Ask HN: How do those eMMC Windows laptops work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do those eMMC Windows laptops work?

25 points_bxg138 comments

I was just shopping around for a low-end Windows laptop and discovered a new trend: machines that have 64gb or 128gb internal storage on "eMMC", which research suggests is similar to what's used in phones, and then they have a micro SD card slot for expansion (also like phones).

I take it the OS lives on the eMMC and not something even weirder like a ROM chip? Do user programs and files go there too or can they only go on the SD? How does it all affect things like partitioning?

Presumably this is a response to the Chromebook-pocalypse but it still feels very strange and mysterious to me for now

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I bought one and used it for a year in college and ran a custom Linux ramdisk OS with a few different chroots on the EMMC. A lot of these things can’t really run Windows (I never tried but I’m told they can boot into the copy they ship with a few times but probably don’t last and certainly can’t update.) setting up Linux on them requires a lot of care (I had to build a custom kernel to get graphics on mine to work at all.) It’s better to think of them like a weird embedded device that happens to be mostly compatible with desktop computers.

Yes it’s EMMC (think SDcard but without a socket, it’s not super fast) and most OSes let you use that as a block device (and most of the firmware will let you boot from it.) Mine had an SDcard socket that I used for really big stuff (anything closed source, any builds so I didn’t burn the EMMC out, and anything I needed to run in wine.)

> A lot of these things can’t really run Windows (I never tried but I’m told they can boot into the copy they ship with a few times but probably don’t last and certainly can’t update.)

You mean just because there isn't enough space? Some of them go up to 64gb or even 128gb, but a lack of OS updates would be a non-starter.

eMMC is just another name for soldered on flash storage. Its no different than a SSD.

The interface is slower.

https://www.howtogeek.com/196541/emmc-vs.-ssd-not-all-solid-...

The school system I work for has thousands of devices with these. They're basically like an SD card for a camera soldered to the board. They do not have the wear leveling and other shit a real SSD has.

They're slow, (comparatively) unreliable and small. Because they're on the board a bad one means a new mobo which is generally not cost effective so it's done. I hate them and the cheap shitty hardware that they come with.

I'd like to point out that these came before Chromebooks but Chromebooks are also using them because they use the same shitty hardware as the cheapest Windows devices.

Even high-end, well-regarded Chromebooks use eMMC storage - e.g. the “base” $1k+ Pixelbook models.

The current eMMC spec is for 400 MB/s, plenty fast for low-end laptop.

The devil is in the details, as with other kinds of SSD.

it’s slower, has a higher error rate, and cannot be replaced or upgraded. get an ssd if possible; i got a toshiba chromebook a few years ago and it’s a perfectly capable little netbook with galliumos and a 128gb ssd after i upgraded it

> "Its no different than a SSD."

It is flash based but it isn't a SSD. The read/write performance is less and the rated write lifetime is much lower as well.

It shows up to the PC just like any hard drive.

It's not bad. It's slower than SSD, but much faster than a HDD.

The main issue is limited storage space. Some low-end laptops sell with 32GB space, and it's so low, you can't even update Windows properly on that one. Having at least 64GB gives you some breathing room.

I bought a very cheap one with 32 gigs a few years ago. I love it. It's fast , light and runs windows 10. It's good for email and browser stuff. My problem now is that i can't update the OS. It doesn't have enough memory. It still functions but i run the risk of not getting the security updates. It gave me about 3 years of great use. I would definitely buy another one.

32GB definitely seems cramped for Windows. 64GB would probably be safe going forward for at least OS updates

It does not cease to amaze me how bloated Windows is (compared to any Linux out there, anyway), and how it gets more bloated with each update.

A year or two ago, I freed up like 100GB of space from my Windows OS drive by deleting these files: https://serverfault.com/questions/746849/windows-temp-large-...

It was a corporate laptop, so maybe the problem exacerbated itself to that level due to frequent patches the employer was pushing.

Storage-wise, most of the "bloat" in modern Windows is pretty defensible. The extra space needed for a service pack / feature update is mostly to enable aborting or rolling back the upgrade. A good chunk of a small storage device is reserved for hibernating the system (hiberfil.sys), which might not be great for desktops but is table stakes for battery-powered systems. A lot of seemingly redundant data is from WinSxS (Side-by-Side), which is Microsoft's answer to "DLL hell" and -- loosely speaking -- a precursor to things like Snappy, Flatpak, and AppImage. The same fundamental concerns will most likely cause the average Linux installation to be similarly "bloated" in another 10 years or so as more backward compatibility needs accumulate.

The bloat in Windows is an interesting issue. I put together Windows OS images and a freshly-installed, before-updates Windows 10 image might be around 2 gigs (maybe a bit more or less, I’m going from memory here). Granted, a Linux distro may hit that size with a lot more preinstalled software, but I haven’t paid much attention.

Windows starts bloating when you apply updates. It keeps a lot around to facilitate rolling back updates if needed; this gets cleaned up over time but it can be an issue on a small disk. There’s ways to get the size back down (while sacrificing the ability to roll back updates that you’ve applied), but you don’t regain all the space.

