opinion please

wolfeking

wolfeking

banned
Okay, so I have run into a quandry here. I have been less than impressed with my samsung 830 SSD. So I pulled it out and stuck it in my M90. Now knowing this, it only has ATA mode. I have yet to find a ACHI/SATA setting like the M90 had. So, should I just use the ~ 15GB of free space that I left for Ubuntu originally to install Ubuntu? Or should I go and divi the drive to 2 64GB areas and dual boots it with windows 7 or vista (still need to find a graphic driver for 7 that does not crash so much). Now I can only really see 2 ways about it.

1. Just use Ubuntu for school time. I have the intel wireless card in so its wireless in ubuntu. That would, at least as far as i know, leave teh windows partition in tact so that any time I want to I can just drop it in the desktop and boot up no issue.

2. Reinstall vista/7 and ubuntu too. Freeware is there. But if I were to put it back in the desktop I would again need to install windows and download everything.

or Wildcard 3.
ghost an image of whats on the drive now onto a partition on the 1TB drive, and then format and install as stated in option 2. That would minimize the reinstall time if putting it back into the desktop, yes?
 
okay, what I am going to do right now till someone can give guidence is install ubuntu to the free space just to get it functioning again. Then we can figure out what to do with windows.
 
If it were me I'd divide the drive into two and install Ubuntu on one half and Vista or 7 on the other. I'd probably start from scratch and reinstall both. Then make an image of the drive if you can and save it somewhere so you don't need to reinstall both in the event of an emergency.
 
okay. Should I image the drive as is onto the 1TB before I image the laptop setup? I have plenty of room for it, as it would only be 256GB of 800+ free.

And I may run it with 2k and Ubuntu. Or XP and Ubuntu. Not sure yet. It has the license to XP on the bottom of its case, so probably going to use it and ubuntu. Its running Ubuntu on the 16 GB that I left free when I installed 7 on the desktop and its noticably faster than 7 was on teh desktop. Boot time is a shade under 15 seconds and thats on SATA 2. Note average time on a 7200 RPM laptop drive was a shade under 24 seconds.
 
Yes make an image/copy of the drive as it is now just in case you decide to go back. Then split the drive in half and install your OSes and make another image of the drive and save that too.

Ubuntu and XP sounds OK, I'd still go for Vista or 7 over XP but if the machine is licensed for XP then that may be better.
 
Well the main issue with vista and 7 are graphics drivers. The ones dell has for vista are very unstable (as in BSOD crashing unstable), and Nvidia says to go to the laptop manufacturer for drivers. So to use Vista/7 for any length of time I would have to flash the BIOS of the GPU to the 7900m GTX which would loose the ability to run openGL programs, but at the benefit of driver stability. :(

I may very well be able to get away with just Ubuntu. Ill ask em tomorrow and see. I think most of the work is online so I don't see why I couldn't.
 
If you have issues with the newer OSes and graphics drivers then going full time with Ubuntu would probably be the best way to go.

You do know Windows 7 has a very nice backup tool don't you? You can make bare-metal backups of any drive you like (including C:\) and save the image to another drive and it only takes 20 minutes or so to restore.
 
What I am going to do for now is run with the install I have, and keep my HDD in the optical bay in case I need windows. Then If I need more space for ubuntu, I can slip the drives into the desktop, backup the SSD and reimage the whole thing in ubuntu.
 
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