I’m amazed at the relentless pace of technology growth and change. I can remember paying US$1,000 for a 300MB hard disk (Mac, SCSI) in the mid-1980s. I just saw some ads for NAS drives this morning, and compared them to NVMe SSDs. There’s a serious HDD versus SSD Widening Price Gap going on right now. It’s worth understanding (and watching) — at least, IMO.

Exploring the HDD versus SSD Widening Price Gap

First, let me lay out some price ranges for you. You can buy NAS drives these days in a range from 8TB to 20TB in size. The smaller ones cost under US$200 these days. (The one depicted is on sale at Newegg right now for a measley US$115 or so.) As NAS drive size increases, so does price. A monster 20GB drive will cost you upwards of US$340. (It’s on sale at Newegg, normally US$20 more.) Do the math, and per terabyte pricing falls between US$14.38 (8 TB) and US$18 (20 TB).

Now let’s look at NVMe SSDs. 8 TB is the biggest you can go with NVMe right now (though there are bigger PCIe card drives, I’ll skip them for the nonce). Most 8 TB drives at Amazon fall in a price range from US$1,000 to $1,120. Again, more math produces a per terabyte price range of US$125  to US$140.

The lead-in graphic shows a Seagate Exos 710 8TB NAS drive (below) and a Sabrent Rocket 4 8TB SSD NVMe drive (above). Prices were plucked from Newegg and Amazon this morning. The ratios is what gets me riled up here: on average it goes from 8.69:1 to 7.77: 1.

Price-Performance Pops!

What this all really means is that HDDs still reign supreme for backup and archival purposes where the fact of storage outweighs read/write times. But as somebody who creates daily backups on important PCs who also occasionally has to restore them, I’ll observe that there’s at least a 4:1 speed difference between the two types of media when restoring a backup (sometimes more).

For those with limited patience or time, and especially for those with limited time windows in which to return to full capability, SSDs are increasingly important for necessary backups and storage access.

One more thing: given the ability to put sizable amounts of blazing fast SSD storage as the near storage tier in a multi-tiered storage architecture means that savvy storage buyers can mix and match these two types of storage ever more effectively. That’s how they mostly do things in data centers for cloud and SaaS providers nowadays anyway (except they don’t balk at spending huge amounts on top-tier SSDs like those described in this mind-blowing TechRadar story).

At this bleeding edge of the storage market, it’s clearly a case of “you can’t afford to do this at home” (unless you’re a centi-millionaire or better). But it’s interesting to contemplate how all kinds of drives keep getting bigger, and how storage architects keep figuring out how to deliver ever-huger amounts of data ever more quickly. Again: amazing!

Corny title, I know, but eerily accurate. In the wake of some recent update, my Lenovo Thunderbolt 4 dock keeps losing its wired Ethernet connection. This is particularly vexing when the RJ-45 is plugged directly into the Lenovo P27u-20 integrated dock. Why? Because the Cat-6 cable I’m using is hard to plug and unplug. Sigh. In perverse homage to Raymond Chandler: I call this the “Big Ethernet Dock Sleep.”

Ending the Big Ethernet Dock Sleep

Upon investigating the issue, it seems to be an endemic dock problem. It appears to be related to dropped connections following sleep. In fact, from what I can see, it affects not just PC docks (I saw posts from Dell, HP and Lenovo users) but also Mac docks (I saw some Apple Support posts as well).

What’s the issue? Take a look at the lead-in graphic. Basically it shows that, by default, the GbE port on the dock can be turned off “to save power.” That’s pretty much a given when a PC goes to sleep.

The fix is dead simple, though. Simply uncheck the first checkbox and everything goes blank. I can’t say for sure that this absolutely, postively fixes the issue. But I can say for sure that the affected PC has gone to sleep, then been awakened, and the Ethernet connection stayed up the whole time.

I’ll post back if it recurs. But from what I see online, this fix has worked for others likewise affected. Thus, I’m optimistic that it will also do the trick for me. If not, I’ll post back here again.

Fingers crossed…

Note added next morning 7:30 AM

The X12 Hybrid slept peacefully, all night long. And when I just RDP’ed into it now, it awoke with a working Ethernet connection. Problem still not conclusively solved, but close!

I have to laugh. I found myself re-reading numerous recent Windows 10 and 11 news stories, trying to figure which OS is which. It doesn’t help, either, that sometimes the news outlets themselves get their wires crossed. I believe that tracking Windows releases gets challenging because we’ve got so many of them to consider. Let me explain…

Why Say: Tracking Windows Releases Gets Challenging?

