Issues shrinking a volume on Windows 10?

I honestly don't get why people still hoard movies and series. Like, are you actually going to watch all that? You've got Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime... there's always something to watch without needing terabytes of files sitting around.
And don't even get me started on music—you've got Deezer or whatever Spotify is pushing these days.

The only reason I have extra drives is for my game library from Steam, Epic, or Origin...

All my photos are tucked away in the cloud.

The funniest part is seeing people with entire archives of installation files on a disc—mostly ancient, outdated versions of random media players or, of course, Nero.

driftingcanyon2 said:Honestly, if you're still messing around with NTFS—that outdated journaling file system with its ridiculous limitations—you probably haven't realized just how much better life gets with Btrfs. Between things like online resizing, self-healing, snapshots, subvolumes, and built-in compression, it's a total game changer. It wasn't until I fully made the switch to Btrfs that I truly realized how much of a mess Windows actually is as an OS; honestly, the sooner it goes extinct, the better.

Linux is great, sure, but all the actual applications live on Windows. An OS without apps is completely pointless.

Megan Thomas5 said:I honestly don't get why people still hoard movies and series. Like, are you actually going to watch all that? You've got Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime... there's always something to watch without needing terabytes of files sitting around.
And don't even get me started on music—you've got Deezer or whatever Spotify is pushing these days.

The only reason I have extra drives is for my game library from Steam, Epic, or Origin...

All my photos are tucked away in the cloud.

The funniest part is seeing people with entire archives of installation files on a disc—mostly ancient, outdated versions of random media players or, of course, Nero.

I don't have any. And honestly, I have zero intention of paying for them. I'm not exactly the type of person who collects movies or series; I just pick up the occasional title that really hits home or something I love enough to watch over and over again.

Megan Thomas5 said:I honestly don't get why people still hoard movies and series. Like, are you actually going to watch all that? You've got Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime... there's always something to watch without needing terabytes of files sitting around.
And don't even get me started on music—you've got Deezer or whatever Spotify is pushing these days.

The only reason I have extra drives is for my game library from Steam, Epic, or Origin...

All my photos are tucked away in the cloud.

The funniest part is seeing people with entire archives of installation files on a disc—mostly ancient, outdated versions of random media players or, of course, Nero.

I have an Apple Music subscription. I pay for it monthly.

Megan Thomas5 said:I honestly don't get why people still hoard movies and series. Like, are you actually going to watch all that? You've got Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime... there's always something to watch without needing terabytes of files sitting around.
And don't even get me started on music—you've got Deezer or whatever Spotify is pushing these days.

The only reason I have extra drives is for my game library from Steam, Epic, or Origin...

All my photos are tucked away in the cloud.

The funniest part is seeing people with entire archives of installation files on a disc—mostly ancient, outdated versions of random media players or, of course, Nero.

Adobe switched over to that subscription model for Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and the rest of the Creative Cloud suite, moving everything to monthly or annual fees. Honestly, if you look at Photoshop from ten years ago, it’s still perfectly functional for most tasks. So, why shouldn't I just stick with my old versions? I actually still hold onto mine—I even have a beautifully organized setup from 2020 that I've kept tucked away. I’ve got them all safely backed up on an external drive.

fadedorca66 said:I don't really get these digital hoarders. They feel the need to cram everything onto physical drives like we're still stuck in the 56k dial-up era, even though everything is just available on demand via streaming services now.

So I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day. I asked if he finally jumped into that game he’d been obsessing over for years—you know, the one that dropped a few months back. He tells me he hasn't started because his drive is totally maxed out. When I asked why on earth his storage is full, he goes, "Oh, I keep all my Star Wars movies in 4K and stuff." I mean, does he really need to watch them every single day? I guess not. 🤔

🤣

But that’s just not true. It’s just that you people—the service-dependent generations—assume that what you know is all there is. No, my drives aren't cluttered. That's why I have a 12 TB IronWolf, plus dedicated working archives for Mac, PC, and specifically for photography, each sitting at 5 TB.
That's why when students come up to me and ask, "Hey, do you happen to have the lectures for course XY, or maybe the lab assignments and projects?" I can tell them—yes, I have them. And you won't find those on a streaming site.

granitecrane2 said:Linux is great, sure, but all the actual applications live on Windows. An OS without apps is completely pointless.

It really just comes down to what you need and how much Unix knowledge you're willing to brush up on, because if you aren't hunting for specific "professional" software, you probably already have everything you need on Linux. Plus, quite a few Win32/64 apps can be run via Wine directly on Linux or tucked away in a KVM virtual machine; honestly, an advanced user can usually ditch Windows on bare metal about 99% of the time.

driftingcanyon2 said:It really just comes down to what you need and how much Unix knowledge you're willing to brush up on, because if you aren't hunting for specific "professional" software, you probably already have everything you need on Linux. Plus, quite a few Win32/64 apps can be run via Wine directly on Linux or tucked away in a KVM virtual machine; honestly, an advanced user can usually ditch Windows on bare metal about 99% of the time.

But I do. I use BOTH OSes; I do my programming in Linux, but I jump over to Windows for my applications because, to put it mildly, 3D work and video editing on Linux are amateur hour. Honestly, they're absolute garbage. I'd rather not spend my entire workday trying to cram Wine onto Linux just to simulate a Windows environment or force an app to run. It's much easier for me to just stick with a dual boot setup.

