Installing upgrade components - question(s)

[Freegrazer]

Hey all.

Did my very first build around 7 years ago. A modest build, certainly no gaming beast and used mostly as a home theatre type PC for movies, music, and general all round internetting.

Covid-19 lockdown has given me some free time to get into astrophotography, and image processing is too intensive a task for my current rig to manage. So, I need to upgrade the CPU, the SSD, and some extra RAM. Again nothing beasty, just enough to handle the image processing related tasks. Sticking with my motherboard (ASUS Z77 Sabertooth) as I'm not doing a whole new build.

Upgrading from ----> upgrading to:

Intel Core i3 3225 ----> Intel Core i7 3770
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP ----> 24GB Corsair Vengeance LP (just adding an extra 2 x 8GB)
Samsung Pro 860 SSD 128GB ----> Samsung EVO 860 SSD 1TB

Plan is to clone my existing SSD to the new SSD, and use the new one as my main boot drive.

Have some questions before I go ahead and make the upgrades, hoping you guys can offer some advice.

1. Is there any particular order I should install the new components? Should I swap out one component at a time and boot up in between? Should I clone the SSD first, or does it even matter what order I do the upgrades?

2. Do I really need to clone the SSD? Yes it's a much larger capacity drive, but I'm wondering will my astro-image processing tasks perform better/faster if operating from the new drive which will also be my new main boot drive, or will the tasks be just as efficient if the new SSD is just used as additional storage for images I'm working on and I just continue to use the current SSD as my boot drive?

I know the PRO is a little faster to read/write compared to the EVO, but ignoring that difference in speed will the EVO be the better choice as both a boot drive and the drive where image related tasks are performed?

3. Rig is also currently rocking Windows 8.1 Pro, but I may move to Windows 10 in a while after I've upgraded. Does this make any difference in how I should approach the upgrade? Move to Windows 10 before or after upgrade?

Also worth mentioning I've already gone ahead and bought the new CPU, RAM, and SSD. Oh and I already have another 4TB of HDD storage to keep my finished astro-images and projects on, so defo not short on storage.

Appreciate any info, thanks guys.

 

[Sparx]

How much did you spend, out of interest? You're upgrading to 8 year old hardware still Seems a bit false economy imo.

But to answer your questions anyway...

1. No reason not to change all components at once

2. No, the drives are pretty much identical performance wise. Just stick with it as your boot/OS drive.

3. Presume the new SSD is a fairly old used one as well? So not much point using it for the OS, thinking it has had an easier life really, it probably hasn't.

If you want an easy life, swap the CPU/RAM over - connect the 1TB SSD as a storage drive, format it and upgrade your OS to W10 once booted up and working ok.

You'll get better performance than the god awful W8.1 by just upgrading to W10 - there was a reason it was so short lived.

 

[Freegrazer]

The SSD is brand new (€100), but the CPU and the RAM are used but in perfect condition and bought from a buddy (€90).

8 year old hardware for sure, but pretty much a bargain and defo needed as the i3 and 8GB certainly wouldn't handle the image processing tasks. Also didn't want to spend very much as I'd just dropped an uncomfortable ball of cash on a fancy new telescope

And yep, I'm thoroughly ashamed I've been putting the W10 upgrade on the long finger for so long!

Thanks for the info!

 

[Sparx]

If the SSD is brand new, you may as well install a clean copy of W10 on that instead. The other SSD will obviously have a lot more wear and less life in it.

Best practice would be to... disconnect the 250 SSD temporarily, connect your 1TB (with the other upgrades) - install Win10, once booted to desktop then shutdown.

Connect back up your 250 drive, select your new W10 OS on the boot manager so you’re not loading up your old OS obviously. Then go into msconfig, remove the Win8 OS from the boot manager tab.

Get all your precious files, documents, games, etc from the 250 and move them to your clean 1TB drive, then format it so it’s clean and use it as storage.

Definitely more of a ball ache, but well worth it in the long run for better performance - and you have a fresh W10 install out of it too.

 

[Freegrazer]

Yeah that sounds like the right way to go about it. As you said it's worth the ball ache.

Only thing is I'd need to actually buy Win10 for a clean install wouldn't I? As far as I'm aware, I can still upgrade from 8.1 to 10 for free because the free upgrade facility still exists even after the MS imposed deadline has long passed.

Could pick up an OEM Win10 Pro for around 80 quid, and a clean install would be nicer. Decisions...

 

[Sparx]

If you look around a certain auction site, you can get OEM keys for a few quid

 

[Freegrazer]

Ahhh interesting! Thanks for the tip, I knew I'd come to the right place to ask my questions

 

[Sparx]

Let us know how you get on!

I need some sleep now

 

[Freegrazer]

Hey again!

So just checking in to say the hardware upgrade has gone swimmingly and I'm seeing immediate difference in all around performance with task switching and application loading times etc.

