2nd HDD and need for an Alienware Respawn Disc?

I'm currently out in Iraq, and waiting on my M17 to be built and shipped out here, I ordered with a 160gb hdd, but have a 320 I recently bought I want to put in to, but the 320 already has Vista Ultimate 64 bit, and all my programs and games I want on the alienware, can I just put the 320 in the alienware, try and transfer drivers over, and boot from the 320? Then format and use the 160 as just basic storage until I get another 320 for raid? Will I need anything off the respawn CD for any of this? What exactly is the benifit of having it?

 

well you can put in the 320 and install the drivers , it should work and then you can format and use the 160 gb, respawn disc is just like a recovery disk but it would makes sense to attach the 360 and then use the respawn disc especially in 64 vista since it stores a lot of dll and drivers from the pervious installs

 

You should be ok all you have to do is install windows on the 320 gb hard drive. I done it. Now the raid I am unsure of becuse I never raid a computer. Yuck I hate laptop keyboards.

 

As long as you don't want to Raid 0/1 you only need a bootable backup of the 160GB HDD which can also be made with Acronis or something like this ...

This will, like the Respawn DVD does, coppy the files from the "old HDD" which are on the "DVD" (you or AW made) to the new HDD.

I would just put the second HDD (320gb) in the first slot than, after the "copping", the old 160gb in the secondslot.

I guess you can also use the 320gb HDD as the backupdrive but I never used Acronis so I don't know wheather this would work as well.

Greetings
Julian

 

Sounds good, how big is the backup image? Where can I download the program?

And why not if I want to Raid? So if I get another 320 down the road I won't be able to raid them?

 

I think the point was can he use the EXISTING windows installation on the 320GB drive on the M17, and the answer is probably no (but you may be very lucky).

If I am wrong, please ignore the first half of this post...

When Windows installs it self configures for the HW on the machine it is being installed on to. Therefore unless the machine the 320GB came from was very very similar to the M17, it is very unlikely the existing OS (with all your games etc... installed) will even boot on the M17.

You may get lucky and it will boot, but I would not bet on any games / complex applications running without issue.

If you are willing to re-install the OS and games etc... currently on the 320GB drive, so you can start with a clean installation / mirrored version of the AW original installation from the 160GB drive, then you absolutely can run the machine from the 320GB drive, but it will need a new install (see above).

As for the respawn DVD, there are other methods of doing this (which will also allow you to image the system and deploy it on to the RAID array once you have that setup). You could certainly get by with free tools ( http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm offers a free tool (time limited) capable of doing this), which saves you buying the respawn DVD...

 

is it possible, or worth it to reinstall the computer with the OEM copy of Vista Ultimate 64 that I have on this computer, and install the copy of Vista premium that comes on the AW onto my old one? Or no?

 

Possible, probably (with some wrangling on the phone to MS, you may be able to get them to activate you licenses), but technically OEM copies are tied to specific machine, so it would be against the license terms...

 

Raid 0 is a problem because of:

You can not use a non Raid backup so easy to get it run on a raid ...

I hoped: "Just greate the raid in the bios and than use the Respawn DVD" ... but it didn't work ...

So you will have to reinstall Vista and so on by youre own

But I think E-wrecked said something about it would be possible some way ...

Sry^^

Greetings
Julian

 

Having done similar before, I suspect you need to ensure the raid drivers are installed before you ghost the drive. I have previously moved a hard drive from one machine to another (different HW) without having to re-install the OS by ensuring all possible storage drivers were installed, but it was a while ago, so I can't remember if there was more to do than that...

Edit: Try this (page 5 of replacing a motherboard without re-install). You will need to use a boot CD / bootable memory stick to restore the image on to the RAID array, and then follow the repair installation steps discussed in this link. I am not sure a respawn DVD will work to do the ghosting / restoring on to the RAID array, you may need to use a different tool which is less low level (drivesnapshot is an example of one I think would work better).

Edit 2: Seems it is possible to move to RAID, see comment 24 on this page...

 

May be AW put something in the Respawn DVD that it doesn't work ...
or I just messed something up^^

Greetings
Julian

 

Possibly, not sure how the respawn DVD would work if trying on to a RAID array, it may have worked if the image had been taken with different software rather than whatever AW use for the respawn DVD. I am actually going to try this myself when mine arrives (will keep original single drive, so can try a few options), and I will post details on how I get on (I am not buying the respawn DVD, so I won't be able to report on attempts with it)