Microsoft wants to use SSD boot drives in Windows PCs

Microsoft appears to be pushing Windows PC makers to offer solid-state drives (SSDs) for Windows 11 devices.

Windows 11 PC manufacturers may use platter-based hard drives or solid-state drives because current requirements focus solely on storage space. According to the minimum system requirements of Windows 11, Windows 11 devices must have at least 64GB of storage space.

One operating system feature, DirectStorage, requires an NVMe SSD, but it is an optional feature that is not available on devices with classic hard drives or non-NVMe solid-state drives. DirectStorage promises to improve loading performance of PC games.

On average, solid-state drives perform better than traditional hard drives. Most device users will experience an improvement when replacing classic hard drives with SSDs. Since low-budget SSDs often don't take advantage of the same technology, they don't all have the same performance levels.

Manufacturers, on the other hand, don’t seem happy with this, and the main reason boils down to cost. If you're building a PC from scratch, classic hard drives are cheaper than solid-state drives, starting at about $30 for a 1TB drive. Manufacturers may get them at lower prices. SSDs start at around $60 for 1TB of storage.

Manufacturers can reduce the storage capacity of SSDs by half or further to reduce costs, but this would make the device less attractive.

The decision to heavily promote manufacturers to adopt SSDs in their devices has greatly impacted low-budget devices. Although most PCs have moved to solid-state drives as boot devices, SSD capacities are still typically less than 256 GB. Some PCs use hybrid storage solutions that include solid-state drives (SSDs) for the operating system and boot, and disk-based drives for storage.

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