Still Setting Up New Computer

I am still busy setting up my new, more powerful, mini computer...  personalizing the operating system, installing programs, upgrading hardware and setting up hard drives and automatic backups.  It is going well but this is a time consuming process.  I always forget how long all of this takes until I get a new computer.  Every time I think I might be finished, I remember something else that isn't installed and set up on this new computer.

In the past, I've always had all my old photos from previous years stored on about ten 1tb external hard drives with no backups.  I've always known that I was taking a big chance by having no backups for these drives but that was something that was always easy to put off.  On the positive side, the only times I ever powered up any of these external hard drives was when I was searching for an old photo or two so these little external SSD drives have very, very few hours on them.  Still, I was taking a chance by not backing them up.

Aside from not having backups to these little SSDs, it was also a pain in the butt having to search through all these external SSDs to find what I was looking for and this was always very time consuming.  I'd plug in the external SSD I thought might be storing the photos I wanted but always had guessed wrongly.  Then I'd need to plug in and search another...  then another...  this was always painful and very time consuming.

My new mini computer has a separate hard drive enclosure so I was able to add a huge 20tb hard drive to store all my old archived photos.  Now I have instant access to ALL of my photos and I still have backups to each year on separate external SSDs.  I'll continue this process of archiving my photos and documents while also backing up on 1tb SSDs.  I should mention that, in recent years, I've been buying m2 SSDs and putting then in single external enclosures.  I've found it's far less expensive this way and it is always a faster drive than the usual external SSDs.

You can see in the photo below that this "Archived Files" hard drive is a huge 20tb's in size and my photos and files from 2007 to present (well...  it's labeled 2007 but the photos actually go back to the 1990s when I started shooting digital cameras) are only eating up a little over 4tb's.  This is good news and now my searches for old photos will be on one drive only which will be far faster!

That Backup (U:) drive is an automatic backup of my Data (D:) drive.  If I make any changes at all to my Data drive (where I store only data files I create including photos and videos), then the Backup (U:) drive automatically updates.  All my programs are on the Windows (C:) drive.

The other day, I tried opening a relatively old image that I had placed some text on...  my new computer couldn't find the font.  I instantly realized that I had not updated my font files so that was added to my list of things I needed to do.  

Updating fonts is a time consuming thing because each font must be "installed".  You can't simply copy the font folder over to Windows.  That was yesterday's project.  As you can see in the folder below, I now have 369 fonts installed and I have many, many more on a CD that I can install as needed.

Two of my other computers (a desktop and a laptop) have had Windows 11 on them for four or five years so Windows 11 isn't new to me.  The computer I'm replacing, however, is a Windows 10 desktop and that was my most powerful computer so I used that one for all my heavy computing tasks.  There have been some noticeable changes to the operating system from 10 to 11...  mostly good, in my opinion...  and only one drawback comes to mind.

This drawback was the "Start" menu.  The Start menu button was moved from the bottom left corner to the middle of the bottom taskbar.  This took a short amount of time to get accustomed to which, for me, happened about five years ago when I first started using Windows 11.  Honestly, it makes more sense to have the menu button nearer the center of the screen so that you aren't always needing to push the mouse farther to the bottom left corner.  So, I prefer the Start menu button in the middle.

What I do not like in the least is the way Windows 11 shows your programs on that Start menu!  It is quite lame...  almost useless.  

First, I  should point out that I absolutely despise having my desktop cluttered with all my program icons.  I really hate that so I always keep my desktop clean with only a background photo.  Having the desktop cluttered with tons of icons is worse than having a messy desk but very similar to not being able to find anything on that messy desk.  So, icons are never cluttering my desktop.

Needless to say, I want to be able to neatly organize my program icons on the Start menu like in Windows 8 and 10.  I've found an easy way to get Windows 11 to allow me to do this as seen in the photo below.  I'm not completely finished setting this up the way I want it but it only needs a few more little tweaks after I use it for a short while longer.

In the coming days, I'll be able to swap out my old computer at my desk with this new, more powerful mini computer.  Hmmm...  that reminds me that I need to reconfigure my desk to be able to house this new computer since this new computer is so different than my old tower computer.  My desk will need to be rearranged.  This means I'll have some woodworking to do....  and my thumb is still healing so I'm not going to be pulling out any power tools...  

I'll just add this little project to my growing list of things to do for when my thumb is well enough to start using power tools again.