So I am changing my Windows 10 box from being inside a desktop chassis into the Antec Mini-ITX chassis with a Gigabyte GA-E350 WIN8 mainboard and as I have no real need of this computer chassis for any other purpose for the foreseeable future this is going back to being what the Windows 10 computer is going to run in, as it was some months ago. The location where it is at is about two metres from the scanner but that is the only device that will need a longer cable and there are not going to be any issues running the scanner's cable or any other cables. As is currently the case the computer will have its own speakers and screen. At present that desktop chassis, which is a mini tower Inwin chassis (smaller than the other three computers on this desk which have Inwin mid tower chassis), will remain connected to the two KVMs and therefore the two main keyboards and mice that I have on my dual stacked keyboard slides under the desk, but the Antec will not be connected to these KVMs, which means it will have its own independent keyboard and mouse, and instead it will be remote controlled using TightVNC server on the Windows 10 computer and Remmina on mainpc as the VNC client. VNC is needed because MS has omitted Remote Desktop from Windows 10 home edition. I have discovered that VNC can be connected as soon as Windows 10 is up to the lock screen so I can log the computer in remotely and there is almost no need to actually sit physically in front of the computer at all.
Another configuration issue is whether I can use a RAID-1 array in the Windows 10 Home computer as I have used in the past when Enterprise or Pro was the operating system of choice. It turns out the old mirrored option in Disk Management has been deprecated in Home edition, but is still available in Pro or Ent. However, MS is migrating to Storage Spaces to achieve the same thing as the mirrored option, and Storage Spaces is available on Home edition. Essentially I will create a 128 GB system partition onto one of the disks and the rest of the disk will be available for the storage pool. The second disk will also be in the storage pool and they will be mirrored. The existing home folder path will be moved into the storage pool by using a NTFS junction on the system volume in my profile path. This is basically the only supported way that you can move your home drive to another partition or disk because MS still won't support changing the registry key path that points to C:\Users. It is a limitation that you end up having to put in a junction for every user but is OK where there is only one user on the computer.
I looked back at my notes and saw I moved the Windows 10 computer last November or about 8 months ago from the mini tower to the Antec and then only five months ago I moved it from the Antec to the mini tower and now it goes back to the Antec which I have no further use for in the foreseeable future. I did enjoy building that Antec as a mini ITX chassis and did seriously look into upgrading it with a new Asrock board. However the only type of board that would be worthwhile is one that has a built in CPU because they are optimised for very low power and for various reasons the NUC won out as the preferred option and I got one of them instead. I have two of these Gigabyte E350 boards in case the one in the Antec chassis blows up so I can keep using the Windows computer with them. Many mini ITX boards these days are just small ATX boards that use a lot of power and aren't suitable for the likes of the Antec chassis which has only a 90 watt power supply so the upgrade route is one I have decided not to follow. Neither do I now have any need of any type of portable computer or server that I could use the Antec for so I am just sticking it with this Windows 10 home computer.
Last time I changed formats I was able to use CloneZilla to move the Windows 10 installation between disks, unfortunately that was not possible this time. Although I have changed the Windows 10 computer 3 times, the first time I changed from Windows 10 enterprise on a no-longer-valid volume license to Windows 10 home and the second time I used Clonezilla to move the disk. This third time Clonezilla was not only unable to move the disk to another physical disk, it also somehow corrupted the existing disk so that it would not even boot and the main data partition was unreadable. It did not matter as there was no data on it that needed to be backed up so it just means a little more work setting it up from scratch. But that in itself is not much as I do not need to reinstall the camera download software, really it is just some multimedia software and the scanner software that I have to put back on it.
I wrote recently about the Vodem problems and how I would overcome them. Using the wireless bridge over a network cable has worked successfully but the issue is it will work on the whole of my network and I want to be able to limit to just one computer at a time to control how much data is going to be sucked off the cellular connection. So the alternative option is to add a wireless capability to one of the desktops to enable it to be used with the tethered phone or I can use the NUC with its built in wireless, but the NUC will need to have a cable connected to it so that I can remote to it with VNC at the same time as it is connecting to the phone.
I have completed moving things around and plugging things back in and now it is just the job of finishing the setup of everything and some of this is happening around other changes in the home environment so that is how things are going together at present.
I wrote recently about the Vodem problems and how I would overcome them. Using the wireless bridge over a network cable has worked successfully but the issue is it will work on the whole of my network and I want to be able to limit to just one computer at a time to control how much data is going to be sucked off the cellular connection. So the alternative option is to add a wireless capability to one of the desktops to enable it to be used with the tethered phone or I can use the NUC with its built in wireless, but the NUC will need to have a cable connected to it so that I can remote to it with VNC at the same time as it is connecting to the phone.
I have completed moving things around and plugging things back in and now it is just the job of finishing the setup of everything and some of this is happening around other changes in the home environment so that is how things are going together at present.
