Q: something else - in my home pc i have the following setup : Windows 10 with a 128GB SSD (c:) + 1TB HDD (d:), where I moved the c:\Users folder to d:\, leaving it as shortcut on c: - this has been working okay for 2-3 years. Since a couple of years ago, though, I perceive that during startup I can't use the internet via browser immediately. Spotify which also opens on startup, lags - 3-5 minutes have to pass before things are back to normal. Now I opened the task manager in another try to investigate the matter, and saw that HDD had 100% access time, - probably the users folder was accessed for user-specific settings and what not.
it feels sane to try and prep up my setup a bit. it's an old Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz and Windows 11 are not supported. i sometimes get nag screens about upgrade to 11 that i can do nothing about. the sane thing to do is to buy a second (bigger, they are cheaper now) SSD and install windows 10 on it, without moving the user folder this time, hooking the old SSD and HDD to it.
i would be willing to try out Linux once again, but I got Ableton Live! 10 that works only on Windows and Mac. I also play a number of games that won't run on Linux unless I do something like Wine (that used to be the case in the old days) - but Live not working on Linux is a no go for me.
what do you say to that?
A: Yes, your diagnosis is basically correct. Moving C:\Users to an HDD means login, desktop, browser, network profiles, startup apps, cache, registry-backed user stuff all wait on a spinning disk. At boot, Windows hits the user profile constantly. If the HDD is slow or slightly degraded, you get exactly what you describe: browser has no internet “yet”, Spotify stutters, system feels frozen for a few minutes, Task Manager shows 100% HDD active time, not high throughput
This gets worse over time because: user profiles grow, Windows adds more background tasks, HDDs get slower with age and fragmentation. So yes, the setup that was “fine” years ago is now the bottleneck.
... Buying a bigger SSD and reinstalling Windows 10 with Users staying on SSD is the right move. That’s not just sane, it’s the cleanest fix.
... [then it goes on to suggest 1-2TB SSD, and dumping the whole working OS on it, and using HDD only as cold storage - it backs up the information that working Live! or games through Wine/Proton on Linux would be unreliable, although not impossible]
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