Windows 10 has two release tracks right now — namely, Release Preview and Production (current release). Windows 11, OTOH, has four: (1) Production; (2) Release Preview; (3) Beta and (4) Dev channels. Each of these releases has its own Build numbers. In those numbers, feature upgrades change the front and major part, and cumulative updates (CUs) change the minor and rear part. Thus, for example 22000.778 describes Windows 11 Production right now. The 22000 part comes from the Windows 11 feature upgrade to 21H1. The 778 part comes in the wake of KB014668 (6/29/2022).

Not too challenging with 1 or 2 such items to keep track of. But with 2 tracks for Windows 10, and 4 tracks for Windows 11, it’s a bit trickier. MS offers web pages to track this kind of stuff, but I don’t always find them terribly informative. It’s probably my fault.

Check Out the Release Info at UUPdump.net

If you look at the intro graphic for this story, you’ll see it’s comprised of the “release buttons” at the head of the UUPdump.net web page. Click any button, and you’ll get a complete release history for the selected release track, in descending chronological order. The info is comprehensive and all-inclusive.

You have to learn how to read release names and numbers to recognize and distinguish cumulative from feature updates in this presentation, though. That’s because UUPdump builds update ISOs to clean-install Windows images that include slipstreamed CUs.

So, if a release name there says “Feature Update” that doesn’t mean it’s really a feature update. Instead, you must recognize that feature updates usually include a minor (right-hand) component labeled “1” or “1000” to the right of the period in the build number. Once you understand those are the only “real” Feature Updates, the update history there makes sense. Works for me, anyway.

So when I want to get straight info, UUPdump.net is where I head. You can do likewise, but also check the MS clearinghouse named Windows release health. It, too, offers good info about production releases and updates. For Insider Previews, the MS web pages named “The Changelog” and “Flight Hub” are equally helpful. Cheers!

OK, then. I’ve been messing about with one of my Dev Channel test PCs lately. And it’s for the usual reason: experimentation leads to self-inflicted damage. Right now, the X12 Hybrid is limping along. It’s having driver problems with Windows Hello and Thunderbolt. The standard response when things get weird gives cause for in-place repair install basics revisited. I’ve been reminded of some important elements worth sharing (and repeating).

Why Are In-Place Repair Install Basics Revisited?

Generally, an in-place repair install involves running the setup.exe from an ISO to replace the OS files in the running image with known, good working equivalents. All this is wonderfully described in Shawn Brink’s terrific ElevenForums tutorial Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-Place Upgrade.

I started my exercise by visiting the Windows Insiders Using ISOs page. But I noticed that ISO version is 21540, whereas I’m running 25145 on my test PC. Alas, that explains why, after mounting the incompatible ISO on said test PC, it offers only the “Keep nothing” option. That’s what’s shown in the lead-in graphic for this story. It was my profound clue that I needed a different ISO.

Of course, the “Nothing” option is exactly what I DON’T want. So I went to UUPdump.net instead, and grabbed the ISO for 21545. And sure enough, once mounted it provides access to the “Keep personal files and apps” option I really want.

The Requirements Tell the Story

If you look at the “Repair install requirements” at the tip-top of the afore-linked tutorial, item 2 therein reads:

• The Windows 11 installation media (ISO or USB) must be the same edition, same version, and same or higher build as the currently installed Windows 11.

That’s what was holding me back. And that’s why I needed to remind myself of the basics, so I could get the repairs I wanted. Indeed: back to basics turns out to point me where I needed to go.

In many ways, Windows remains a “learn as you go” kind of thing. So it was upon returning home to update my PCs. The team I worked with used the Box Drive app to exchange big files. Thus, I found myself asking “How does one update Box Drive?” It took a bit of digging, but here is the Box App update secret revealed.

Getting to Box App Update Secret Revealed

It’s an app, so my first update thought was to go to the Windows Store, where such things normally get handled. No go. Next, I tried the winget command in Powershell. Nothing doing. And my typical auto-update tools — namely PatchMyPC and SUMo — didn’t help, either. Obviously, there had to be another way…

When I went poking around for help online, I couldn’t seem to find much insight there at first. Then I found a Box Support article with the essentials of this operation:

1. Find the Box Drive entry in the notification icons (click the up-caret if it’s not already showing on the toolbar).

2. Click that entry, then click the Settings (gear) icon at lower left.

3. If an update is pending, an update option appears in the resulting pop-up menu. Once up-to-date, though, the item no longer appears.

