Dell Inspiron Laptop Bogging Down

[Comptech]

No problems with 11,just put the takbar back were it should be with simple right click. Same as 10, when installing say no to keystrokes and everything else on the next to pages. All my 10 stuff works works fine if not better in 11. Not upgrading the all though, at least not at this point. Stuff works fine, why reinvent the wheel?

 

[arlo]

11. The sucky "I lost my right click context menu" (7zip, etc.). Can be fixed with registry edits and stuff.
11 is certainly not the catastrophic disaster 10 was when the free upgrade was introduced.
But then again. Just like cloning a tired operating system to a new SSD. If your pc used to run fast and now is balky. An SSD clone makes an old, tired OS look much faster. But it could really zing. As much of a pita as it is. A fresh install without all of the bloatware crap that OEM vendors install is always the best way. Harvest all of your unknown and forgotten credentials because the day will come to get a new pc or do a wipe and install.

 

[harshness]

11 is certainly not the catastrophic disaster 10 was when the free upgrade was introduced.

This is surely because Windows 11 is such a short hop from Windows 10. The heavy lifting was digging out of the pit of dispair that is Windows 8. Remember that Windows 10 was to be "the last version of Windows" and there are already rumors of a Windows 12.

Microsoft is still working on adding features that were promised in Windows 7 but for now they've settled for making most of the included applications look similar and have managed to update some of the carryovers from 20 years or more ago. The ugly part is that some of the old tools were much easier to use.

 

[EarDemon]

Glad the SSD migration went smoothly!

My thoughts are Windows 11 has an awful stock UI in terms of Start Menu, Task Bar, Right Click Context Menu among a few other things. Under the hood it is an improvement, speed and memory management are two improvements I've noticed. The big thing for me personally is Windows 11 supports ReFS v3, which supports booting off of an ReFS drive. My laptops boot drive is NTFS, but with the release of Windows 11 booting off an ReFS formatted drive is now possible. I didn't make the switch with 21H2, but when 11 22H2 goes final, I will be moving over from NTFS to ReFS for the boot drive, my other two SSDs are already ReFS.

For the UI, I do enjoy the further adaption of the dark theme. For my eyes, the darker the better. I use OpenShell to give me the Start Menu I want and ExplorerPatcher to customize the rest of the UI to make it look like previous versions of Windows.

When Apple, after two decades went from version 10 to 11 for their OS, it's was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Microsoft would do the same. The whole Windows 10 being the last version of Windows line was one statement made at a conference in 2015 by someone who had no authority to say that and was never backed up by anyone else. Tech journalists and bloggers took that line and ran with it.

Just got my new laptop for work, replacement SSD will be here next week. Once I get that going, four out of the five computers I use daily will be on 11, just leaving my desktop on 10, which hopefully will be replaced at the end of the year or beginning of '23.

 

[harshness]

I will be moving over from NTFS to ReFS for the boot drive, my other two SSDs are already ReFS.

While ReFS is probably a resurrection of WinFS (circa 2003) that was supposed to debut with Windows Vista, there aren't many tools around to fix problems with it (including undeletion). Given what you "win" with it, it doesn't make much sense on something as small as an SSD.

I understand that if you use Windows you don't have many choices of file systems but that's probably always going to be the case as long as Windows is in control of storage. This is why there is so much interest in using *nix-based iSCSI and file shares on top of ZFS and BTRFS.

 

[EarDemon]

Resilient File System (ReFS) is designed for maximum reliability to pick up where NTFS left off. I don't claim to be a file system expert, but the advantages of ReFS over NTFS seem pretty compelling to me.

Resilient File System (ReFS) overview

Learn more about: Resilient File System (ReFS) overview

docs.microsoft.com

ReFS vs NTFS: Difference between ReFS and NTFS File Systems | N-able

Compare the differences between ReFS and NTFS file systems and see how these systems help facilitate data availability and curb data corruption.

www.n-able.com

You will not see this on home computers anytime soon, but for servers and professional workstations, where reliability is needed most, it's here. And with Windows 11 (and Server 2022) supporting v3 and being able to boot off of an ReFS partition, it makes it easier to migrate to an entire ReFS based setup. WIN 10/11 Pro can read ReFS formatted drives but only Pro for Workstations and Enterprise can format (and now boot off of) ReFS drives.

While small is a relative term and while there are now 22 TB mechanical drives, I do not consider my 2 TB boot SSD small, nor do I consider my two other 1 TB SSDs small. ReFS targets virtualized environments and while any difference I notice at home with my type 2 hypervisor environment will probably be minimal, if any at all, I am really looking forward to using ReFS in my ESXi environment at work down the road.

 

[harshness]

Resilient File System (ReFS) is designed for maximum reliability to pick up where NTFS left off.

That's not a stellar starting point. There are still features from NTFS that aren't in ReFS (though they finally managed to get SQL Server running a few years ago -- it required Alternate Data Streams that hadn't been implemented in ReFS previously). I use ADS for other purposes (picture metadata) so I was surprised to find that it wasn't there.

That said, I can't say I've had any trouble with my Windows 10 machine running NTFS and I've got about 13TB of storage across four drives. One of the old drives was formatted under Windows XP and lived through several years of Windows 7. Some of my drives are older so I can ill afford any slowdowns in performance.

Anything less than 6TB is arguably "small" these days. My local Costco was recently selling Seagate 8TB USB hard drives for under $90 (less than the price of a 1TB SATA SSD)! They make for great home server drives when removed from their cases.

