A small 'workstation' for my office

[Pob255]

Cannot speak for linux as I don't use it, windows 7 is very flexable now over hardware changes, worst comes to worst you just run a sysprep and tick the generalise box, this way windows uses a set of generic drivers when you reinitialise it and not try to use the old motherboard drivers. (which was the big issue when changing motherboard in XP)

Not sure how well SSD's react to being partitioned for dual boot, main reason I use multiple drives is for safety, if one fails or gets corrupted the other should be uneffected and if unplugged then there's no chance of overwriting the wrong thing.

on windows 7 one thing I would say is to move the user profiles&floders off the ssd and onto the hard drive, yes this will increase boot times compared to running them off the ssd (as you're loading the profile and desktop) but windows is very messy over profiles and many bits of software dump tons of stuff into user data folders or just outright install themselves in there which means a user profile can grow rather large quite quickly esp if you dump files onto your desktop.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems the Samsung 840 PRO 128GB is on offer:

http://forums.hexus.net/current-barg...o-99-99-a.html

It is a bit more expensive than the normal 840 and other SSDs but the 840 PRO is one of the best SSDs out there IMHO.

[DanceswithUnix]

If the Linux installation is fairly up to date such that it recognises the hardware, then I would expect it to just work. Video drivers may need some manual tweaking if you have gone from say Nvidia to AMD, but the machine should at least boot to the point that you can do that.

If you are moving or adding drives, then the BIOS may number them such that you need to run a rescue disk to tell the boot manager which disk to find Linux on. A single disk system should work.

Windows almost always bites me on motherboard change (though it is getting better), whereas I have never been forced to re-install Linux.

I run dual boot Fedora/Win7 and have been dual boot for years. I run Windows on a seperate drive to Linux so that when I have to re-install Windows I don't risk the Linux install (I tend to unplug the drive just in case).

[Kirano]

Okay, so, it seems that the better option in terms of future stability, ease of use etc. would probably be to use separate drives for the Windows and Ubuntu OS.

If I'm going to do that then the easiest thing for me would be to use my current Ubuntu installation on the separate 500Gb hard-drive I have (which has more than enough space for everything I need) and will save me having to go through the painstaking process of reinstalling Geant4, OpenScientist etc. I can probably go through the install and manually remove things that might create problems (AMD drivers, anything related to the mobo etc.) before removing it and putting it in the new desktop. I'm using 12.04 (the LTS support) btw.

@DanceswithUnix - would that be a windows rescue disk or a linux one? Linux has generally been very good to me when it comes to hardware changes... The only time I had a problem was when I hadn't booted it for about 4-5 months, during which time I'd replaced almost everything else in the computer. Unsurprisingly, when I booted it it wasn't impressed. Probably if I'd been a bit more tech savvy, I could have done some command-line work to rescue it.... I wasn't - I don't think I'd even call myself tech savvy now.

So, a single SSD for the Windows OS + 1Tb drive for the data should easily cover everything I'll need to do in windows. In fact it will probably be slightly overkill but you can never have too much space, right? X) That said I filled about 20Gigs of Google drive with data from simulation runs in a matter of weeks, so maybe it won't be all that unused...

I have been eyeing the pro series drives for a while... Let me recalculate the basket, start budgeting for other stuff and see what I have left....

[Pob255]

One thing to note with SSD's is that larger ones of the same type/model are generally a bit faster, not but massive amounts but still a bit faster.
If you can get that samsung 849 pro into the budget that would be a good move you can always add in a 2nd ssd later for linux if needed

[Kirano]

One thing to note with SSD's is that larger ones of the same type/model are generally a bit faster, not but massive amounts but still a bit faster.
If you can get that samsung 849 pro into the budget that would be a good move you can always add in a 2nd ssd later for linux if needed

You know what? That was just the conundrum that was going through my mind. I guess now I have my answer!

Sweet! Thank you so much for all your help and support with this everyone... Here's a snapshot of the final basket, still nicely within the price range I had set out for this!

Oh... well, there would be if I could figure out how CAT-THE-FIFTH was so clever and posted an image to the chain!

Basically it's what CAT-THE-FIFTH had in post number 12 except with the Coolermaster K-280, a 1Tb drive and the Samsung Pro 128GB SSD. Plus an extra 120mm fan (the one recommended by you Pob255)

Ordering tomorrow morning, delivery for Friday, assembling on Saturday, setup in office on Sunday, work LIKE A BOSS Monday through to June 2014! Well, that's the plan anyway!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You will need to upload the picture?? I use photobucket.

[DanceswithUnix]

@DanceswithUnix - would that be a windows rescue disk or a linux one? Linux has generally been very good to me when it comes to hardware changes... The only time I had a problem was when I hadn't booted it for about 4-5 months, during which time I'd replaced almost everything else in the computer. Unsurprisingly, when I booted it it wasn't impressed. Probably if I'd been a bit more tech savvy, I could have done some command-line work to rescue it.... I wasn't - I don't think I'd even call myself tech savvy now.

That was with Fedora, where the install disk also doubles as a rescue disk.
I had upgraded the motherboard and Windows hosed itself and had to be reinstalled, so the grub bootloader was gone from the boot hard disk. Booting into rescue I could see the linux partitions OK, with some googling I told rescue where my root partition was and it booted. Run grub, reboot, linux all fixed.