Restructuring my PC Build

So the unthinkable happened last weekend; after running Zorin OS in my secondary Windows 10 Enterprise partition that I had set up for an environment to experiment with and run virtual machines for my blog without further cluttering up my primary M.2 SSD, I shut down my system. When I booted my PC back up the following day, I was surprised to see to see a screen prompting me to check my disk for errors! Errors? I know I hibernated my primary partition to reboot, but I made sure it went down properly and my SSD is only about a year old and protected by a UPS (and thus has never encountered a power failure), this didn't make sense. After this scan completed, my computer proceeded to boot loop back into the same screen. So I shut it down and went into the UEFI settings to see what might be going on. To my surprise, my secondary Windows 10 partition on my 5,400 RPM HDD was my first boot drive and it bumped my entire boot order out of line automatically! So, I verified that my main Windows 10 installation was indeed still intact and upon booting that partition, I was greeted with a prompt asking me to scan drive D: for errors. I complied and let it go about its business. I was prompted that drive repairs were unsuccessful, so I rebooted once again and disabled the ScanDisk utility on boot in my secondary partition. Now, instead of boot looping, my secondary installation threw me a screen saying that it could not boot (I forget the exact wording of the original message and unfortunately didn’t think to screenshot/photograph it). I tried manually rebuilding the boot loader thinking that might have been corrupted in an update. To my dismay, I found out that not only was the boot loader broken, but the entire directory was entirely missing from my disk and could not be rebuilt!

Now, this Hard Disk is one of my older drives, I originally received it as a gift to upgrade my HP Tower back around December 2016 and I didn’t ever have that PC on a UPS, so it did admittedly encounter several power failures and that computer was one that I used to run almost constantly. I’ve even had the power fail in the middle of critical Windows Updates before (no thunderstorm, just a quick power failure), which completely bricked those installations in the past. So from recalling the drive's history, I did suspect drive failure (which is why I replaced it with a 2TB m.2 SSD for my primary drive), but I wanted to rule Windows Update out of the equation, since a failed update could have produced similar results. So I decided to reinstall Windows 10 once again, back up whatever files I could recover, and do a full nuke and pave. This would become my new environment for running virtual machines for the blog and experimenting with different functions. Immediately after installing the OS and updating to the latest drivers, I restarted my PC. This is when Windows decided to go into an infinite loading screen (I gave it about an hour and left my computer to go have lunch before I decided that the drive was officially done). Unfortunately, this drive held two out of my four multi-boot partitions as well as my Hackintosh setup under Ubuntu! So losing this drive meant that I would have to either replace the drive and recover what I could or I could restructure my system. I decided to go for option 2, since buying a new drive at the moment isn’t exactly within my budget (still studying for certifications and looking for work at the time of writing) and I definitely don’t want to cheap out on another basic 2TB 5,400 or 7,200 RPM hard drive. I have big plans for this machine in the future and I don’t want my next hard drive purchase to go to waste (I’m thinking along the lines of a 2TB nVME SSD and an 8 TB archive drive and I’m running out of spots to connect extra drives!) I also have other drives in my PC, so restructuring wouldn't be too difficult.

For my earlier blog post, I decided to throw Ubuntu Unity Remix into a VM on my primary OS, but I only allocated 10 GB of virtual storage space, since that disk is getting really crowded. Doing so gave me two advantages, one that I could test it out and blog about this Operating System, but two is that I have a long history with Ubuntu and specifically Unity with my old Netbook and I really loved the interface. So I wanted to see if that would be a viable option for a daily driver Linux Distribution! I instantly loved the familiar 3D look and feel of Ubuntu Unity (especially with CCSM) as well as how well everything across the entire OS was integrated. I decided that this was the way to go for my newest unexpected project. Since I already have Kali Linux on my Lenovo Laptop (and that isn’t going anywhere) and I have a live Kali USB, I figured that I don’t really need a redundant Kali Linux on my desktop anymore, especially since it isn't built for daily driving and simple tasks are much more difficult to perform, not to mention that I was unable to get a Hackintosh VM loaded on Kali. So I hauled out my backup drive and got to backing up my files and documenting a list of programs that I wanted to reinstall in Ubuntu Unity. I then proceeded into my Ubuntu installation on the failed disk (which thankfully started up and allowed me to back up my Hackintosh configuration files and virtual hard disk). I then decided to physically unplug this hard disk from my system, since it is an identified point of failure that could cause system instability in the future. I isolated my Kali disk and was underway with overwriting it using a live USB installer for Ubuntu Unity Remix 20.04 LTS.

The installation process was identical to the one documented in my other blog post going over Ubuntu Unity Remix, so you can read that for more information and screenshots if you’re interested. I immediately began restoring my files and customizing my desktop interface with all of the CCSM 3D effects and transparency that I used to love back in the days of Ubuntu 11.04! So my PC is finally back up and running exactly the way I want it to with a fully functional Hackintosh (all I had to do was drop in my backed up files and it booted to the exact same session I had on the other disk) and my favourite Linux programs. I’ve reduced my multi-boot configuration of 4 different operating systems back down to two for now, but I’m enjoying the simplicity. I figure that from now on, I will most likely use Virtual Machines for experimentation going forward and I plan to replace my old hard drive with most likely another 2 TB m.2 nVME SSD to expand my Windows installation (since that’s starting to run low on space) as well as an 8 TB archive drive (likely a 5,400 RPM HDD) where I will probably allocate space for my virtual hard disks! I still have a 4 TB archive drive, but that is also getting full. However, my 4TB drive is definitely a viable option for the future of this blog and should allow me to continue experimenting with different virtual operating system installations until I start generating enough income to properly upgrade my desktop.

Overall, I am very pleased with Ubuntu Unity Remix and plan to use it more than I have previously used other Linux distributions on this computer. I do enjoy that this new layout for my PC somewhat resembles what my Netbook was like back in the day! I’m thankful that my principal PC has not been greatly affected by this change and that I can still actively use different versions/distros of Windows, Linux, and Mac OS to continue experimenting with for educational and recreational purposes! Once again, thank you for tuning into The Nicholas Perspective and as always, keep an eye on my News Feed on the Home Page for my latest updates!