And that’s really all there is to it. Like much else about Windows, it’s dead easy if you know how to do it. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a runaround figuring things out.

Why Not Stick to Standard Methods?

Good question! Given that Box Drive is a Windows app, why did its maker decide not to use the Windows Store to deliver updates? I can’t say, except to observe that Box Drive is concerned with security and file protection, as well as offering file exchange services. My best guess is they opted for explicit control to help maintain security, rather than relying on less visible background updates through the store.

Again: it’s pretty easy to accomplish, once you understand how it works. And thus, I’ve got another item to add to my usual update drills.

OK, now we know. Windows tinkerers and tweakers have often wondered why the Taskbar clock in Windows 11 shows no seconds. Nor does it provide a registry tweak to display same. Raymond Chen lays things out in an Old New Thing blog post. Entitled “Now that computers have more than 4MB of memory, can we get seconds on the taskbar?” it provides the answer: “No.” Along the way, MS explains Windows 11 Taskbar clock missing seconds. In a word: “Performance.”

How MS Explains Windows 11 Taskbar Clock Missing Seconds

As you can see in the lead-in graphic — Windows 10 on the left, 11 on the right — the 10 clock happily displays a seconds count. 11 does not, nor does  it offer controls to display same. Why that difference?

Chen’s explanation is interesting and hinges on performance issues when many clocks are involved, all in need of ongoing updates. Here’s a lengthy, but informative, quote from the afore-linked blog post:

On multi-users systems, like Terminal Server servers, it’s not one taskbar clock that would update once a second. Rather, each user that signs in has their own taskbar clock, that would need to update every second. So once a second, a hundred stacks would get paged in so that a hundred taskbar clocks can repaint. This is generally not a great thing, since it basically means that the system is spending all of its CPU updating clocks.

This is the same reason why, on Terminal Server systems, caret blinking is typically disabled. Blinking a caret at 500ms across a hundred users turns into a lot of wasted CPU. Even updating a hundred clocks once a minute is too much for many systems, and most Terminal Server administrators just disable the taskbar clock entirely.

He goes onto say that even PCs that lack a Terminal Server role are still subject to performance constraints. Indeed, “periodic activity prevents the CPU from entering a low-power state.” He also adds “Updating the seconds in the taskbar clock is not essential to the user interface. . .”

Now we know. For those still inclined to stay on top of time at the second level (performance concerns aside) check out this ElevenForum thread: Taskbar Clock Replacement. ‘Nuff said!

In other posts here, I’ve groused about AdDuplex and its (IMO) over-reporting of Windows 11 marketshare. My February 1 item is a good example. Just yesterday, I noticed that a major desktop OS marketshare tracker — namely Statcounter –registers Windows 11 amidst the versions it follows. The lead-in graphic above, in fact, refreshed just this morning (April 1) grants Windows 11 an 8.47% share of Windows desktops overall. Good-oh! Now that Windows 11 makes marketshare radar I can trust, those numbers will get increasingly real.

What Windows 11 Makes Marketshare Radar Means

This means major tracking sites (NetMarketShare, Statcounter, Statista, and analytics.usa.gov) are instrumenting their sites to track Windows 11. This is a bit trickier than it seems, because Windows 11 presents itself as Windows 10 in its basic user agent info. One must use agent-hints to pick Windows 11 out from that crowd. Indeed, some programming effort is required to make this happen.

To me, that goes a long way toward explaining why Windows 11 has been off that radar since it made its initial debut on June 28, 2021. (Its public debut occurred on October 4, 2021.) Now it’s finally on at least one real radar (I don’t count AdDuplex, as I explain in the afore-cited post) so we finally have some statistically defensible means to figure out how many Windows 11 instances might be in use.

What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?

If indeed there are 1.5B instances of Windows in use (as MS has recently claimed) and 8.47% of them are Windows 11, that’s a simple calculation. The result is 127M, give or take 50,000. I had guessed in February that the number could be between 50 and 100 million. Looks like I wasn’t too far off the mark. Using the latest AdDuplex value of 19.4 percent, that number would be 291M. I just don’t believe it’s that big: now how, no way.

As more tracking sites start reporting Windows 11 desktop share numbers — and I have to believe they will, and soon — we’ll be able to refine our understanding of Windows 11 numbers further. Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you posted.