Yay, "Windows 10 Feature Update to 18xx", on a (7200RPM) HDD? Pain.

[VirtualLarry]

Well, "Disk" is pinned at 100% busy time. Been going by about a percentage point a minute, in terms of being "installed".

Yay me. Wonder what possessed me to think of downgrading this rig from SSD to a HDD, just to save a few bucks. I think that must have been during the period of time when SSD were getting more expensive, and not less, like they are now.

Surely, I could afford $23 to slap in a cheap 120GB SSD for the customer. 😛

 

[sdifox]

What rate are you pegging your time at? Ten cent an hour?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I don't actually have a customer for this box yet, although I have a few in mind. I should have said, "potential" customer, sorry.

I had it listed on the box, as 16GB of RAM, G3258 @ 4.20Ghz, SSD, and a GTX950 2GB, and what was actually in the box, was 1x8GB DDR3, G3258 @ 4.0Ghz, and a 160GB HDD. Guess I should update what's written on the box. 😛

(I downgraded it to a glorified browser box, because dual-core overclocked G3258 gaming boxes are basically no longer a "thing". If they ever were, three years ago.)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I'm finally in Windows 10, version 1803. I'm not sure how many hours it took, but it felt like maybe 1.5-2. In comparison, on an SSD system, it rarely takes more than 30-40 minutes.

 

[Shmee]

Larry, why not just download the 1803 ISO and make a bootable USB installer with it? This will save time over updating an older version of Windows 10 to 1803, especially if you are doing a lot of installs.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Donate it to Goodwill.

 

[LTC8K6]

You can't sing the praises of low end systems and then complain when they are slow... 😀

 

[dave_the_nerd]

You can't sing the praises of low end systems and then complain when they are slow... 😀

But if he didn't do low-end systems, he couldn't buy 12 of them.

 

[Mr Evil]

...on an SSD system, it rarely takes more than 30-40 minutes.

You say that like that's an acceptable time. I have a VM that I only use very rarely for compiling C++ projects. I started it up a few days ago because I needed to do something quick. First thing I had to do was install a small driver and restart. Big mistake, because Windows decided that was an appropriate time to install some updates; half an hour later and it was too late. That wasn't even one of the big updates, just a few months-worth of small ones, and on a machine with a fast NVME drive too.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

You say that like that's an acceptable time. I have a VM that I only use very rarely for compiling C++ projects. I started it up a few days ago because I needed to do something quick. First thing I had to do was install a small driver and restart. Big mistake, because Windows decided that was an appropriate time to install some updates; half an hour later and it was too late. That wasn't even one of the big updates, just a few months-worth of small ones, and on a machine with a fast NVME drive too.

Windows is intended to be on 24/7. My computer at home installs updates and restarts itself at like 3AM, and I've never had to think about or wait for an update to install.

 

[Mr Evil]

Windows is intended to be on 24/7. My computer at home installs updates and restarts itself at like 3AM, and I've never had to think about or wait for an update to install.

I could leave all my VMs running constantly if I had enough RAM, but even that doesn't work well. My PC at work restarts at 3AM, but that just means that I am greeted in the morning by it asking for the BitLocker password before it can finish booting. Since Windows update needs to install files both before shutting down and before booting, I then have to waste 10 minutes staring at it doing... whatever it is that it does that takes so long. That machine has a fast NVME drive too.

On my personal machine I disabled updates completely, so I can then install them manually when I want to rather than when Microsoft wants to.