Mobo swap and Harddrives, need advice

DrLee

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Jul 27, 2006
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I'm not quite sure where to begin, but I will start by describing what I currently have.

I have an old mobo p5w dh deluxe, and two drives: one 320gb 5400rpm 16mb cache (in dual boot XP/Vista) and a 500gb 7200rpm 32mb cache.

What I would like to do is get an updated mobo (780i ultra ftw), another 7200rpm 32mb cache drive for my OS's, and to raid 0 the two 500 gb'ers. I am a little confused on how to go about doing this and preserving my data. Swapping the mobo will leave me with 2 OS's that need to be reinstalled.

I'm a raid newbie, this will be my first attempt but my question is: I know I cannot raid 3 drives in raid0, can I raid the two into an array and still have the old 320 plugged in? If so, could I just install the new mobo,1 new 500gb drive, raid 0 and reinstall vista onto both the 500's, and then just plug in my 320 and transfer the data from it?

Is this the best way to do it? Or can someone more experienced offer a better process?

Ideally, I would like to change nothing heh... is it even possible to backup my current 320gb drive into an image and restore it onto my array, creating the proper partitions/dual bootability and saving all the data? My thinking is that it would still be an invalid install because it is a backup on the old motherboard and windows will still reject it with a blue screen.

Any help is greatly appreciated.


 

br3nd064

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Aug 20, 2008
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Yes, put the 2 500gbs in, configure them to use raid 0, install vista, then plug the 320gb back in and transfer the data over. You will have to install the software again, but you will be able to just drag all the data (music, movies etc...) over to the new drives. Unless there are some programs that you can't re-install, you shouldn't have any problems.

Hope that helps.