If you're looking for secure storage, there are much more time-proven solutions than Windows. My file server is running TrueNAS Scale (based on Debian Linux with ZFS as the filesystem). ZFS was released just about the time that WinFS was shelved (2006). TrueNAS also supports iSCSI (a software RAID technology that simulates SCSI drives) which is somewhat popular in the Windows server community.

 

[EarDemon]

If you have no use or interest in ReFS, or it doesn't work for you that's fine. But I do.

Not including backups, my entire work environment isn't even 13 TB. Just over 6.5 TB in the ESXi environment, and 5 TB on a physical file server, where there is probably a terabyte or two of duplicate data, so 2 TB is huge to me.

Never been to this Costco place, I've heard of them, but I have no idea what they are all about. If you need a large amount of storage, that's great I guess. I haven't used a computer with a mechanical hard drive as a daily driver in about 10 years. Only hard drives in the house are the 4 in my NAS and the ones in my DVRs. All computers have nothing but SSDs, all external hard drives have been replaced with external SSDs. I don't need a digital vault of terabytes worth of data, I don't even have 1 TB of my own data. The bulk of my data is work related offsite back up copies of various SQL databases and the final EDB before moving to Exchange 365.

 

[harshness]

If you have no use or interest in ReFS, or it doesn't work for you that's fine. But I do.

I'm not sure you've highlighted why ReFS is either required or the best option for you.

 

[EarDemon]

There is nothing specific other than the reliability aspect. It's handling of VMs may be an advantage, I don't know. Besides what difference does it make? I want what I want, I don't need a specific reason. I don't have a deep knowledge of various file systems, but looking at the differences, ReFS seems to like a viable option. I have an OS that supports booting off of it, so why not give it a try, what harm can it do?

I'm not suggesting anyone else migrate to ReFS, that's not even an option of most people since only two higher sku's of Windows support formatting and booting off of it.

 

[harshness]

what harm can it do?

It may be much more difficult to recover files that have been trashed and you'll likely find that many of the conventional file backup tools don't know how to deal with the "alternative" system. AFAIK, Dropbox still isn't compatible with ReFS. Carbonite is only supported on servers.

Some of the more NTFS-like features (like booting and page file support) have appeared only very recently (or not yet) so while they're present in name, they may not be all that proven. File encryption and compression still aren't available.

Other features like data de-duplication are only supported in server versions of Windows.

There's a question in my mind that ReFS is suitable for systems that aren't live most of the time. Obviously, the "scrubber" (the ReFS equivalent of CHKDSK) can't run when the computer isn't fully awake.

 

[EarDemon]

While that's good to know, none of that applies to my situation.

I actually forgot about issues with backing and and recovering since backing data up has become irrelevant to me. I used to use Veritas System Recovery and had full backups scheduled for every Sunday and library folders backed up every Wednesday in addition to that with 4 week retention to my NAS. Since Veritas can't back up ReFS formatted drives (or at least version 21 didn't support it), I never bothered to put it on my laptop or any other computer for that matter after my last round of clean installs. I don't have much data, therefore there is nothing to backup/recover.

I don't use Dropbox or any other 'cloud' solution, never have never will. And there is nothing I have that if lost would be devastating. Mildly inconvenient yes, devastating, no. My digital music collection is the only thing that comes to mine since I buy music on an a la cart song by song basis (don't believe in streaming) and the vast majority of the music I bought is from Google Play Music which Google abandoned last year like they do so many things and purchased music can't be redownloaded anymore. And I have 6 copies of my entire music library, NAS, laptop, desktop, phone, flash drive in car, external SSD at work.

So yes, while that is a valid concern for a lot of people, that really doesn't impact me.

As for file encryption, with what little data I have stored, if you want it, you can have it. I have nothing at all on any drive that contains any personal, confidential or proprietary information.

 

[harshness]

I have nothing at all on any drive that contains any personal, confidential or proprietary information.

Surely your employer's data is confidential and/or proprietary.

If your data is mostly static, there's no point in having a transactionally intensive filesystem.

 

[EarDemon]

Everything I have that is work related in on my NAS in NTFS.

My data is a mix. I play around with the same VMs and the same photos and videos for weeks to months at a time and then delete and move on to different configurations or different media files when I get bored or get stuck.

We all have freedom, you are free to use what you like, and I am free to use ReFS for any or no particular reason at all.

 

[harshness]

Everything I have that is work related in on my NAS in NTFS.

Have you ever wondered why none of the mainstream NAS devices don't support ReFS?

You can put yourself through any trials you want. I was just interested in whether or not there was a good reason to hang yourself out on the bleeding edge.

 

[EarDemon]

Because ReFS is not widespread and it may not be the best solution for the application. I am in no way saying ReFS is the best thing ever, it's 100% perfected and everyone should be using it yesterday. I have been using it as an experiment on my non-boot drives since almost day one and have had no issues to speak of. The only reason I have is to experiment, and that's good enough for me. And as I said, I find the advantages for VMs interesting, even if I don't fully understand them, but they may not even be applicable in a type 2 hypervisor setup. I'm not putting myself through any trials, I actually don't even think about it unless I open up My Computer and see the ReFS tag next to the drive letter. If both drives blow up tomorrow nothing is lost and life goes on. I don't really consider something that came out a decade ago to be bleeding edge, even if the adaption rate is pretty low. The other thing is, I indirectly paid more for this laptop because of it being licensed for Pro for Workstations with no option to downgrade to Pro, I might as well play with what I paid extra for.

It's not a big deal, the sun will still rise tomorrow regardless if my drives are formatted in FeFS, NTFS or a mix of the two.