I get the feeling the Windows Update mechanism is a large legacy mess that is stuck having to account for corner-cases that have built up over time. Microsoft are improving it; I think it’s just a really big engineering task that they’re having to slowly work through. I vaguely remember something about the way Windows handles overwriting open files in-place which makes this worse, but I can’t remember the specifics off the top of my head.

> I get the feeling the Windows Update mechanism is a large legacy mess that is stuck having to account for corner-cases that have built up over time.

I get the feeling that Windows itself is a large legacy mess that is stuck having to account for corner-cases that have built up over time. Of course this facilitates its impressive degree of backwards-compatibility (one of its most desirable features), but still.

Every time I try to play a game that I paid for on iOS that no longer works because Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility, I'm reminded of how thankful I am for Microsoft's efforts here.

I really think the amount they've improved Windows under-the-hood over time is impressive, especially taking into account the constraints they've had to work within.

On a related (though somewhat tangential) note I must say that I think MS tying WinRT (which as I understand it is the clean rewrite of the Windows API) to the Microsoft Store initially was a massive mistake. I still don't have a clear, confident impression of where I can or should use WinRT, even after all these years.

Chuck a linux distro on it before you chuck it out. You should get more years out of it and if you don't like it you planned on getting a new one anyway :).

You should be able to upgrade it to the latest version of Windows 10 with a fresh install which should get you security updates for a while. You'll probably end up losing your previous data though, but having the install media on an external drive might let you upgrade without having to completely format. Sadly I imagine you'll run into the same issue after the next massive Windows update. As others suggested, running Linux would probably alleviate these issues.

Yep, just do a clean install. I needed to do the same for my partner on one of her 32gb systems. It's since been running and updating fine for the past year or two.

A year or two ago, I freed up like 100GB of space from my Windows OS drive by deleting these files: https://serverfault.com/questions/746849/windows-temp-large-...

It was a corporate laptop, so maybe the problem exacerbated itself to that level due to frequent patches the employer was pushing.

I "bricked" my 32GB laptop a few years ago by allowing Windows 10 to use an SD card as extra space for an upgrade. Then I read that that iteration of Windows Update had a bug when there was something in the SD card slot during an upgrade. So now it is running Debian. But in theory that bug might be fixed and you could put an arbitrary auxiliary SD card in and upgrade successfully.

I distinguish by the way between an update that could happen with little fanfare vs the upgrade that would be named after a year, season and user role (e.g. 2017 Fall Creators update). The latter take more resources.

Looking for a good commute debian laptop. Which model was it ?

2015 HP Stream 11. I would steer people away from it generally but if you have more time than money it could work out. HP has this on its website but notably Best Buy, where I originally got mine as an open-box deal, no longer seems to have anything at the price or equal specs. My current laptop is an HP 15-ish with a core i7 and a real SSD. Not sure how I got in an HP rut.

I have an HP Stream that I bought about 1.5 yrs ago with 32 Gigs of storage. I am surprised you managed to run windows on a machine like that for so long. Mine came with Windows preinstalled and even just opening a webbrowser and idling would pin the CPU to close to 100%. I blew over Windows with Ubuntu and LXDE as my desktop environment and now the machine is great for what it is, I haven't ever gotten close to using up the available space with Linux on it.

You are super overthinking this. It's a lower tech ssd. It's nand storage just like a sata ssd would be. It's rw just the same.

In the mid-2000s I once tried installing Windows XP to a 16GB eMMC drive that was in a PCI slot adapter on my main PC. It did install successfully, just as it would on a normal hard drive. It did boot. The only problem (besides it being only 16GB) is it took forever. The PCI slot transfer speeds were slow. The eMMC card itself was slow. I can't recommend doing it, but it does work.

Picked up an Asus E203MA last month. I treat the eMMC just like I would any SSD/HDD and slap Arch on it all the same.

Any specifics you care to know?

I wouldn’t expect the heavier windows managers (and Windows) to perform at an acceptable level. Gnome sure didn’t. Tiling windows managers and mate/xfce have been great. It handles light web dev pretty fair as well.

I bought a HP stream with 128GB internal storage for 199 € and it's serving me well because of weight (1 kg) and purpose (writing, connect to remote servers via ssh). Being a Celeron you can't do fancy things but it's ok. You can extend the storage capacity with microSD cards.

funny, I could rescue an small laptop with 32GB eMMC and 2GB RAM from been thrown away just a day ago

i did a fresh win 10 install and it works amazing fast but I have just around 5 gigs left after updating and i want to work with linux as well

does somebody has some tips for slim it down and get the most out of it?

Can it boot from the microSD card or USB? If it can, you can install Linux on a card or USB Drive just like you do on a HDD or SSD.

yeah, it can! thanks!

If you are careful/lucky, some of them have an unused SATA port and then you can add a separate SSD to it.

Windows has bad filesystem support, let alone trying to efficiently run eMMC. f2fs has many advantages.

It’s very slow. Think of SD RaM access speed. Avoid.

Slower than a typical SSD maybe, but 400MB/s isn’t “slow” by any means - not compared to a spinning hard disk which is probably maxing out at 100-125MB/s if you’re lucky.

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