Windows 10 slow boot

If anybody is the slightest bit interested I managed to use the Windows Management Service under C# .net 3.5 to write a class that produces a sorted dictionary linking the drive letter to what Microsoft calls the "Friendly Name" so you can use the drive letter as a key into the dictionary.

You have to accept that "CT1000MX500SSD1" is regarded as a friendly name but that's down to Crucial, my Sabrent returns "Sabrent Rocket 4.0 500GB".

Anybody wants a copy email me (reply to is valid) it's 3 KB.

Thanks for the encouragement :-)

Of course the drive letter as seen on machine A will not be the same as seen on machine B, if that drive is mounted remotely.

Why don't you just change the name to something sensible?

I mounted one of the server drives as "Z" and it shows as "Z" with the correct drive name (as used on the server) and sizes but the type is "Unknown", I would think WMI only works on the local machine.

The "friendly name" is built into the firmware, the drive name for that one is "DataBack".

You can use WMI to a remote machine if the firewall and credentials are set up correctly...

So "DataBack"is the actual friendly name. Just give them all actual friendly names.

DataBack is the functional name, the "friendly name" reflects the manufacturer/type.

and not even wrong :-)

Windows *does* "defrag" SSDs (although defrag is called "Optimize Drives" these days) - but it understands the technology and does not rack up additional SSD writes for no good reason.

File fragmentation still happens on SSDs however because the seek latency is not affected by the fragmentation you don't get the performance hit that you would with a HDD. However when a file is fragmented there needs to be meta data maintained that tracks where those fragments are - so as the fragmentation increases, so does the size of the meta data. As that needs to be read, updated, and written to the SSD, and that *does* reduce performance a bit (and also means that badly fragmented files will result in additional write operations to track those fragments).

More significantly however there are a maximum number of fragments that the meta data can track. So if you have a file hit that limit, then any further writes or attempts to extend that file would fail.

Optimisation also takes care of running re-trim operations (which mops up any actual trim notifications that were abandoned because the number of queued trims at the time the file was deleted had reached its maximum length).

There is a resonable explanation here:

The physical disks are the whole disk drive, which could have multiple partitions with a label for each partition. The FriendlyName is the manufacturer identifier as you would see in the catalog. The second line here, is an 870 EVO 2.5" SATA drive. I removed its serial number from the example.

PS> get-physicaldisk

Number FriendlyName SerialNumber MediaType CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage Size

------ ------------ ------------ --------- ------- ----------------- ------------ ----- ----

And because the operating system is rather confused about the PassMark ramdisk, it keeps calling the stupid thing "Fiber Channel" connected. Which it is not. There is no Device Manager entry, and the labeling is based on a WinSAT erroneous evaluation, rather than a chain of PNP information. The MediaType in the above table is more accurate, as it says "unspecified", which is true to a large extent. No purpose would be served by declaring a MediaType either. Or it would bust the behavior in the Optimize (defragment) panel.

If instead, you do a Volume listing or a Partition listing, then the "label" of the file system can be listed, which might be "Backup2025" or whatever.

You can see these properties in the text-based "diskpart.exe", which can "list partitions" or "list volumes" for you. And then some of this Powershell goodness, can do a similar thing.

Partition 3 Type : ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7 Hidden : No Required: No Attrib : 0000000000000000 Offset in Bytes: 122683392

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------

• Volume 0 C W11HOME NTFS Partition 118 GB Healthy Boot

The "W11HOME" is the same as the "DATABACK" idea, it's the label field.

Paul