicks and w/o messing with partitions and risking your data, so just use x86 for most of your job, and boot on x64 if really needed. Wmware 10 is still also pretty capable, and can run x64 guests on x32 hosts (if the CPU is x64 capable)