Just need a little help getting a ssd and Win 10 cleanly installed!

Hey I have a older Intel H57 mobo chipset which came with my Dell XPS 8100 Studio desktop and I know it's only sata 3 but would like to install a 120gb PNY SSD. I am a little confused because Dell has my single WD Black Cav 1tb HDD running in RAID in the bios menu. How should I go about installing the 120gb SSD for Win 10 x64 and a couple games also keep the WD 1tb HDD as a media, games, etc system storage drive? I have a decent amount of experience with Windows installation and computers in general just never messed with a SSD drive before. I know my mobo/chipset will limit the speed of the SSD but I think my system will still benefit. I have a i7 860 cpu, h57 mobo/5 series 3400 chipset, 8gb 1333mhz ram, Evga FTW 960GTX 4GB gpu, 600w psu, and the WD Black Cav 1tb 7200rpm HDD. Any advice, guides, or help at all would be great! Thanks!

Installing a 2.5" form factor SATA SSD is just like installing a regular hard drive, aside from it being smaller. It uses normal SATA power and signal connectors. Some drives come with cheap (stamped metal) adapters to allow them to be mounted in 3.5" HD bays. I have had trouble with those matching the holes that were present in my case. Some people simply use double-sided tape to hold the drive in place, not necessarily in a HD bay.

I doubt that being limited to 3Gb/s (gigabits/s) will be a serious speed limitation. Your PCI-E X1 slots are rated at 500MB/s (=4Gb/s), so adding a USB 3.0 (6.0 Gb/s) would be a waste.

Before you begin.. Dell is no longer suporting this computer and will not provide any drivers or firmware for windows 10.
So do it on your own Risk.

Does your Motherboard Support multiple HDDs.. I bet it does. Before doing anything please attach SSD on MOBO and ..
Check if OS is able to detect it. (Ports may not be compatible as 8100 is an Old device).
If you can see SSD in OS....
In BIOS you have to change sata mode to AHCI and install OS on SSD... after changing boot order to SSD first.
Now you can use windows 10 without issues.

You can take further trouble if you wish to configure Raid again.

Once OS is installed Download RAID drivers from Dell website..
Now Change Sata mode in BIOS to Raid.. Computer will fail to boot .. Press Ctrl + I and it will ask to choose your Cache drive select your mSATA.

I would recommend to as AHCI instead of Raid as Dell will not give you drivers compatible with OS 10

manish9009 said:

Before you begin.. Dell is no longer suporting this computer and will not provide any drivers or firmware for windows 10.
So do it on your own Risk.

Does your Motherboard Support multiple HDDs.. I bet it does. Before doing anything please attach SSD on MOBO and ..
Check if OS is able to detect it. (Ports may not be compatible as 8100 is an Old device).
If you can see SSD in OS....
In BIOS you have to change sata mode to AHCI and install OS on SSD... after changing boot order to SSD first.
Now you can use windows 10 without issues.

You can take further trouble if you wish to configure Raid again.

Once OS is installed Download RAID drivers from Dell website..
Now Change Sata mode in BIOS to Raid.. Computer will fail to boot .. Press Ctrl + I and it will ask to choose your Cache drive select your mSATA.

I would recommend to as AHCI instead of Raid as Dell will not give you drivers compatible with OS 10

Apparently the machine is already running Win 10.

The case has a specified location for a second HD.

The BIOS has no AHCI setting. The choices are ATA and RAID. I'd leave it at RAID. No need to actually configure a RAID setup.

Savannahmick will probably be using a regular SATA SSD, rather than an mSATA device.

Jeepers - what has happened to support.dell.com? I don't see any Win 7 (the original OS) drivers available for download for the Studio XPS 8100. Can they be gotten with a service tag or serial number?

