Advice Request Is it true that WD really is lighter and faster than most other AVs?

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truefacts

Level 1
Jun 9, 2020
12
This discussion is irrelevant if people do not list if they are running Windows on HDD. HDD is legacy hardware that is the reason for slow performance. The expectation that WD should be optimized for HDD is not realistic. It has always been Microsoft's position that hardware older than about 5 years is legacy. In fact, it will not certify most hardware older than 4 years.

W10 WD running on SSD is among the very best optimized security software running on Windows.
 
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SeriousHoax

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Mar 16, 2019
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Saying HDD is legacy is extremely ridiculous. We're talking about HDD not floppy. Every manufactures still make and sell HDD, people still buy HDD, millions of people still use HDD and will continue to do so for more years to come. The price difference is pretty big also. More than double in my area for 1TB. HDD is not going away anywhere anytime soon. 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.
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.
WD's performance sufferers in some areas on HDD which is Microsoft's fault not the fault of HDD. High CPU and I/O usage is not something that can be improved overnight, if they could they would. Every AV works differently, Bitdefender consumes more ram on average than the most, WD usage more CPU and disk, ESET is light in every department, cloud AVs performance relies more or less depending on the internet connection, CPU but they are light on ram and disk and so on.
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. 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. WD is there already installed on the system and it does its job pretty well.
 

insanity

Level 5
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Oct 9, 2016
216
No AV is going to run fast on HDD. The OEM world has moved beyond that years ago. The technology has changed. Nobody is really supporting HDD any longer beyond using HDD as a backup drive. Some OEMs still make HDD systems for the ultra-cheap market where people just do not want to pay. The OEMs have long since moved on from HDD technology and are optimizing for SSD. HDD is legacy and nobody in their right mind is going to spend the time, money and effort to support legacy hardware. That is IT industry standard practice.

You're missing the point: WD is consistently worse than most AVs when it comes to on-access scan and disk usage. You don't have to run your system on a HDD to notice. 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.

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.

I'm sorry, but everything you are saying confirms exactly my point regarding unrealistic expectations. It is emblematic example of the disconnect between consumer thinking and how the IT industry works . You are stating things that no OEM and Microsoft do not subscribe to. So yes it is all unrealistic expectations. Every party's position on hardware is that after about 5 years, the hardware is legacy and therefore there is no guarantee of optimal performance. HDDs are sold today because people are cheap and because HDD is meant for data backup. The OS today is not intended to run from the HDD. Your next counter argument is that Microsoft did not do a good job when HDD ruled supreme. Back then, WD was just a freebee that Microsoft shipped with Windows. The market reality was that people were going to install 3rd party AV. Therefore, Microsoft did not put forth the effort to compete in that space - and there is no reason that it should. WD back then was only an "as is best effort" based upon AV market reality.

Here again the issue is not Microsoft but people. People do not want to change and then point the finger at Microsoft. They need to spend the money and upgrade their hardware.

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

Your comment actually reflects an attitude that I see coming from many IT insiders and tech enthusiasts: the notion that their personal preferences should exclusively dictate the market trends. 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.
 

Vitali Ortzi

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Dec 12, 2016
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You're missing the point: WD is consistently worse than most AVs when it comes to on-access scan and disk usage. You don't have to run your system on a HDD to notice. 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.

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.



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

Your comment actually reflects an attitude that I see coming from many IT insiders and tech enthusiasts: the notion that their personal preferences should exclusively dictate the market trends. 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.
I still disable windows defender on older machines or new Celeron cheap laptops with slow storage.
 

truefacts

Level 1
Jun 9, 2020
12
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.


.
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.
 
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Tutman

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Apr 17, 2020
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My experience on three separate systems running Windows 10 Pro with 8 GB of ram on each, WD lags the system and does impact the performance.
Yes we are using HDD. Which is NOT "legacy" BTW. The original HDD of the 1980's and 1990's were SCSI and slow and measured in size of around 40 mb and that is legacy. That is NOT the same HDD of today with gigabytes and terabytes.


Changes in Storage Space Over Time

The first hard disk drive (RAMAC 305 produced by IBM) back in 1956 could store 5MB of data, which was a huge amount at the time. This is coincidentally also the size of the first “small” 5.25-inch hard disk drive that arrived in 1980. We went from needing a special room for the hard disk drive and its computer, to having one we could fit inside a desktop computer.


Ten years later, in 1990, a “normal” hard drive (like the ones produced by Maxtor) held about 40MB, with more expensive options able to store more than 100MB.


Fast forward to present day, and you can buy a 3.5-inch hard disk drive with 15TB of storage space.

1592174982762.png
 

Andy Ful

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I can bet that Microsoft does not bother what MT members think and post, so blaming Microsoft or defending it will not change anything. I participated in several such discussions - all ended with high blood pressure without any agreement. Such a discussion can only bloat this thread (like many others before).
If most posters can agree that WD is not optimized to work with HDD and we can understand why it happens, then expanding the discussion on Microsoft sins is not necessary here. It would be much more interesting to find an agreement on other possible light or not-light WD features in relation to the performance parameters usually measured in the performance tests of AV testing labs. :)
 
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truefacts

Level 1
Jun 9, 2020
12
Fast forward to present day, and you can buy a 3.5-inch hard disk drive with 15TB of storage space.

That it is still used does not matter. It is used only because of cost. And the cost is so low because it is legacy. It is outdated technology even with the vast improvements over the decades. HDD are not intended to run an OS on it. The HDD use case in this day and age is for data storage. Just because people continue to use HDD and it is widely used, does not make it Microsoft's priority.


