XP to WIN 7 Ultimate rebuild please help, check, advise

DucDuc

DucDuc

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Thomas
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As stated in the title I'm doing an upgrade/rebuild of my desktop.

Not sure what I am forgetting so please chime in with any advise. So far I have

Downloaded all "my documents" to external HDD
captured all my licenses/key codes that I can think of
Downloaded GPU drivers for new OS
Downloaded latest drivers for MoBo BIOS
Made sure I either have the S/W or can get off the net for my apps
Passwords stored on alternate PC or can get P/W support via email on Gmail account
Moved game files to External HDD so can restore progres

I want to be as clean as possible so leaving the program files behind and bought a complete WIN 7 not the upgrade to ensure I do not carry over any baddies.

I have 4 new 1TB black caviar drives I was planning to run in Raid 5 from the MoBo raid controller. Do you think I should go 3TB storage or 2TB and keep a spare HHD? They have a 5 year warranty but I have read very mixed reviews on the drives. Every thing from DOA to 5 Years in with no issue.

Spec.
DFI 590 SLI MR2/G
AMD 2X64 5800
2X2 GB RAM
2 X NVIDIA 9600 GT
M Audio Delta .....
1 X WD 500GB SATA HDD (plan to format and use as :C)
4 X WD 1TB SATA HDD
1 X IDE 250 GB ( plan to remove and not reuse)
1 X 500GB external WD my book
Monitor to be upgraded in future
Sony Blue ray Player
LG DVD RW Drive
Loads of fans



My Plan was to use existing 500GB drive as :C drive and the 4 new drives as RAID 5 config. I also have 2 TB external for B/Up and 1 TB portable for music files.

Does this sound reasonable? I'm getting very close to a final PST export and final shut down for rebuild. Also I know I need to return my Lic for Lr3 and PSE8 before rebuild. Any final thoughts and advise is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

DucDuc
 
Internet favourites? Unless you moved the location they're under your existing profile.

Think carefully where and how raid is used, you have redundancy of 1 drive failing with your raid 5 setup, but what if the raid controller (m/b) failed? Make sure you have a verified external backup solution in place.

There is going to be a quite a lot of heat in this case, SLI and 5 HDDs, optical drive... Is this a gaming PC setup or for backup?
 
amjad175 said:
Internet favourites? Unless you moved the location they're under your existing profile.

Think carefully where and how raid is used, you have redundancy of 1 drive failing with your raid 5 setup, but what if the raid controller (m/b) failed? Make sure you have a verified external backup solution in place.

There is going to be a quite a lot of heat in this case, SLI and 5 HDDs, optical drive... Is this a gaming PC setup or for backup?
Click to expand...

Thanks Amjad. Had not captured internet favs, good call. I also take your point on the B/U. My 2TB external will become the B/U drive until it is not big enough.

was planning raid5 config for speed and reliability ( I Know 0 is faster but has no redundancy and 6 is better than 5 but controller only offers 0,1,2,5,).

I have not had the speed for photo processing on large RAW files with current system and external HDD (internal full), they take about 1-1.5 mins to open.

I Did do and may again do more gaming but also play guitar through PC with digital beats/bass and recording capability etc... but mostly motivated by RAW edit and organization speed plus WIN 7 & office 10 as I'm on XP and 2003 now but world has moved on, so shall I.

I run one large fan that can blow directly across the four drives plus the GPUs have OB fans, plus and aux fan to vent case and a additional fan over CPU heat sink fan going out of case too. Thermals never been an issue with current build, never gone to high speed on the fans, except at shutdown(as expected) but agree will be more than before/current.
 
Having drivers for the mobo ready is good but you'll probably not need them, Win7 is one of the easiest installs I've ever done.

A back up of your personal info is the most important and you've done that.
 
Have just moved from a Vista PC to Win 7. I used Windows Easy Transfer to save 25Gbytes to a disk drive and restored from there. Haven't found anything that hasn't copied perfectly including windows settings, favourites etc... See: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=7349
 
PS. A new processor/mobo/memory would do wonders for your desktop system ;) Dual SLI 3 year old technology with a low end (by comparison) processor will make for not much speed for lots of power draw....
 
arad85 said:
PS. A new processor/mobo/memory would do wonders for your desktop system ;) Dual SLI 3 year old technology with a low end (by comparison) processor will make for not much speed for lots of power draw....
Click to expand...

no doubt you are correct but that would be a new PC not a rebuild, I'm looking at a rebuild. Possibly will consider cpu up grade but MoBo stays. How much mem can you put on a b4 bit WIN os? I have 2 sets of 2X2 chips.
 
Can you recommend a better CPU fro AM2 socket? On a search I can only find AM2+ with better performance than I have now. AM2+ while compatible with AM2 socket benefits are limited to socket performance so the power plane and hyper transfer will not improve if I went to AM2+. Def not getting a MoBo this time.
 
Some programs save custom settings and the like into your Username\AppData folder which you might not have caught as Windows likes to hide things like that.

Things that spring to mind...

Photoshop custom actions/gradients/brushes/plugins
Lightroom custom presets/export functions/plugins
Excel macros saved to somewhere other than the working sheet (this is buried if you save to the default location. I think it's called Start.xls)
Word fonts & templates
Outlook settings (contacts, sent items, etc. Can often be exported to .pst file for re-import afterwards)

With game files, things like chatlogs, screenshots, savegames & the like are often saved to ProgramFiles/ProgramName and you'll lose them with a fresh game install.

Lastly, if you connect direct to the Internet (rather than through a router which would be unaffected) your ISP username/password should be handy.

That's all I can think of!

Ian.
 
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