Upgrade - new MB CPU SSD with some old parts

[duallydave]

Approximate Purchase Date: in the next couple of weeks

Budget Range: (1000 - 1200)

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: (CPU, mobo, RAM, SSD) CMPSU-750TX

Do you need to buy OS: No - use existing upgrade W7HP from newegg

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg.com

Location: Seattle area

Parts Preferences: Asus Z77 sabertooth, core i7 3770, corsair CMD16GX3M4A1866C9, samsung 840 pro SSD, corsair H80 cooler

Overclocking: Yes - mild

SLI: Maybe

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1200

Additional Comments: I would like a quiet PC - will add soundproofing to my rattly Lian Li case

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: parts are aging (7 hard drives), want faster, itching to build something

The current PC is 4 years old, takes a while to boot, raid 5 needs to go, too many hard drives. I enjoy building computers, I've built a number of them in the past, but nothing in 4 years. I originally used a SAS mirror for my boot drive, and raid5 data drive, then did an upgrade install from Vista to W7HP, but when I tried going back to a previous restore point it blew up in my face due to the SAS drivers and the upgrade install from Vista. I then made the raid 5 set my boot disk, but it takes several minutes to boot, and the raid5 set is always hiccuping

currently: LIAN LI PC-V1010B, Asus P6T deluxe, core i7 920, 12G corsair XMS3, Noctua cooler, 5 x WD6400AAKS as raid 5, 2 x 136G SAS 10k as raid 1, GTX 550 Ti, ASUS Xonar DX 7.1, LG GGW-H20L DVD

What I am thinking is to clone the existing boot drive to the samsung 840 pro SSD, replace the mobo, cpu, and ram, then do an upgrade install to the SSD so it will see the new hardware. I would then use the other disks as several raid1 mirrors for several data drives. I know I would have to move a lot of data out of the way to reduce my boot drive size so I could clone (would like to use the 256G 840 pro rather than paying for the 512). I do have a seagate external backup drive with my data backed up, but I'm hoping to clone so I don't have to reinstall everything. I only have about 600G of data on this 2tb raid 5 set, so I don't really need all those drives. I'm concerned they might start failing before long, and depending on my backups and a new SSD instead of a raid boot disk.

Does this plan seem reasonable? I usually do new installs, but in those cases I have two computers, old and new, rather than a rebuild of the hardware. I'm concerned about cloning, I have not done that before, and hoping that a clone + upgrade install will make it go a lot faster so I'm not without a completely functional computer for a while. I would not care to reinstall all my software if I don't have to.

I'm a Unix sys admin at work, so kind of a computer junkie , I tend to overbuild because I can. A full new build would probably double the cost with a new case, PSU, GTX 660, etc.

 

[popatim]

What you already have should be pretty quick as is and overkill for what you say you use it for. Why not start with the SSD and see how performance goes.

Since those Blues are not recommended for use in raid anyways go ahead and split them up as you see fit.

If that doesnt make you happy again go ahead and spend away. The apart you've picked out are well thought out and you shouldn't really have an issue.

 

[duallydave]

Thank you, I agree that starting with the SSD alone may be a good option, I at least want to make sure it still runs after the clone. At that point I would at least know if the first step is working and I can easily go back if it does not clone properly.

If I was rich I would probably buy a Tesla, just because it would be cool and fast, despite being way more than I need, for the same reasons I want to build a lot more computer than I really need.