Thanks for the info. I am getting so many excellent responses here, and I genuinely appreciate it.

I don't think it's defrag.
It is most likely using SSD or M2 disks and defrag is unnecessary on these disks.
In fact, this process can shorten the life of ssd and m2 disks.



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https://www.youtube.com/yepkoo
https://dev.epicgames.com/community/profile/bxvo/Yepkoo#learning

16 core? 3090?! That’s not a pc. That’s a monster! Wowza!! What work do you do with it?

Also, by maintenance, do you mean defragging? I haven’t owned a PC since ‘07.

It’s like they plan for them to become obsolete in 7 years’ time. Even if the Mac isn’t broken, it reaches a point where it can’t run the latest OS. Can’t even upgrade the RAM anymore. Having that Mac break after 8 months, with no end in sight, was too much.

Although Mac computers used to be more advantageous than Windows computers in terms of power, they no longer have any advantage, just an unnecessary expensive and limited system. I don't think I will use it for the rest of my life.

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https://www.youtube.com/yepkoo
https://dev.epicgames.com/community/profile/bxvo/Yepkoo#learning

I have a similar setup only I went with theA;ienware R10 with an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor. :)

I've been a Mac girl for years. This year My mac decided to blow it's SSD and my friends in the art community convinced ne to begrudgingly buy a PC. I got a 16 core AMD processor and an GTX 3090. It has changed my world! But now after many years I'm back to maintaining my PC instead of having a Mac that takes care of itself. I think you trade ease of ownership for raw power. I will say I haven't tried the new M2 Max or M1 Pro Macs yet though. 

Thank you, and thanks to all for these very helpful replies. I didn’t really realize until the next day just how fortunate I was to get a full refund from Apple on an expensive computer.

I ordered a total beast from Dell with a Cyber Monday deal!

The big reason I switched back to PC from Mac (after being a Mac user for about 10 years) was that Apple decided that if your computer is more that 3 years old, you should junk it and buy a new one!  I had a graphics card die and apple wanted me to buy a brand new computer!  They wouldn't even talk to me about my 5 year old computer.  And they make it SO hard to open them now.  Forget it!

Here's what I did:
I went online, researched the parts I wanted, went to the store with a list and asked them to build it for me.  I've got a Fractal case, filco mechanical keyboard, and I've got multiple HDD bays where I've slotted my old hard drives.  Now, if something breaks, I can just pop open the case, unplug the part and replace it myself.

Drives formatted by either Apple OS or Windows can't normally be read by the other system. Several solutions are available to get around the issue. Format the drive as EXFAT, preferably using Windows for the formatting action - drives formatted as EXFAT can be read and written to by both OS and Win systems. Another option is to access the drives over a Network, and yet another solution is to install Paragon HSF+ on the Win PC and leave the Mac drives formatted as they are.

The plus for Paragon HFS+ is that you will be able to read any native Mac drive on the PC without having to jump through hoops reformatting.

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.