I am currently replacing my aging 9200 with a custom built system. After having had a number of Dell desktops and laptops, which have provided excellent service, I have learned the lesson of limited upgrade potential and now limited configuration options on a new Dell system and have ordered from another source a custom system where I have specified from the case, power supply, motherboard and upwards. It has enormous expansion headroom.
However, I'm reluctant to dispose of my multi screen quad core 9200 and plan to give it some new life with some upgrades, use it as an admin system and keep the shiny new system for media and some multiscreen applications -
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit to replace Vista Ultimate 32 bit in a "clean installation" (Vista is creeking a bit), was always a bit suspect)
Add Samsung 840 SSD 120Mb as system drive.
Keep the Raid 0 2x250 Mb
Keep my 8600GTS video card
Take the opportunity to upgrade things like Office ( to 365 now that we will have 5 household PC's)
I also have an external 1TB Seagate drive which has my important files sync'd and which has plenty of space to back up other files. I also have Skydrive and have sync'd a few folders and a few pc's to try it out.
I would appreciate some advice on the best sequence of approaching the upgrade (after my new system is live!) and also some advice on the SATA ports.
The Raid 0 is plugged in Ports 0 and 1, two optical drives in Ports 2 and 3, Ports 4 and 5 are spare.
I am assuming that it would be better, based on previous posts in other threads, to move both optical drives (1 at a time) to Ports 4 and 5 and test them before any upgrade. I will need to take back-ups of my files, but I'm not sure whether Microsoft Easy Transfer will be of any benefit moving programmes and settings.
I was proposing to shut down Vista, unplug the Raid drives, plug the SSD in Port 0 which will fit, I hope, in the spare 2.5 drive bay under the second optical drive and above the multi card reader. Disconnect the multicard reader as suggested elsewhere in this forum.
Install Win 7 on the SSD, then replug the Raid drives in 2 and 3, replug the multi-card, update the bios settings. I would prefer to initialize and do a full disk check on the old drives, as one of them once showed an error, but has been OK since I cleared it in the IMSM dashboard. I will then re-install applications as needed from scratch and download the appropriate data from the external drive, Skydrive or wherever.
I would appreciate any advice and comments on the above.
Thanks and regards
Leighton
