Need strategy for migrating existing C: drive to SSD + 1TB storage

[DerekOldschool]

I have 3xWDCaviarSE16 250G(RAID0) as my C: drive and they are getting old. They are running perfectly, but getting old (almost 5 yrs) and it is time to upgrade. The C; drive is currently using 300G of the 700G available. It is not partitioned and I'm running Win7 Pro x64

I just purchased a Crucial M4 Micron C400 SSD 256GB for use as my new C: drive

I also purchased a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB for use as a storage drive for My Documents, etc.

After doing some research, my strategy would be to plug in the WD 1TB drive, create the stroage partition, and move My Documents (and anything else that needs to be backed up) to the new storage drive.

Then I would uninstall games and apps that I'm not using and clean up the C: drive to make sure it is using the least amount of space. My idea is to reduce the size of the C: drive to about 100G and have everything else on the WD 1TB storage drive.

At that point, I would plug the new 256G SSD in and transfer image of the ~100G C: drive to it with Acronis or some other similar softwear.

I've never actually done this before and I can't seem to find a good source for the full deal on this. I'm also worried about going from a raid configuration to just one drive - will that screw up things when I try to first boot off of the SSD?

Thanks for any opinions, links, etc.

Derek

 

[grinder]

If it were me i'd save myself the trouble and install clean on the new drive; us techies typically re-load windows annually anyways don't we?

 

[DerekOldschool]

I did plan on getting 2x GTX560 Ti for Christmas and possibly doing a fresh install over the holidays...... but that's so far away.....

 

[Guest]

Yeah I would move your library to the black and anything else you want saved, install windows and what ever apps/games you want on the ssd. Relink the library from your ssd to the saved ones on your black. Once you are certain you have everything saved then nuke the array and setup a mirror with 2x250 drives, keep the other 250gb as a hot spare for the array. Then use the 250 array for a redundant backup. IE: images/docs,video. Updated everyweek or per month up to you.
if your black goes you have the 250 array still, if the 250 array goes you still have 1x250gb spare to rebuild, with out data loss.

 

[DerekOldschool]

thanks for the feedback - I've got the 1TB drive installed and My Documents transferred.

I'll be installing windows on the SSD this weekend!

 

[DerekOldschool]

got the drive installed and my disk Data transfer windows index went from 5.9 to 7.4!