Rebuilding computer help?

[equatom]

Hi everyone!

So i had recently rebuilt my brother's computer (dell studio 8100) as a Christmas present, fitting it with a new graphics card (GTS 450 OC), new Power Supply (Corsair hx 650) and new RAM (2x4 gig sticks).

now though, he is saying that the CPU is just too slow, and that he wants a new computer.

so i advised him to just buy a new case, CPU, and motherboard, since i had just given him a new GPU, RAM, and PSU.

so here's what we're going to do:

1. buy a new case, CPU, and motherboard from wvw.umart.com.au (i live in Australia, cant use newegg)

2. when we get the parts, i'm going to disassemble his old computer, and salvage the newer parts i got him for Christmas, and put them into the new computer.


I have a question though. My brother has two HDD's (2tb and 1tb) and i want to salvage those from his old Dell and put them into the new computer- but i have no idea how.
plus, he wants to run them in raid0 on this new computer

so i need help, he has movies and a bunch of work on his hard drives in his Dell right now, how would i get those and install them in raid0 into the new computer, and install a fresh copy of windows on them, without screwing everything up?

any help and input would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Great1122]

Ok partition one of the drives you have right now(preferably the faster one with more rpm) put at least 20gb space in it. That way you can install windows 7 without formatting the entire thing. If he wants to run them in raid 0 he's giving up 1 tb of space as raid 0 only works with identical memory sets which means it'll only recognize 1tb of his 2tb hard drive(I know this from experience). The JBOD raid would be the only one that allows 3tb of space but this raid doesn't improve any speed. To learn raid just get a motherboard that supports it and you can configure it in bios it's really easy. Oh and one last note, any raid that improves speed requires hard drives to be formatted, I don't think jbod does but I have no experience with jbod.

 

[Buckshot420]

Make sure the HDD are SATA and not IDE. Your new board will not support IDE (most likely). You can get a IDE to SATA converter but it will look ugly in your new build.

 

[Great1122]

Make sure the HDD are SATA and not IDE. Your new board will not support IDE (most likely). You can get a IDE to SATA converter but it will look ugly in your new build.

The dell studio xps 8100 is a fairly new desktop, the oldest sata drive I have is from 2004, it has an ide connection as well, so the sata/ide thing is not exactly a big issue for most modern builders, but I understand it's better to be safe then sorry.

 

[equatom]

thanks for the reply guys. neither of the HDD's are IDE.

heres what im gonna do: move all the files from the 1tb to the 2tb, then partition like 60Gigs onto the 1tb, and then use that as my windows HDD.

then after the computer is up and running with windows, i gonna put in the 2tb HDD and transfer all the files back onto the 1tb that were there originally. then im going to see if i can run them in JBOD raid, like Great1122 suggested.

 

[slh28]

You should probably just get a small 60GB SSD, the computer will feel much, much faster than any RAID configuration using hard drives (RAID doesn't help with access times). Also be aware that if one of your drives in the RAID fails then you've lost everything on both drives.

 

[dikbozo]

All I could find regarding your machine is that it has an 'i' series intel CPU. If so, there is no point in swapping out the motherboard, just replace the CPU with a faster one.

 

[equatom]

hey guys, thanks for the replies.

I will post my brother's current specs:

Case: dell studio 8100 case
CPU: Intel i5-650 (dual core, 4m cache, 3.2GHz)
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GTS 450 OC (i gave this to him for Christmas)
HDD: 1TB HDD, and a 2TB HDD. not running in any form of RAID.
RAM: 8Gigs (2x4gigs)
Motherboard: socket LGA1155
Optical Drive: generic DVD-RW drive
Power Supply: Corsair HX650 (i gave this to him for Christmas)

here's the new parts we are going to buy:

Case: Enermax LuxuRay, OR NZXT Phantom (depends on how much money is left over)
CPU: intel i5 2500K
CPU Cooler: Coolermaster hyper TX3 evo
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V LX
OS: Windows 7 home premium OEM

so what i'm going to to, is use the parts i got him for Christmas that now reside in his current computer, and use them in the new build. i will also be using his old HDD's and Optical Drive.

i just needed help figuring out how i'm going to go about using the 2 HDD's in his new build.