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Beebox, Win10 installed size too large

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Joined: 04 May 2015
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    Posted: 20 Jan 2016 at 3:55pm
Originally posted by srenovo srenovo wrote:

 

Let me begin with windows 10 has been a disaster for me - so I have avoided it BUT I did buy a windows 10 Beebox to play my music and surf the web.  I upgraded the ram to 8gb so that I could see win10 on my 4K TV - and have some headroom.  I added a 500gb ssd that was not in use and have my backups sent there and I thought about making it the boot drive but I have to many hobbies so I just muddle along - then I read your post.

So my issue is that I am not familiar with windows 10 - if I want to follow your protocol - where do I get a windows 10 key - do I have to use software to extract the key before I reinstall windows10 or does windows 10 come w/o the need for a windows key?  If I download the install from the web.  I am think that I would just remove the 32GB ssd and use the 500gb ssd then.


You do not need a Windows 10 key if you simply replace the drive in your BeeBox PC. A Windows installation is tied to the mother board, not the drive where Windows is stored.

You can physically install the 500GB SSD in your BeeBox, download an ISO installation file from the Internet. Mount and copy it to a USB flash drive, and run the installer with the SSD as the target.

The "SSD" in the BeeBox is really an eMMC, or embedded MultiMediaCard. You cannot remove it, it is attached to the mother board if it is truly an eMMC chip. It is similar to a SSD only in that it basically uses flash storage like as SSD does, but the two devices are completely different.

You will be much happier with the performance of the 500GB SSD, rather than the eMMC flash storage device. The SSD will be much faster overall. Compression as used as described above, has both good and bad points. It does save space, at the cost of write speed performance, which is much slower due to the compression process. Add to that the write speed of an eMMC device, and it will be slower than a standard HDD. Read performance benefits from compression normally, which makes the eMMC seem more like an SSD, but it really isn't.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote kenzz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Jan 2016 at 3:09pm
Originally posted by srenovo srenovo wrote:

 Let me begin with windows 10 has been a disaster for me - so I have avoided it BUT I did buy a windows 10 Beebox to play my music and surf the web.  I upgraded the ram to 8gb so that I could see win10 on my 4K TV - and have some headroom.  I added a 500gb ssd that was not in use and have my backups sent there and I thought about making it the boot drive but I have to many hobbies so I just muddle along - then I read your post.
So my issue is that I am not familiar with windows 10 - if I want to follow your protocol - where do I get a windows 10 key - do I have to use software to extract the key before I reinstall windows10 or does windows 10 come w/o the need for a windows key?  If I download the install from the web.  I am think that I would just remove the 32GB ssd and use the 500gb ssd then.

First ... I don't guarantee anything I say is 100% correct ... so proceed at your own risk.
I'm happy with win10 ... download Classic Shell or similar to provide a win7 style start menu and, for me, it's as easy to use as XP or win7.  

Personally I wouldn't transfer win10 to the 500gb ssd ... probably I could do it but I think much more complicated than making a fresh, clean install on the original 32gb . For me, it would make no  practical difference using the PC with the 32/500gb or the 500gb options.

Straightforward to put a fresh, cjean install of win10 on the 32gb. No need for a key ... once win10 is activated on a PC then it will re-activate again with no key. If it worries you, asrock have a small program which can be downloaded here to read the key  http://www.asrock.com/nettop/Intel/Beebox%20Series/?cat=Download&os=Win1064 ... look in the Utilities section.

There are several explanations of making a clean install ... one example is http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/ . You download  a Microsoft official win10 to an 8gb usb drive; alter boot order by pressing f12 on the beebox at the boot screen; boot from the usb; when the win10 install asks which partition to use, delete all partitions to unallocated space and install on that. Everything should work when the install is finished but some of the drivers may not be quite right ... go to windows update in settings and get win10 to update a couple of times ... after that the win10 update should have found and installed updated drivers for you.

With the original 2gb ram, that should give you about 15gb used space and 13gb free space on the 32gb ssd. Microsoft allow for compressing the win10 files using CompactOS ... easy to do e.g. see here http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/22088-compact-os-compress-uncompress-windows-10-a.html . That would then give about 13gb used space and 15gb free space with the original 2gb ram. Because you have upgraded the ram to 8gb you will find that win10 has automatically increased the sizes of the hibernation file and page file therefore you may find the space used is several gb more. It's possible to reduce the size of hiberfyl and pagefile but if you've still got enough room on the 32gb to suit your purpose then it's not necessary.

Maybe that all sounds complicated but if I can do it then it must be relatively easy. That usb drive can then be used to reinstall win10 in future if you get viruses etc i.e. similar to the system discs that used to be supplied by PC manufacturers with a new PC.    
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote srenovo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Jan 2016 at 3:52pm

 

Let me begin with windows 10 has been a disaster for me - so I have avoided it BUT I did buy a windows 10 Beebox to play my music and surf the web.  I upgraded the ram to 8gb so that I could see win10 on my 4K TV - and have some headroom.  I added a 500gb ssd that was not in use and have my backups sent there and I thought about making it the boot drive but I have to many hobbies so I just muddle along - then I read your post.

So my issue is that I am not familiar with windows 10 - if I want to follow your protocol - where do I get a windows 10 key - do I have to use software to extract the key before I reinstall windows10 or does windows 10 come w/o the need for a windows key?  If I download the install from the web.  I am think that I would just remove the 32GB ssd and use the 500gb ssd then.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote kenzz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Jan 2016 at 5:12pm
I've found some useful info on this forum so I thought I'd contribute.
I have a Beebox N3150 which was supplied with factory installed win10. I see there's a couple of threads here about transferring win10 to a larger SSD because win10 installed size was very large. 

Mine was similar e.g. after first update of win10 the C: drive had used space  21Gb and free space 7GB (rounding off figures). The Windows folder size was 31GB which reduced to size on disk 21GB after the win10 compression. I'm no expert but the 31GB size of the Asrock factory installed Windows 10 folder is crazy ... it appears the Asrock win10 is multi-language and there's some Asrock bloatware so that is maybe the reason. I dont know ... perhaps Asrock may explain if someone reads this???

However I downloaded and installed the official MS win10 media to a usb drive and made a fresh, clean installation of 64bit win10 on the Beebox by booting from the USB drive. After the first win10 update I then had C: drive used space 13GB and free space 16GB. 

Win10 allows for compressing the OS if on a SSD by using "CompactOS" through tghe command prompt. After compression I finished up with ...
C: drive used space 10GB and free space 18GB
Windows folder size on disk 9GB with actual size 13GB
I reckon 18GB free on the C: drive is a reasonable amount of space to allow for future win10 updates and a few bits of software I need to install on the C: drive ... data and other portableapps softweare will be OK on external storage.  

The above procedure is standard and reasonably easy to do but I don't accept any responsibility if it goes wrong!
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