Time to start fresh, but with windows 10?

iamdarkyoshi · November 15, 2015

We upgraded my mediaserver to windows 10 to try to make it a little less sluggish. Well, after a day of windows 10, the HDDs got encrypted by bitlocker and nobody here did that, so say goodbye to over 1TB of data. Long story.

Anyway, we want to just backup the HDD that is not locked in case we need program data and then do a fresh installation of windows 10 using the free upgrade. The HDDs are like this:

OS drive (WD 500GB Blue)

>OS Partition

>Data storage partition (LOCKED)

>other derpy partitions that the OS uses

Dad's old work laptop drive (something that will probably be removed)

>OS partition (LOCKED)

>General storage partition (LOCKED)

>other derpy partitions that the OS uses

>HP_TOOLS partition (derpy HP stuff)

Media Storage Drive (1TB HITACHI drive from an old external enclosure)

>Media Partition (LOCKED)

And there is a spare HDD from the OLD mediaserver, a 320GB WD Blue (not plugged in because it was not being used).

This PC used to be my dad's work PC, and after he retired from that job, he brought his PC home and the HDD from his laptop, and we threw the storage drive from our old mediaserver into it.

All HDDs show a status of "Healthy" with no bad sectors or anything.

But what HDD config should give us the BEST bootup times and general performance? We upgraded hoping it would be snappier, but it was still slow as balls with all of the old crap still on it.

Also, how should we get the PC to windows 10 without any trace of the old OS data? Reinstall windows 7 with the key on the side of the machine, then force a free win10 upgrade?

thorpj · November 16, 2015

-snip-

Ah, bad luck with that bitlocker problem. Do you know how it happened?

If that pc is being used as a media server I think it'd be a good idea to use freenas. That should prevent drives from being encrypted by (i assume) most kinds of malware. Performance will be far better than running windows (less overhead). You can use plex within a "jail" (it's a freenas term...) as your media server, and there's a fantastic webgui that you can use to configure things. It works across windows, linux and osx.

I would suggest that you backup what data you can and wipe every drive. You can do this one at a time, and juggle the storage around until every drive is clean, but remember to be careful about how you restore the data, else the drives will be in the same state as before). Keep in mind that freenas will probably want to wipe them anyway.

This way you've now got a windows 10 license for something else!

Whether you go with freenas or not, with this kind of motley setup, i don't think you're going to manage some kind of redundant setup. I've got three hard drives (two of them are 5+ years old) striped together, which means (i think) that if one goes, they all go.

iamdarkyoshi · November 16, 2015

Ah, bad luck with that bitlocker problem. Do you know how it happened?

If that pc is being used as a media server I think it'd be a good idea to use freenas. That should prevent drives from being encrypted by (i assume) most kinds of malware. Performance will be far better than running windows (less overhead). You can use plex within a "jail" (it's a freenas term...) as your media server, and there's a fantastic webgui that you can use to configure things. It works across windows, linux and osx.

I would suggest that you backup what data you can and wipe every drive. You can do this one at a time, and juggle the storage around until every drive is clean, but remember to be careful about how you restore the data, else the drives will be in the same state as before). Keep in mind that freenas will probably want to wipe them anyway.

This way you've now got a windows 10 license for something else!

Whether you go with freenas or not, with this kind of motley setup, i don't think you're going to manage some kind of redundant setup. I've got three hard drives (two of them are 5+ years old) striped together, which means (i think) that if one goes, they all go.

Freenas probably wont be an option, as my dad also does his work on this PC still for his school. And we have quite a few other tasks for this thing, such as our FTP server, printserver, playon/plex, RDP... But the data loss isnt HUGE, it was all movies and TV shows. Family photos and stuff were backed up to the cloud, the only thing major that has been lost is the work my dad had on his laptop HDD. I have thought about freenas though, but it seems easier to just use a PC that is usually on anyway.

thorpj · November 16, 2015

Freenas probably wont be an option, as my dad also does his work on this PC still for his school. And we have quite a few other tasks for this thing, such as our FTP server, printserver, playon/plex, RDP... But the data loss isnt HUGE, it was all movies and TV shows. Family photos and stuff were backed up to the cloud, the only thing major that has been lost is the work my dad had on his laptop HDD. I have thought about freenas though, but it seems easier to just use a PC that is usually on anyway.

Ah if it's being used for other purposes then perhaps not. Unless you ran a couple virtual machines, which is also possible with the freenas "jails".

Although, with all that going on, on one pc, i think we know why it's sluggish... What's the specs on this pc?

Windows may be easier (especially given that it's already on there), but given all of the problems you've got with the current setup, a different approach may be required.