As I wrote in September, my HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF desktop with an AMD PRO A4-8350B R5 processor was giving me messages about limited computer resources when using Zoom under Windows 10, though not under Linux. These sitll occur, even though I have added memory, taking it from 8GB to 24GB. This last time, I finally remembered to bring up Task Manager. It showed me that there was no memory problem, but that Zoom was using a lot of CPU. Why this occurs with Windows but not Linux is puzzling. For now I will have to have all of my Zoom sessions on that system under Linux rather than Windows.

I got a new 1TB SSD drive for Christmas. I used it to replace the 512GB drive that I had installed on my HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF system. That 512GB drive in turn went back to the old laptop I had taken it from. In both cases the copying was done by Macrium Reflect Free. There were no problems at all with the HP desktop, but the laptop refused to boot afterwards. So I got out my Linux USB boot repair stick and booted from that, ran the boot repair utility and everything was fine. Both Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux 20.04 booted cleanly.

So I now have two extra 256GB SSD drives. Don’t really know what I will do with them. For now they are mounted in enclosures with USD 3.x connections.

Having done a memory upgrade to my HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF system, it was time to add more storage. It came with a 256GB SSD, and I added the 512GB that I had taken from an old laptop. Since I was leaving the original drive in place and simply adding a drive, the process was much simpler than in the drive replacements I have done. The whole thing would have been trivial if I had put the new drive in an external USB 3 adapter. USB 3 is fast, but imposing the USB/SATA conversion would add some overhead, so I decided to open up the machine and make another SATA connection. There was a free SATA power connector inside, but I had to add an extension cable to reach any plausible place to put a new drive. Fortunately, there was a free SATA data cable already present. I put the new drive into a 2.5″/3.5″ mount, but there were no holes to screw it into the obvious place. This is a problem I have faced before, and I used the same remedy: Duct tape.
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I have an old laptop which I do not use often. I had installed a 512GB SSD on it, but decided to replace it with a 256GB SSD so I could use the larger drive on a more modern system. Once again, I planned to used Macrium Reflect Free to clone the drive. This is a lot harder when you want to clone a larger drive to a smaller one. I had to delete my Linux partitions and shrink the Windows one with gparted on my Linux boot repair disk. My total space in use was well under 256GB but Macrium still objected. Examination revealed that I had forgotten to shrink the extended partition in which my Linux partitions had resided. So I fixed that. Still no joy. There was a big (>256GB) gap between the end of the extended partition and the last Windows partition. So I moved that partition inward to leave all the free space at the end. This finally satisfied Macrium Reflect Free and it was able to clone the drive.

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Having experienced resourse limitations on an HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF I decided to add more memory to it. It has four slots for memory and came with two 4GB memory modules. I ordered two 8GB modules from Crucial, where you can search for upgrades compatible with your particular computer model. These arrived and I proceeded to install them, hoping for a 24GB system. This proved to be trickier than I had expected. Continue reading →

I have an HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF desktop with an AMD PRO A4-8350B R5 processor and 8GB memory. It is a dual boot Windows 10/Ubuntu Linux. Firefox, Thunderbird, and Zoom are installed under both operating systems. My usual process for getting into a Zoom meeting is:

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I meant this to be “Reconfiguring a Linux System,” but that is not how it turned out. I had followed the default Ubuntu installation process when I set up this system. I wanted to change it so that the swap area and /home would be in separate disk partitions, as decribed in these articles in How to Geek and Make Tech Easier. The first step in this process is to create the new partitions using GParted, which I have used before. GParted always gives dire warnings about the need to back up your files before using it. I have always heeded these warnings, but this was the first time the reason for them was brought home to me.

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