I managed to get a Win10 Pro key (thanks again for the tip) and have the install USB ready to go for the new SSD. But I just wanted to double check something before I install Win10.

I want to put Win10 on the new SSD, but keep Win8.1 on my old SSD for a little bit while I set up and fully configure Win10 to my liking on the new SSD. Once that's done I'll then format the old SSD. I do not intend to use either SSD as storage to be accessed by the other in the meantime. So does this mean I can just go ahead an install Win10 on the new SSD and manually (UEFI) boot to either SSD as I choose each time I switch on the PC, and I don't need to worry about messing up partitions or C: drive letter designations or MBR?

It's dual booting, but independently as I will never access one SSD while booted into the other. Just that I've read some users who had issues with dual booting and drive lettering etc. so I want to be damn sure I don't mess anything up and run into problems.

I suppose I could just disconnect whichever SSD I'm not booting from each time I boot, but that's more hassle than I'm willing to deal with

Are there any pitfalls or anything else I need to watch out for?

 

[Sparx]

No you shouldn't do - if you have both drives connected at the same time - install W10 to the new SSD, it should create a boot manager menu with both OS' available as you say to Dual Boot and select which.

 

[Freegrazer]

Great Stuff, thank Sparx!

So just to be clear, I don't need to disconnect all other drives when I go to install W10 to the new SSD? Every guide I look at suggests doing this in case the bootloader gets installed randomly on a drive other than the one you're installing W10 to. I don't see why that would happen but apparently Windows sometimes randomly decides to do it.

Can I just whack the USB into the slot and install without pulling all other SATA cables first?

 

[Sparx]

I used to believe that years ago (disconnect other drives) but over time, I've left other drives plugged in - never once seen Windows magically dump OS/core files on another drive, than the one I installed it on lol

Just connect up new SSD as normal, boot from USB, partition and install W10 on new drive. Job done

Should then result in boot manager each time start PC up for both OS'

 

[merlin6r]

Yeah that sounds like the right way to go about it. As you said it's worth the ball ache.

Only thing is I'd need to actually buy Win10 for a clean install wouldn't I? As far as I'm aware, I can still upgrade from 8.1 to 10 for free because the free upgrade facility still exists even after the MS imposed deadline has long passed.

Could pick up an OEM Win10 Pro for around 80 quid, and a clean install would be nicer. Decisions...

You don't need to buy a Win 10 key if you have a Win 8.1 Pro key.

Do the upgrade to Win 10, make sure it activates and its yours.
Reinstall/fresh install Windows 10 and it will reactivate because you've had it before...

 

[Tetras]

Great Stuff, thank Sparx!

So just to be clear, I don't need to disconnect all other drives when I go to install W10 to the new SSD? Every guide I look at suggests doing this in case the bootloader gets installed randomly on a drive other than the one you're installing W10 to. I don't see why that would happen but apparently Windows sometimes randomly decides to do it.

Can I just whack the USB into the slot and install without pulling all other SATA cables first?

I think there used to be a bug with Windows 10 that practically guaranteed it would bork your other installs, I don't know if they fixed that with later builds or not. I don't think it deletes your stuff though, it just means you can't boot from it. Not that this is much of an improvement.

You don't need to buy a Win 10 key if you have a Win 8.1 Pro key.

Do the upgrade to Win 10, make sure it activates and its yours.
Reinstall/fresh install Windows 10 and it will reactivate because you've had it before...

Wouldn't this de-activate the Windows 8.1 install if he's dual booting?

 

[merlin6r]

I think there used to be a bug with Windows 10 that practically guaranteed it would bork your other installs, I don't know if they fixed that with later builds or not. I don't think it deletes your stuff though, it just means you can't boot from it. Not that this is much of an improvement.

Wouldn't this de-activate the Windows 8.1 install if he's dual booting?

Well you'd think so but I can only go on my experience, which was the following;

Installed Windows 10 on one machine using my genuine Windows 7 key. Later built a new machine and on that activated Windows 10 using my Microsoft account that had retained my Windows 10 activation.

I later rebuilt the old parts into a spare case, installed Windows 10 from fresh, gave it to a friend telling him he'd need to buy a key for it. However he didn't as it remained activated, presumably from the time the Windows 7 key was entered on that particular collection of parts (apart from the SSD and HDD), despite the fact I'm technically using the Windows 10 activation i 'swapped' for the Windows 7 key.

This makes sense since Microsoft are just trying to get as many people on possible onto their new 'eco-system' where they are making more money from Windows store etc. I don't think they care at this stage how you get onto Windows 10, as long as you do.

They still charge oem's for licences on new machines, and that must be worth 100 times what we spend on standalone copies of Windows...


EDIT: also, is he dual booting? I thought he meant changing to Windows 10?