13 posts
Got a new i7 2600/motherboard/memory/power suppy on the way from newegg, hoping to swap out in my system without reinstalling the OS... Anybody have any experience doing this?
Good luck with that. Normally that extreme of a change calls for a re-install of the OS.
Is your current HD compatible with the new mobo (IDE, SATA, SATA II, Serial ATA, etc)? You didn't list a new one of those so you'll hopefully be able to simply transfer it over as is and run with it, no major reinstall needed (I think ?)
Yeah, after doing some research I think there are just too many chipset/USB/etc drivers that might not get updated properly, so I am going to do a full reinstall. oh Joy.
The drives are good to go compatabilty wise, SATA 2 or 3...
I've done it. Not as bad as you think. I have actually kept my OS install through three motherboards, three different OS drives, and two chip architecture changes. Remember that you can always reinstall windows and do a "repair install" with xp... you don't lose your apps or documents.
Main thing is get your drives ordered correctly... make sure c is still c, d is d, etc.
Something like clonezilla is good if you want to start over with a bigger hard drive... you can clone the entire drive to it, including the magical markers and bits that make it work as an OS drive, then you can enlarge the partition, etc.
If you want to go with it, i can point you at a couple of resources i use.
oh that's cool charger... I am torn, I'd like to do it as simply as possible, but I also enjoy the feeling of a fresh install, things seem to run better (not sure if that is real or imagined). My back went out so I have not started this yet. Was going to start backups today.
Think now maybe I'll give it a try, I'll have everything backed up anyway so why not?
I might go so far as to make a complete clone hard drive... hard drives are ridiculously cheap anyway...
clone using clonezilla (you load it on a USB stick and it becomes a bootable system).
Then boot with the original or cloned drive, if it gives you issues, do a repair install, if that doesn't work, start from scratch.
Since you're changing most everything already, you might want to check to see if you'll need a bigger power supply. If you try to run all that new stuff on an undersized PS, you'll run into several weird issues and could damage something.
Now, if you DO need a larger PS, you might need to get a new case as well so, if that happens, make sure you look for one that keeps things cool but quiet. I'm thinking about upgrading in July (once the money starts coming in) so I've been doing a lot of research and it appears that there are quite a few excellent cases out there now that are meant to be very quiet. Some come with built in docking bays like Charger's - another thing you might want to look for! :)
[Edit: One last thing, several places that make DAWs are saying that the newer motherboards don't come with TI chipsets and therefore you can have latency issues with your soundcard or audio adapter. However, if your mobo doesn't have this, you can get a card with the TI chipsets on them to get around the issue.]
And guess what? The TI chipset is no guarantee...
Best thing to do is buy a firewire card, preferably one that is PCIE, and also, one that does not implement a PCI bridge. From what my buddy ( a verifiable genius audio hardware engineer) has told me, the PLX chip is better than TI, but even better than buying a card for a specific chipset, is eliminating the PCI bridge on the card. Also he told me that VIA firewire chips no longer suck. Basically most firewire chips are good enough, but the implementation is where things get messed up.
yeah I got a new PS as well...
Sticking with my PCI soundcard for now (MOTU 2408 mkII). I have low enough latency to monitor thru the computer using whatever fx I want, I'm not anxious to spend money on a USB or firewire audio interface and have latency that prevents me from doing what I can do currently.
I know you recommended clonezilla charger and I checked it out. I am thinking of going with Acronis as I like the idea of incremental backups, also noted they have a restore to dissimilar hardware option which may be handy. Anybody have any experience with this?
Also, lol knowing me and my impatience, i am likely to go ahead and just do this without a boot image backed up. I'm not sure what it would buy me, since if it doesn't work after repair install I need to go from scratch anyway...
Hmm, just found Paragon Free -
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/index.html Gotta like the price ;)
Well I did it. It was painful in an unexpected way. Had everything backed up, swapped out the hardware and rebooted BSOD, complaining about the harddrive. stepped back and looked at everything again, went thru the motherboard manual again. Nothing. So I swapped SATA slots on the DVD drive and the main harddrive. BSOD again. Thought ok, well now its time for a repair install. So started that, everything is loading up, and as soon as it starts writing to the harddrive, BSOD. So now I start thinking my harddrive got messed up somehow.
So I zoom out to bestbuy, grab a fresh drive. Get home, start the install. As soon as it starts writing to the drive, BSOD again. So now I'm no my work computer, Googling for issues with my motherboard. Finally locate a BIOS setting needed for XP to load until the proper AHCI drivers are installed. WOOT! So I go back to my original hardrive and reboot. Success! Lots of driver issues of course, but the basics are working, so I install all the new drivers that came with the motherboard. A couple reboots later, this thing is flying.
What a beast of a machine. I loaded up one of my normal projects, ran at 1.5 ms latency (lowest possible with my soundcard) while live monitoring my guitar thru krankenstein/cabsim/chorus/dalay with absolutely no noticeable latency. One core/thread appears to be at about 40% and the rest are well under 10. The OCD in me will see if I can get that balanced better (might be the OS on that core as well) but this is insane performance.
Thanks for the advice Charger. Other than the dumb AHCI glitch, which at the time caused a bit of grief, it was smooth sailing.