As for that question about being stuck in the past with old software: I own a SCANNER (yeah, yeah, I know—a device most people in the younger generation haven't even seen before) that absolutely requires TWAIN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWAIN). Practically speaking, you can't just plug this scanner into a modern version of Windows and use the latest Photoshop without some serious technical gymnastics. However, you can use it on a Mac, or if you happen to have an older version of Photoshop. Believe it or not, I still have my old Photoshop CS2 on a disc. With that, the scanner works like a charm. On CS6, it's a no-go.

Now, I can already hear people saying, "Man, just go buy a new scanner." Well, I can't. My scanner has two lamps. The top one is specifically for scanning film and transparent materials. Can you find something like that on the market today? Sure. But look at the prices.
No way.
Let me show you. Something you used to be able to pick up at Best Buy for a hundred bucks would cost you...

Why on earth would I toss out a perfectly functional scanner just to buy a new one for $833 or this monster for 7?

The easiest fix for that scanner is just using a virtual machine; I actually still run an old laser printer from back in 2000 by keeping it inside a VM. Honestly, though, some people find that kind of workaround unacceptable, mostly because they either don't know how to set it up or they just prefer things to be easy.

driftingcanyon2 said:The easiest fix for that scanner is just using a virtual machine; I actually still run an old laser printer from back in 2000 by keeping it inside a VM. Honestly, though, some people find that kind of workaround unacceptable, mostly because they either don't know how to set it up or they just prefer things to be easy.

I use virtual machines too. However, they are significantly slower than running a native OS. It isn't a matter of being tech-illiterate; it's just common sense. For instance, if you don't have an old version of Photoshop, what exactly are you going to put in that virtual machine? At the end of the day, you still need to have those legacy Windows versions stored somewhere, or you'll be digging through sketchy websites filled with pop-up ads whenever you actually need them. It's much better to just keep everything organized neatly on a hard drive. It doesn't take up much space, and it's easy to locate.

granitecrane2 said:I use virtual machines too. However, they are significantly slower than running a native OS. It isn't a matter of being tech-illiterate; it's just common sense. For instance, if you don't have an old version of Photoshop, what exactly are you going to put in that virtual machine? At the end of the day, you still need to have those legacy Windows versions stored somewhere, or you'll be digging through sketchy websites filled with pop-up ads whenever you actually need them. It's much better to just keep everything organized neatly on a hard drive. It doesn't take up much space, and it's easy to locate.

Virtual machines have actually come a long way lately; using paravirtualization within KVM, VirtualBox, or VMware can get you speeds that reach about 90% of bare metal performance. On my setup, Windows XP and Linux both boot in about ten seconds if the file container is sitting on a fast SSD, provided you know how to tune the VM settings correctly—in my experience, vmdk is the fastest, while qcow2 is great as a sparse file because of how it handles preallocation. You also just need to install the optimized drivers within the guest OS, though most Linux distributions include them by default, making the guest OS "aware" it's running in a VM. As for my older OS files and main software, I keep them on CDs or DVDs and manually create ISO images as needed, so I never have to deal with downloading anything from questionable sites, and finding any specific Linux distro is easy enough via official sites or mirrors.

driftingcanyon2 said:Virtual machines have actually come a long way lately; using paravirtualization within KVM, VirtualBox, or VMware can get you speeds that reach about 90% of bare metal performance. On my setup, Windows XP and Linux both boot in about ten seconds if the file container is sitting on a fast SSD, provided you know how to tune the VM settings correctly—in my experience, vmdk is the fastest, while qcow2 is great as a sparse file because of how it handles preallocation. You also just need to install the optimized drivers within the guest OS, though most Linux distributions include them by default, making the guest OS "aware" it's running in a VM. As for my older OS files and main software, I keep them on CDs or DVDs and manually create ISO images as needed, so I never have to deal with downloading anything from questionable sites, and finding any specific Linux distro is easy enough via official sites or mirrors.

They have definitely improved, but let's be real—they're still slow. I’ll say it again: I use VMs, and I run all three major OS options, but there is absolutely no way I'm doing video editing on Linux. If I'm editing, I want to be on Mac or Windows.

granitecrane2 said:They have definitely improved, but let's be real—they're still slow. I’ll say it again: I use VMs, and I run all three major OS options, but there is absolutely no way I'm doing video editing on Linux. If I'm editing, I want to be on Mac or Windows.

Sluggish in what way? It really comes down to the specifics—how much RAM are you allocating to the guest versus the host, and how many CPU cores are assigned to the vCPUs? Did you enable VT-x extensions, ensure the file container is sitting on an SSD, and turn on host caching? Also, check if paravirtualization is active for the guest and whether you're running a Type 1 or Type 2 hypervisor. Once you dial in those settings, the speed issues usually just disappear.

Greetings. I am currently running Windows 10 version 21H2, and I’ve encountered a rather irritating quirk. Whenever my monitor enters sleep or standby mode, everything seems to grind to a halt—even while I'm listening to music via Spotify. It only resumes once I move the mouse to wake the system up...
Does anyone have any insight on how to resolve this issue?

U Windows Settings ('Windows' key + 'i' on your keyboard)
click 'System'
go to 'Power & Sleep'...

...under 'Sleep', set your inactivity timer (minutes; hours; never) for sleep mode.
Pick your time. If you're just listening to music, just turn off the monitor (assuming this isn't a laptop).

Regarding music playback, rendering, file conversion, and the like... you can usually prevent sleep mode within the settings of that specific active program—well, at least in most of them.

Well, thank you quite a bit for the response. I believe I’ve managed to successfully delay the sleep mode settings following your advice...👍

Great 👍