Could you give some pointers to that research?

Info on VM:
https://help.github.com/en/actions/automating-your-workflow-with-github-actions/virtual-environments-for-github-hosted-runners#cloud-hosts-for-github-hosted-runners

States:

Each virtual machine has the same hardware resources available.

• 2-core CPU
• 7 GB of RAM memory
• 14 GB of SSD disk space

Uses Standard_DS2_v2:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sizes-general#dsv2-series

On a Windows VM:

PS C:\> Get-CimInstance Win32_LogicalDisk

DeviceID DriveType ProviderName VolumeName        Size         FreeSpace
-------- --------- ------------ ----------        ----         ---------
A:       2                                                     
C:       3                      Windows           136912564224 8117616640
D:       3                      Temporary Storage 15031267328  13100244992

The numbers line up with D: being the SSD.

Great, thank you for the PR, let's merge it :)

JFYI,

The whole step of downloading and extracting didn't seem to change much time-wise, but SSD's have got to be faster than HD's...

Working on fully tested master binaries, I'll probably use an embedded action for it. Maybe when I'm done we can think about non MRI Rubies...

It is forbidden to use magic outside of Hogwarts!