Posted on 10/05/2025 5:51:28 AM PDT by Paul R.
I'm looking for recommendations for the (primary) volume size to allocate on a brand new SSD being used for a mildly unique purpose: It will be the 3rd drive in the machine, and will function as the drive most programs (except the OS) will reside on, and also it will be used for "fast" data backup of the primary data drive, which is the 2nd SSD: Drive F.
Background and more info. is in my Post #1, below. Please read that too, B4 posting. :-)
Thanks in advance, All!
Recent updates have been reported as causing this same issue for some users. If possible, you should roll back that update if you can somehow boot the machine into safe mode. That likely would get it going again. You will be receiving no more updates for Windows 10 in less than two weeks. So, this would likely not be a reoccurring problem in the future. You might consider looking at the other post that I just made.
The reports that I am reading seem to indicate that it actually is security updates to Windows 10 version 22H2 that have been causing difficulties for many. Supposedly patches are being released, but it makes me wonder what Microsoft is up to.
Anyway, I wanted to have at least one fast (by my standards!) Win 11 Pro desktop going anyway, and I already bought the machine (some time ago), so, right now it's mostly just a matter of finishing up the tweaks and additions to it. I'm also just beginning to delve into Linux to hopefully avoid a lot of the Microsoft headaches, in the long run. Linus (even just installing it) does have a learning curve, and as I'd mentioned, I'm not as sharp as when I was 20 y/o. My time - who knows how much I have left? I like tech challenges, but, a few more camping, hiking and fishing outings would be nice too, while I still can!
In any event, it would be nice to get the old WIN 10 Pro desktop, a good quick machine, normally, going nicely (as in being able to browse the web with it): Perhaps Win10AME is a quick answer. It also might be the best bet for my wife's machine, and she doesn't like tech challenges"!
Other readers may benefit from your post, too. :-)
Thanks!
The latter: This machine will, for now, only be Win 11 Pro. Later I may well add dual boot capability (for Linux).
OK, so are you going to wipe the win 10 drive then and use it for storage? (after recovering personal files of course)
So...
THEORETCALLY if I wait until, say, next weekend and then download (create) a new Win 10 Pro bootable USB flash drive, and use that to boot the machine, it may boot correctly, and then maybe I could roll back the Sept. update on the C: drive?
I’ll try safe mode in the Win 10 Pro machine again, too, once I get this WIN 11 Pro machine all dialed in. The Dell Repair Software was telling me there was no restore point to go back to, which seems impossible, as I’d created one manually about 2 months prior, and there should have been even earlier ones, too. I know they get overwritten as the space allocated gets used up, but there used to be several listed. WTH. (eye roll)
For now, the C: drive from the Win 10 Pro machine (very similar setup) will just stay in it. Luckily, I have a couple new spare SSD’s hanging around: One of those is the drive for which I’m asking about the allocation in the Win 11 Pro machine. The data drive in the new machine is the data drive from the Win 10 Pro machine — I just physically swapped it into the new Win 11 Pro machine. Works like a charm...
You have a lot of company.
The external drive is HDD, it’s just slow and a bit noisy. I prolly should spring for a new one that might(?) benefit from a USB-C 3.1 connection. I’m not sure the present external backup HDD would...
I am all for getting a newer computer that will run Windows 11. I am actually a computer equipment hoarder. My wife and I each have a laptop that runs Windows 11 and I have 2 mini-PCs that run Windows 11 as well. The mini-PCs both cost less than $150 and are surprisingly capable even though each is used mostly for server duty.
Prime Days are coming up on the 7th. I am sure there will be some tempting deals on Windows 11 machines. I will likely be purchasing a Windows 11 “gaming” mini-PC with an Optilink interface to use as an “AI Server”. This has many interesting advantages, but takes a fairly powerful processor to work well.
Depending on how your Windows 10 computer was setup, it should have gone into recovery mode where you could have used Windows Restore to get rid of the latest update. You might be able to get it into Recovery Mode by repeatedly pressing your delete key or F2 or some other method depending on the computer. It seems to me that you already know how to get into your UEFI settings menu... it should be one of the options depending on how you get into that.