Yes I can get them with service tag F9JCQL1 and I still have driver disk also. Yeah Dell isn't really good about longterm support! I am going to upgrade but right now I still can score 8000 in Firestrike which is faster than 55% of the systems that run it. Plus money is tight I can game at 1080p with max settings and the old i7 860 at 3.6mhz is fast enough still for most things. Anyway bobkn I really appreciate your help and I am going to install the ssd first thing in the morning. So anymore help or advice would be great! Thanks for all the replies!

savannahmick said:

Yes I can get them with service tag F9JCQL1 and I still have driver disk also. Yeah Dell isn't really good about longterm support! I am going to upgrade but right now I still can score 8000 in Firestrike which is faster than 55% of the systems that run it. Plus money is tight I can game at 1080p with max settings and the old i7 860 at 3.6mhz is fast enough still for most things. Anyway bobkn I really appreciate your help and I am going to install the ssd first thing in the morning. So anymore help or advice would be great! Thanks for all the replies!

I don't have much to add. I tried to recall how to make the old HD not bootable. (Getting rid of the Windows folder will do that, but there may be better ways.)

An I7-860 system isn't exactly archaic. You already have a newish graphics card, which is the most significant hardware upgrade you could get.

A 120 GB SSD is probably adequate, but if you can afford a larger one, go with it. (I bought 120 GB SSDs at around $1US/GB. They're now closer to $0.25/GB.)

Additional recommendations:

Disconnect the old HD while installing 10 on the SSD. Your "digital entitlement" ought to activate 10 on the SSD after a clean install.

If you don't have a means of imaging the old Windows installation (external HD), this would be a good time to obtain one.

bobkn said:

I don't have much to add. I tried to recall how to make the old HD not bootable. (Getting rid of the Windows folder will do that, but there may be better ways.)

An I7-860 system isn't exactly archaic. You already have a newish graphics card, which is the most significant hardware upgrade you could get.

A 120 GB SSD is probably adequate, but if you can afford a larger one, go with it. (I bought 120 GB SSDs at around $1US/GB. They're now closer to $0.25/GB.)

Additional recommendations:

Disconnect the old HD while installing 10 on the SSD. Your "digital entitlement" ought to activate 10 on the SSD after a clean install.

If you don't have a means of imaging the old Windows installation (external HD), this would be a good time to obtain one.

Hey THANKS! I only have one more question should I just use my disk that I created during my first Win 7 to Win 10 upgrade for the install to SSD? Or is there a better way? Also I am running the insider previews if that makes a difference and I see where there is a clean install tool for the insiders but I have to switch drives so not sure if I can use it. I am sorry but one more thing whats to best way to setup old HDD as OS storage and keep running programs from it? This is the last time I'll bug you for awhile! Thanks a million!

savannahmick said:

Hey THANKS! I only have one more question should I just use my disk that I created during my first Win 7 to Win 10 upgrade for the install to SSD? Or is there a better way? Also I am running the insider previews if that makes a difference and I see where there is a clean install tool for the insiders but I have to switch drives so not sure if I can use it. I am sorry but one more thing whats to best way to setup old HDD as OS storage and keep running programs from it? This is the last time I'll bug you for awhile! Thanks a million!

Getting out of my depth here.

If it was me, wanting to install an insider build, I'd want an .ISO. I'm not sure which is the latest available through legitimate sources. I have downloaded an .ESD from an illegitimate source, and converted it to an .ISO. I may not use it unless I get sufficiently bored between now and 2 August.

I believe that there is no simple way to keep running installed programs from the existing HD after it is no longer the OS drive. That is for all programs that used installers, and that have all sorts of entries in the Windows Registry. (Some software runs without being installed, but that is for a small minority.) That's not to say it's impossible, but I don't know how to do it.

CmmTch said:

By the way, I have a couple older Dell laptops from 2008 and 2011 (Latitude's, E6400 and E6420) and using the service tag on their site gives drivers, BIOS, manuals, etc...

In the good old days (maybe as recently as a few months ago), Dell would allow download of drivers etc. without a service tag. Looks like they have tightened up.

I haven't purchased a Dell PC since 1995. (Or any prebuilt desktop PC, for that matter.) I used to sniff around their support area in an attempt to assist others. Looks like that door has closed.