Has anybody installed a SSD ,enabled AHCI and reinstalled Windows on a Dell Precision T3500?

[ilievxman99]

I have a Dell Precision T3500 with 2 Western Digital Black HDDs currently installed inside it. Since my registry is clogged up and my PC is slow but SSDs have dropped in price I want to get a Western Digital Green 120GB SSD and reinstall Windows. However I am unsure about enabling AHCI because of other threads created. So my question is would there be a problem if I just plug in the SSD, go into BIOS, enable AHCI and reinstall Windows 7? One thing I would like to specify is that I won't be plugging in the SSD straight into the motherboard. I will be plugging it in a SATA 3 PCI-E card so I am not limited by my motherboards SATA 2 capabilities in terms of speed. I will back up all of my specific files from both of my current HDDs and plan on keeping them inside as storage drives. All of the other parts are specified in my signature underneath this box of text. Hope I've been clear enough, but if someone needs extra detail, I am happy to answer questions.

 

[USAFRet]

1. The WD Green is a pretty substandard SSD.

2. 120GB is pretty small for the OS drive. Yes, I know you'll have other drives in it, but it is still pretty small.

3. Have you verified that your system can actually boot from a drive connected via a PCIe slot? Not all can, especially something old enough to have only SATA II ports.
How have you verified this?

 

[ilievxman99]

I don't care if the SSD is super fast and whatever...I have seen somebody with a Dell Precision T7500 use an SSD through a SATA 3 PCIE card. Those both computers are from the same generation.

 

[USAFRet]

I don't care if the SSD is super fast and whatever...I have seen somebody with a Dell Precision T7500 use an SSD through a SATA 3 PCIE card. Those both computers are from the same generation.

Using it as a drive and using it as a boot drive are two different things.

Try it. See what happens. It won't break anything.
Disconnect all other drives while you do this.

 

[ilievxman99]

What I meant is that he used it as a boot drive after cloning his HDD to it but he never mentioned changing to AHCI.