About to do an upgrade, will my OS still work?

Anim2 · 3 Jan 2007 at 12:31

Hey all

I have an Asus P5GDC-V motherboard with a P4 3Ghz processor. Two 80Gig Sata drives in Raid 0 (I think) I have around 150Gig space but I know they are in some kind of raid setup.

Windows device manager reports the drive as being a Microsoft RAID_MASTER

Soooooo

I just bought a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard and 6400 cpu with 2gig ram. Is there any way I can just swap over the hardware and windows would re-configure its drivers ok?

Or do i have to reformat (which would be a royal pain at the moment)

Any tips or advice much appreciated.

Thanks

p4radox · 3 Jan 2007 at 12:43

You might be able to get away with a repair installation of Windows, but for such a major upgrade, a complete reformat would be my preferred choice. Before you try anything, I would recommend getting a backup of all your important documents.

Anim2 · 3 Jan 2007 at 12:47

I thought that might be the case. I have so many deadlines in a row that downtime is a real headache for me.

I also don't have a floppy drive and just read the motherboard manual which says I need one for setting up raid :eek:

Cheers
Anim

inactionman · 3 Jan 2007 at 12:52

Download all the drivers and put them on a USB flash drive. When you do the windows install it should see the drive as either a floppy or a hard drive, if not you should be able to set this up in the BIOS.

gumbald · 3 Jan 2007 at 12:58

If you've got deadlines I'd leave it for now, as tempting as the upgrade may be

Sometimes transferring HDs between setups:

a) works
b) works with a repair
c) doesn't work

However for the top 2 options, I'd still want to do a reinstall, blue screens have appeared a few boots later in my experience

Anim2 · 3 Jan 2007 at 13:11

Hi guys, thanks for posting so fast

I've decided to keep the upgrade kit to one side and slog on with this slow ass rig until after the 12th

Its probably worth buying the extras to make an entire new vista pc and set this one up as a media center PC. That way I can continue work and build up the new one when i get the odd spare moments.

Heres the extras I think i can get away with (have keyboards and mice lying about)

Akasa AK-ZEN-01-WH Zen White Case - No PSU
Hiper HPU-4M580 Type R 580W ATX2.2 PSU - Black
Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66R-00838)

It will cost me another £307 but for that I get this old pc as a spare running machine.

What do you think?

gumbald · 3 Jan 2007 at 15:54

There's been questions raised about the Hiper PSU, and do you really need Vista Ultimate?

millsy888 · 3 Jan 2007 at 16:15

just to add to what others have said,

i would always choose to do a full re-install of windows when replacing the mobo, had a few BSOD if i tried to repair the installation on a new setup. I have learnt my lesson on that

FunkyCowie · 3 Jan 2007 at 18:27

Anim2 said:
Hi guys, thanks for posting so fast

I've decided to keep the upgrade kit to one side and slog on with this slow ass rig until after the 12th

Its probably worth buying the extras to make an entire new vista pc and set this one up as a media center PC. That way I can continue work and build up the new one when i get the odd spare moments.

Heres the extras I think i can get away with (have keyboards and mice lying about)

Akasa AK-ZEN-01-WH Zen White Case - No PSU
Hiper HPU-4M580 Type R 580W ATX2.2 PSU - Black
Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66R-00838)

It will cost me another £307 but for that I get this old pc as a spare running machine.

What do you think?

Go with this option... Just a wild guess because your your username... you do animation or video work? In which case it is nice to have a spare PC for rendering on one machine and working on the other.

Anim2 · 5 Jan 2007 at 11:40

FunkyCowie said:
Go with this option... Just a wild guess because your your username... you do animation or video work? In which case it is nice to have a spare PC for rendering on one machine and working on the other.

Your exactly correct

I have a few other machines setup for network rendering so I could just add this one too.

Thanks
Anim