Saying HDD is legacy is extremely ridiculous.
HDD technology was created in 1980. The status is determined by age, not prevalence. The industry does consider it legacy but continues to use it primarily as a cheap data storage solution. The proof is that most systems today do not even have an HDD. If they do it is for data storage and not to run the OS on it. Some OEMs make low-cost systems with only HDD for the sake of price for people that do not want to pay.
Microsoft considers hardware outdated if it is using technology older than 4 to 5 years. It will not even certify hardware in most instances that is 4 years older. Do not confuse prevalence and using it as meaning that Microsoft is going to expend huge efforts to ensure its products work great with the technology. If Microsoft did that then it would soon go bankrupt. Even the OEMs stop making driver updates around 4 to 5 years, sometimes a lot less. This is because they move onto focusing and optimizing for the latest-and-greatest.
People are triggered here because they just do not want to accept that performance issues have been overcome by other events. Those events are the rapid development, overtake and speed of SSDs in the market place. Software publishing is just like manufacturing a physical product. The OEM is not going to do anything other than follow the current IT industry trends. They End of Life and drop support just like every other manufacturer. Consumers just do not get this basic fact.
Most people I see around usually install the OS in a SSD but still use HDD for storing large amount of files. My own brother currently living in The Netherlands built a monster of a PC on January last year (eg; i9, 64gb ram, Nvidia 2080) spend a lot on it but still bought a HDD along with one internal and one external SSD. HDD is not legacy.
Your statement proves exactly what I said. HDD use case nowadays is as cheap data storage. Search Index service has always been slow, but Microsoft has never really cared about improving it. The improvements were minor tweaks and not done because Microsoft has such big concern about people using HDD.
It's also wrong to assume that Microsoft and other AVs only optimizes their AV for SSD and don't care about HDD. They definitely do because most people still use HDD. Many AV perform smoothly on a 5-10 years old HDD. Btw, Microsoft improved their search indexing performance on Windows 10 2004 update reducing CPU & disk load and one of the reason to do so is to improve performance on HDD meaning they do care.
If you were in the industry and followed Microsoft's statements and positions in enterprise then you would really understand. Microsoft has long recommended SSD and puts top priority on SSD. Just because that discussion does not make it over to consumer systems does not mean MIcrosoft cares about HDD. This is how Microsoft approaches consumer market - what Microsoft does and wants in enterprise it also silently does the same for consumer. This is because Windows is a general operating system.
Microsoft improved Windows 10 not specifically for HDD as you state. Microsoft does not care about AV running on HDD.
WD's performance sufferers in some areas on HDD which is Microsoft's fault not the fault of HDD.
HDD is slow legacy technology. HDD is so slow that its use case is primarily for data storage and not for installing the OS. This industry trend has been the case for well over 5 years.
WD is an "as is best effort." Nobody pays for it. So Microsoft is not going to go out of its way for legacy hardware. Microsoft owes no one anything because WD is free.
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The main thing is, performance varies based on many factors, it varies from user to user based on the system configuration and usage. Putting all the blame to HDD is wrong. We geek people tend to notice this variations, slow downs but average users don't know about this and don't care either..
Microsoft has stated many times over the years that it is not even going to try to support the highly fractured hardware and user ecosystem. Windows, and WD, are "as is best efforts." What you geeks, as you put it, want is permutation compatibility which would put Microsoft out of business. Your complaint should be directed at the OEMs and end users that do stuff that they should not do.
We geek people tend to notice this variations, slow downs but average users don't know about this and don't care either. Most average people who doesn't browse forums like us are using Windows 10, using Windows Defender and happy with it. They would never complain about performance.
I work in AWS cloud on servers. So technically I am a geek. We use both SSD and HDD. The extreme limitations of HDD because it is ancient legacy hardware is known by everyone. Any HDD OEM itself will tell you HDD is going to greatly slow down everything.
WD is there already installed on the system and it does its job pretty well.
My point exactly. Nowadays when people talk about WD most of them are talking about W10 WD running from OS installed on SSD. Microsoft focuses not on legacy hardware such as HDD but instead on the leading hardware trends, which now is NVMe SSD. Anything older than 5 years old is considered ancient. Right now SATA III SSD are considered sub-optimal and are recommended as data backup due their cheap price.
A lot of the narrative behind HDD is from countries where the earning power is much less than places such as Europe and USA. Well I'm sorry, but Microsoft makes almost all of its decisions based upon those markets. It supports 2nd and 3rd world markets as an "as is best effort."
I could notice the slowdown in my newer laptop when I opened a folder with many files (like executables, Word documents etc) or if I had an external HDD plugged in.
You can exclude that folder from real-time and scan it manually.
Other users brought up the issue of running WD on older machines or low specs PCs, and I told it's terrible based on my own experience with my old laptop with a 5400 RPM HDD. Other AVs perform much better than WD, so there is certainly some room for improvement.
This is to be expected. HDD is extremely slow ancient legacy hardware. It is only meant nowadays for data backup - which if you configure WD correctly then you will not run into all the things you are complaining about.
You're basically saying: "look, we know this product has been consistently inferior to its competitors for many years, but don't you dare come up with 'unrealistic expectations' of improvements so as to make it on par with other AV software available on the market". LOL
Microsoft openly stated that it was not competing with 3rd party solutions. The attitude Microsoft had until W10 WD was released was that 3rd party AV was better. However, with the extraordinary advancement of SSD technology Microsoft has focused on optimizing it for SSD.
So, if there is a disconnect between Microsoft and customers, the problem is on the people, not on Microsoft. This is complete nonsense. The IT industry wants to offer their products in exchange for the customers' hard earned money. So, companies should try to adapt their products to meet their customers' needs, not the other way around.
The disconnect is that consumers fail to recognize that enterprise dictates everything. The consumer markets are just an afterthought. Plus the consumer market does not want to pay for much of anything. The fee you pay an OEM is mostly to cover the cost of their tech installing the OS. It is not the cost of the Windows license that the OEM has to pay Microsoft. Microsoft's margins for OEM consumer installs is quite low.
Microsoft's own official position is that Windows is at the bottom of their priority list. They have released official statements about it. Their goal is to move away from Windows and come up with solutions to better serve enterprise. There shall be even greater focus on services targeted to enterprise and consumer market will fall even lower in priority. It makes sense. The consumer market is not only a can of worms it has lower margins.
These facts are the forces that are pushing Microsoft to make Windows a subscription service in the future.
