Problems with new Plex server

I upgraded my Windows machine recently. Well, I tried to. It's complicated.

When I decided to change my local streaming server from iTunes to Plex, I used a Windows device. It was a rather robust Windows machine that was more than capable of handling the job. But, it wasn't a new machine. It was a few years old. It's seven years old now, and while it's more than capable as a Plex server, it has some drawbacks when it comes to doing other stuff. When I sat down and thought about all the things I needed to do, I decided to get a new computer. So, I did.

The problems began immediately. The device experienced high disk usage. Windows Task Manager showed 100% disk usage. That caused the device to be sluggish, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted. I was less than thrilled. I began researching all the different causes for this, with me wondering if I had a lemon, or if I had erred somewhere in the initial setup. Then, a huge coincidence happened.

In my day job, I do tech support for a local agency. They purchased some new computers recently, and one of my tasks was to set it up. As it turned out, two of the devices purchased were the very same brand and model I had purchased. And they too experienced the high disk drive usage, performing poorly in the process.

That actually became an opportunity. I had a personal computer issue that was driving me nuts. But then work had the very same issue. I could work the issue while at work, because I needed to work the issue for work, and perhaps find the cause and develop a solution. I could also work the issue at home, and anything I learned, apply to work. Finally, I stumbled across information about Killer Network Service. It's supposed to help network performance. Maybe it does. But for the first several hours after it starts running for a user, it slows the machine down to a crawl.

For home use, it's not quite as big of a deal, as I'm the only user. Once it settled down, it didn't act all sluggish. But at work, that was another story. When a new user logs on to the computer on the domain -- they use shared computers -- the whole mess starts over. And, when Windows sends an update that causes setup to repeat or partially repeat, I don't want the users to have do deal with that.

So, I killed Killer. Removed it. Everything seems to be working fine now. But there was another issue on my personal computer.

When I put the 10 TB hard drive into the machine, it wouldn't read it. That was scary, as I was concerned that the new computer, or a poor physical install on my part, had fried it. But that wasn't the case. The hard drive was fine.

So, no easy transfer of data from one drive to another. Oh, did I mention I had a new 14 TB drive in the new computer? No? Well, I did. So all the files needed to be moved over.

Installing the old data hard drive didn't work, so I broke out my USB drive docking station to connect it that way. No luck. The device seemed to acknowledge that something was connected, but it couldn't find the drive enough to read it. I had to use some utilities to confirm it was seeing it, just that it didn't recognize it.

Was my docking station bad? I don't know. But I ordered a new one just in case. It's arriving today, and I'll find out soon enough.

If it's not the docking station, my next task is to put the old computer back together, add it to the network, map some drives across the network, and do the data transfer that way.

My Streaming Life should be a lot easier. I suppose it's my own fault.