I can bet that Microsoft does not bother what MT members think and post, so blaming Microsoft or defending it will not change anything. I participated in several such discussions - all ended with high blood pressure without any agreement. Such a discussion can only bloat this thread (like many others before).
If most posters can agree that WD is not optimized to work with HDD and we can understand why it happens, then expanding the discussion on Microsoft sins is not necessary here. It would be much more interesting to find an agreement on other possible light or not-light WD features in relation to the performance parameters usually measured in the performance tests of AV testing labs. :)


What is posted on a forum has no influence. Of course Microsoft does not care. Of course WD is not optimized to work on HDD. Microsoft never intended to do so for a lot of reasons that people here either do not know or refuse to accept. All one need do is search for Microsoft's official positions on hardware. Support stops. They EOL efforts all the time.

I do not think Microsoft is blameless in certain cases. But the technology has been overcome by other events. And that is SSDs rise to supremacy in the market place and HDD relegated to data storage legacy. People are triggered because their perspective is that Microsoft is screwing them over by being negligent in making WD better on obsolete HDD. Microsoft doesn't want to do that. It is a lost cause money losing effort for them.

There is nothing for anyone to get upset about. Accept reality for what it is. Not what they want it to be. You can see the triggered people that keep jumping in and saying HDD is not legacy. It sure is. It is obsolete technology. Anyone in IT knows that.
 

bayasdev

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WD on-access scan uses way too much resources (CPU and I/O) if you have a folder full of EXEs nor run an unknown program, otherwise is pretty light. WD in W10 2004 gave me memory leaks of up to 800mb of RAM, LTSC was consistent between 150-220mb RAM usage.
 
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ForgottenSeer 72227

I'm probably going to disagree with most of the comments here. In my experience, WD is far from being the best AV when it comes to system resources. It's actually quite heavy and the impact is noticeable when you run WD on older hardware or low specs machines. There are other AVs that perform much better (like ESET, for instance)

And that's totally cool!

As I've said there will always be a range of experiences when it comes to AVs and performance, WD is no exception. Granted I, like many others have had great performance from WD, it's well known that not everyone will. There are so many factors that play into this, but a large part has to do with the infinite number of hardware/software configs on the Windows ecosystem. All my systems have SSDs, one being an NVME drive. The lowest amount of ram between all my systems is 8GB, so I won't place my systems under the low end category, but I can appreciate that not everyone has such systems. All in all whether you use/like WD, or not, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. All that matters is there is a large selection of AVs to choose from, all of which have their pro's and cons. All one has to do is just try them out for themselves and use the one that works for them/meets their needs.(y):emoji_beer:
 
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blackice

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And that's totally cool!

As I've said there will always be a range of experiences when it comes to AVs and performance, WD is no exception. Granted I, like many others have had great performance from WD, it's well known that not everyone will. There are so many factors that play into this, but a large part has to do with the infinite number of hardware/software configs on the Windows ecosystem. All my systems have SSDs, one being an NVME drive. The lowest amount of ram between all my systems is 8GB, so I won't place my systems under the low end category, but I can appreciate that not everyone has such systems. All in all whether you use/like WD, or not, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. All that matters is there is a large selection of AVs to choose from, all of which have their pro's and cons. All one has to do is just try them out for themselves and use the one that works for them/meets their needs.(y):emoji_beer:
But, then what will we all argue about until we are red in the face!?
 

truefacts

Level 1
Jun 9, 2020
12
I think some people like to rile up the MT crowd. Some people like high blood pressure. :ROFLMAO:

People get triggered. It is part of the internet and debate. You can say the sky is blue or water is wet and it will trigger somebody somewhere. Here I just do not understand what there is to get upset about. HDD is legacy hardware. Everybody in IT knows it is obsolete technology. WD does not run well on HDD and Microsoft is never going to optimize WD for HDD when the world has moved onto SSD. Some people just cannot handle the facts.
 
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blackice

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People get triggered. It is part of the internet and debate. You can say the sky is blue or water is wet and it will trigger somebody somewhere. Here I just do not understand what there is to get upset about. HDD is legacy hardware. Everybody in IT knows it is obsolete technology. WD does not run well on HDD and Microsoft is never going to optimize WD for HDD when the world has moved onto SSD. Some people just cannot handle the facts.
Don’t worry, I’m a runner. My blood pressure is low (y)
 

danb

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WD does not run well on HDD.
Are you suggesting that there is a way to optimize IOPS for HDD, independent of SSD performance? If something is slower on a HDD, it is surely slower on a SSD as well.

Other vendors have figured it out, and Microsoft will too at some point. WD has not been around as long as some of the other vendors, and it takes time to work out the kinks. Trust me, I know ;).

WD truly is great, but just like with everything, it is a work in progress. The prompts are incredibly confusing, but this can be fixed as well.

But overall... over the next few years WD will probably take over the consumer and business markets completely. The only thing that might remain are the niche products that complement WD rather than compete with it. Just a guess ;).
Some people just cannot handle the facts.
Please present some actual facts with hard data and empirical evidence (instead of opining incessantly) and we will see if people can handle the facts or not.
 

TairikuOkami

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That it is still used does not matter. It is used only because of cost. And the cost is so low because it is legacy.
It is not just the cost, HDD can last several decades, can you say the same about SSD? Not to mention data recoverability, data from damaged HDD can be still recovered, even from burnt ones, but once SSD chip is fried, it is game over. And as for the cost, SSD would be much cheaper, if disk manufacturers would not make cartel deals, like companies many times in the past and then were caught red handed. They want to sell out all manufactured disk with a low capacity. The only reason, TB disks are so cheap now, because of the flood, that destroyed a lot of supplies a few years back.
 

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