On Windows Vista and every subsequent version of Windows, if I search for a file and include the entire C:\ drive, I might very well have time to make tea or a sandwich while the search results come in. On Windows XP, using the search dialog with the animated dog, I can search the entire C:\ drive and expect it to be done in a minute or two, if not in seconds.
It can’t just be nostalgia; I can replicate these results on period-accurate hardware today. What changed with Vista to make file searching so much slower, even with indexing enabled?
This is like asking for a source for common sense statements.
HDDs are pretty terrible at random IO, which is what reading many small files tends to be. This is because they have a literal mechanical arm with a tiny magnet on the end that needs to move around to read sectors on a spinning platter. The physical limitations of how quickly the read right head can traverse limits it’s random I/O capabilities.
This makes hard drives, abysmal, at random I/O. And why defragmenting is a thing.
This is common knowledge for anyone in it and easy knowledge to obtain by reading a Wikipedia page.
SSDs are great at random I/O. They do not have physical components that need to move in order to read from random locations they generally perform equally as well from reading any location. Meaning their random I/O capabilities are significantly better.
The difference isn’t significant in this situation. You’re acting like HDDs are floppy disks lol. Their random IO is not “pretty terrible”.