Well, it sure seems like there are millions of such comments on FR...
BTW, I can still remember the days when I was pleased with how much text (or a Fortran program) one could fit on a 5-1/4” floppy drive!! Damn, I’m gettin’ old.
Here is the method to do this recommended by ChatGPT which is likely clearer than I could type out.
https://chatgpt.com/share/68e2b518-f96c-8008-9ba1-74ec3faf3684
I am sorry. I sent out a response without noticing this.
System recovery is reliably unreliable. Here is a more lengthy and thorough technique from Grok:
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_18400c6a-a209-4830-9ee0-44448ff3216a
Oh, I see, it was already just a data storage drive when it was on 10 so the 11 sees it fine.
Found some information for you:
Noted!
One thought occurred to me just now:
If I wanted to add dual boot capability to the Win 11 Pro desktop machine later, and have it boot off that new SSD that I need to initialize, would I likely be best off to set some space aside “unallocated” as a future home for that (Linux) OS? Then, I should look up the drive size requirement(s) for various versions of Linux?
That is one cool thing about the Linux installer... You have the option during install to either wipe and do the whole drive, or install dual boot/”Along side” in Linux terms.
But it will actually do all that partitioning for you during the install.
It will check the drive for existing operating systems.
If it sees one it will ask you if you want to install along side.
Then it will allocate and create the partitions and volumes it needs to do it’s thing.
So no need to partition it ahead of time, it is all part of the Linux install and it will scoot the windows over for it’s own partitions next to windows.
It generally creates three partitions for itself. System, Home, and “Swap”. And in total they add up to about 25 Gb as a minimal base setting for the initial size. But some installers have a slider so you can increase that Linux size during the install if you like.
But Linux is like windows. If you start to run out of room with that 25 Gb it will ask you if you want to increase the size of that partition and then it will reallocate more for itself from unused space.
So no need to do any partitioning before hand. It will detect and create for itself. :)
Now... One note though, when you do this, because you have all those drives, I would temporarily unplug all but the one main drive you want the Linux to go on. That way there is no mistake which one it installs to. The Linux will pick up and see those drives fine on the fly after you plug them back in again and reboot.
And the data saved on that drive gets "scooted" too, I assume.
I guess I misled you. it was just a figure of speech and not really accurate.
It leaves everything associated with the existing OS static where it is already. It doesn’t mess with those partitions at all. It just takes advantage of extra unused space and allocates some of it for itself and it’s own needed partitions. So you do have to have some extra space available for it to steal from the Windows partition that is not being used. It will see what empty space is on your windows data partition and borrow from that. So as long as the data partition is not chocked full it will have no problem doing all that.
So basically when you get done it will actually be two drives. One with Windows and one with Linux. And it will give you a menu at power up to choose which one you want to boot into. If you let it go on it’s own without choosing then it will go to Linux and auto boot as the default OS. Now if you would rather have it boot into Windows as the default OS, there is a simple one line configuration edit in Linux to make it do that instead of Linux as the default auto boot OS.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/
You should expect to put up with some nags to buy the full version, but it is certainly not necessary if all you want to do is resize partitions. It is much easier than doing it the manual way in most cases. Some Linux distributions such as Ubuntu will resize your Windows partitions for you when you install them.
I should warn you however that adding Linux distributions even Ubuntu, but especially Debian will often screw up your ability to boot into Windows until you use a free boot repair tool.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
The previous tool usually gets things working again with just the automatic settings, although I make it a habit to always image the entire drive using the free edition of Macrium Reflect whenever I am adding additional operating systems.
The free edition is no longer on Macrium’s website, you have to get it from Major Geeks. Just check that you are using it for personal use only and do not bother to register it.
https://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/get/macrium_reflect_free_edition,3.html
It is the same edition that is included with Hiren’s Boot CD. So you can use it that way as well if you don't feel like installing it in your Windows system.
I have had up to half a dozen operating systems on the same disk, which takes a bit of wizardry. It is definitely safest to use a separate hard drive for each OS. If Linux's Grub and Window's Boot Manager will not play nice together you can instead choose the boot partition using your computer's UEFI/BIOS boot manager when you first start the computer up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.