Advice on PC upgrade

[civil]

Good People:

I asked this at EvAv I believe, before the...well, you know. But I don't remember the answers and I'd rather start afresh:

I bought two new HDDs, 8 gigs of RAM and Vista 64 to upgrade my computer. Currently it's got a single HDD, standard computer shit, a GeForce 8800 and runs 32-bit Vista. I only want to run the 64-bit on this machine as I'm only using it for video editing, so I don't need any fancy dual-booting capabilities. My question is how to approach this as this will be the closest I've ever been to "building" a system. I want to do a fresh install of Vista and am not worried about keeping anything that's on there. So I was thinking I'd go in this order:

1. Install 64-bit Vista and make sure it's all good.
2. Update any drivers I need to.
3. Install RAM and make sure that's all good too.
4. Finally install both HDDs.

Does that seem like a good way to go about it? I do want to use the old HDD for the OS, one HDD for storage and the other HDD to run the video editing program.

TIA for any advice,

civil


EDIT: The GF is asking when I'm coming to bed so if anyone replies and I don't reply back it's not rudeness it's sleep.

[Grifter]

If it were me and you have the service pack 1 version of V64 I would format the drive install everything (like it's a new build) then install Vista. If it's a pre-SP1 version of Vista and an Nforce based motherboard do everything as above except only install 2GB of your RAM before hand and the other 6 after everything has been updated.

Just my opinion.

[biosc1]

Personally, I like to install Vista, install the drivers I need for the mobo, graphics card, network, etc...then I do all the Windows Updates...just my personal preference, but when updating I like to know that Vista knows what exactly I have hardware-wise.

[Disgustipated]

Make sure to memtest86 the RAM.

[civil]

If it were me and you have the service pack 1 version of V64 I would format the drive install everything (like it's a new build) then install Vista. If it's a pre-SP1 version of Vista and an Nforce based motherboard do everything as above except only install 2GB of your RAM before hand and the other 6 after everything has been updated.

Just my opinion.
It is an SP1 version. You would suggest install everything then upgrade the OS? If I understand correctly 32-bit only "sees" 3 gigs but can work with 4. I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "format the drive install everything" - to me that would mean installing the new OS. But I'm in uncharted waters. :o

Personally, I like to install Vista, install the drivers I need for the mobo, graphics card, network, etc...then I do all the Windows Updates...just my personal preference, but when updating I like to know that Vista knows what exactly I have hardware-wise.
Good point. I think you and Grifter are saying the same thing, if I understand you both.

Make sure to memtest86 the RAM.
Which (memtest86 or memtest86+) do you do? How many cycles do you usually do? I get impatient and usually just give it 2.

[biosc1]

Which (memtest86 or memtest86+) do you do? How many cycles do you usually do? I get impatient and usually just give it 2.

I think he's a fan of all-nighters...

[civil]

I'm gonna do this thing tomorrow and now I have another question: Is a partition necessary? I'm going to have three HDDs (one 400 gig and two 640 gig). On the smaller HDD I'm going to put the OS and misc applications I have (Office, Photoshop, the usual other programs), the other will be for a video editing program and the third will be where I store the video editing files. Since I have the actual OS DVD I figure I don't need to partition. Would there be a reason I would need to?

[muddi900]

I partition just for the hell of it. I regret it now because there is no point to it with multi-HDDs. Just make one small partition for the OS or store your important files away from the OS drive.