July 17, 2024
Today marked the first time I had reinstalled Windows on my desktop computer in the past 11 years, which was when I started building computers.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done tens, maybe even hundreds of computer builds. Whenever my friends come to me asking for computer help or recommendations, a reinstall of vanilla Windows (given they don’t want to run Linux) is always on the checklist. It gets rid of all the manufacturer bloat and gives you a snappy blank state for your new computer.
However, this is one of those “do as I say, not as I do” moments for me — I’ve never reinstalled Windows on my own desktop once.
I started building computers in 2013, speccing out an impressive AMD A6-6400K (remember those days?), 8GB of RAM and a 1 TB Toshiba spinning drive. Since I was a broke elementary school student at the mercy of my parents, this was all I could afford. I could play Planetside 2, a game that I’ve played for the past decade, at around 15-30 fps, barely enough to run around and maybe not die. This eventually got upgraded to a FX 4300 and a GTX 750ti (I could finally play Planetside at 30+ frames), still equipped with my spinning drive. The computer was running Windows 8, which was eventually upgraded to 8.1 when it came out.
I then went down the x58 rabbit hole, going from an i7 920 then to a Xeon X5660 with a Radeon HD7970. Somewhere in between, I had gotten my hands on a Sandisk SSD and cloned my OS partitions onto there (thank you Macrium Reflect lol) and left my bulk storage on my HDD. This cheap SSD then moved to a slightly better SATA SSD with a DRAM cache (PNY CS1311). This was about 2016, so I had moved to Windows 10 as well, never having ever done a clean install of Windows.
Once I started college in 2021, I moved to a Samsung 970 EVO (along with a fancy new AM4 system), which I had, again, cloned the OS partition to and served as my main boot device for the next 3 years. I never moved on from Windows 10. By this time, I knew all the intricacies of this setup. I had to install new programs in a very specific order or else the OS would never find the start menu entry for it. I had to manually redirect all my program install locations. I know how to manipulate the partitions so that I could leave enough room for my Linux install. I knew the exact pathnames to every relevant file.
Cut to July 2024, I booted up my computer and was running some god-awful embedded IDE based on Eclipse when several programs crashed and my drive threw me hundreds of S.M.A.R.T. errors. I had planned to upgrade to a WD SN850X (thanks Prime day and my impulsive trigger finger) anyways so I already had a spare drive and a USB enclosure next to me. Five hours and a lot of heartache later, I could not recover the drive and accepted defeat.
Eleven years. Six different CPUs. Five different drives. All that history was no more. As I installed a clean copy of Windows 10, I felt the most vulnerable I had felt in a very long time. I no longer knew the exact path where every program was installed. I no longer have access to some of the files hidden in that drive. I no longer had to worry about programs complaining that I was still using MBR.
I write this just as I have decided to graduate college and pursue a full-time role in chip design. I’ll leave behind my old life as a carefree student and start a new life thousands of miles away from home.
The literature nerds probably know where this is going — this vulnerability and nostalgia that I feel represents this step forward in my life, and I have to be open and accepting of these changes blah blah blah.
Let me tell you this — life is not a metaphor, and not all things that happen in your life need to be metaphors either. To me, this is just a sadness and nostalgia and vulnerability that matches the feelings I have looking back at my life. After all, this Windows install outlives more than half my lifespan.
Thank you for sticking with me through the streams and seas of time.
“We two have paddled in the stream, from morning sun till dine, but seas between us broad have roared since Auld Lang Syne.” And I think about the many broad seas that have roared between me and the past — seas of neglect, seas of time, seas of death.
John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed