Good plan. It should work nice. However, I don't think machines are shipping with Windows7-64 DVDs any more. You might get lucky or you might have to request it.

Setup existing drives and check operation.

Try to create any Dell Recovery USB flashes (why not). Maybe even Image the HDD if you care to ever revert back.

Remove both the existing mSata drive and spinning-HDD.

Install 240gb mSata.

Check for detection in BIOS. Set BIOS and RAID-BIOS (if available) to plain AHCI and no caching. Pick either UEFI or Legacy.

Install Windows 7 clean. Then chipset and other drivers (see my favorites).

When happy, install spinning HDD. Check BIOS detect. Erase all partitions, create partition, format as D:

 

Cheers for the reply!

In case of emergency i have an extra copy of windows 7 pro i'm more tempted to use, but thanks for heads up on possible lack of os!

So questions that arise from this is, whats RAID-BIOS? Will i easily be able to find and select options AHCI and no caching and which boot order system is preferred, UEFI or Legacy?

I assume chipset and drivers will be on the alienware resource CD?

Cheers

Ruley

Yes, they'll be there.

You can easily change that on the BIOS to AHCI under SATA Operation.

Any of them should be fine, however I find Legacy more familiar.

I wouldn't burn a retail $150 license, when the machine comes with one (that you paid for).

Look around for Intel raid controller options. It's possibly all inside the UEFI interface now.

I've seen some new (Win 8.x capable) UEFI computers ship in Legacy mode. Try the different ways yourself or Google it:

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19498444.aspx

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417361,00.asp

All drivers are at http://ftp.dell.com or http://support.dell.com

 

Hey everyone, thanks for all the replies!

So, laptop came, it has the OS CD and resource CD (lucky me!) i've booted it and all seems well with ram and CPU etc...

I had a poke around in the bios without saving just to see what was there.

I can change mSATA operation from RAID to AHCI but i cant see a specific option to disable cacheing (does one exist?)

Laptop is already set up in legacy boot mode so i will use that order.

So the plan is to install 250 msata

+

remove HDD,

Boot and change msata operation from raid to AHCI

boot order CD drive first

install windows 7 from os cd to 250 msata with no partitioning

boot and install drivers

remount HDD and format clean for use as storage!

Thoughts?

cheers for everyones help

George

Did your plan work? I am planning to do the same thing. I am going to use a 256 msata and use the HDD for storage. Did you run into any problems? Did you continue to run AHCI mode after installing the HDD or did you switch back to RAID since you have two drives now? Thanks!

Did you do any of the following after installing your SSD? 1. Enable Trim 2. Disable Hibernate 3. Disable or Move Page File to secondary HDD 4. Move Windows Temporary Files to secondary HDD 5. Disable System Restore 6. Enable Write Caching 7. Disable Indexing 8. Disable Superfect, Windows Search, and Prefetch Thanks!