I ordered the above unit from Dell with the base 500 GB drive and the base 4 GB of ram because I figured, being pretty tech savvy, I could do basic upgrades myself, and cheaper than the Dell Recommended Upgrades
Well my first upgrade is going to be to an ssd hard drive. and when done I will move the existing 500gb over to the second bay for data storage.
Dell, and Alienware puts a lot of bloatware on the machine, plus with all the programs I have loaded, I am looking at a used space of about 55 to 60 GB. I can buy an 80 or 60 gb ssd but I have several questions before I make the decision.
1. What is the base footprint of a windows 7 64 bit professional edition install. How much space does that take up? I know how much my needed programs use (Office 2010, etc) but not how much Windows itself really needs. and as for the bloatware all I really want is the ability to have my keyboard light up in its different zones. The rest I think is really fluff. So windows 7 64 bit pro with Alienware FX editor, I think. What else must I have and how much space will that take
2. I did the factory recovery disc creation, using a usb thumb drive, plus I have the application/driver discs that came with the machine. If I put the new ssd drive in, and unstall a base windows, the discs I have should get me my lit up keyboard and drivers back afterward, right? I will not be wiping the original drive and setting it as a data drive until I have the ssd functional.
3. when I do go to put the original drive back in as a backup, what do I change in the bios. It is currently set to use raid even though there is only one drive installed. If I want the second to be a data drive, I turn off raid, right?
Sorry for the questions. Opinions asked for, and appreciated
