I think I'm going to order two more 2 TB WD Black HDD's - Newegg has them cheap again (running 5 - 2 TB WD blacks internal now, not to mention multiple 3 and 4 TB externals).

Then when they get here pull out the Win 7 and Win XP HDDs (dual boot now).

Re-image one of the new HDs with Win 7 (I use Acronis to back-up/restore image) as first boot then install Win(d)-X as on the other new drive as second boot (again dual boot) so I DON'T screw up a perfectly fine and working Win 7 - Win XP dual boot set up (MUCH, much quicker to swapped pairs of drives in and out then "recovering/reimaging" drives).

I need to do this because I just ran the Win 8.1 compatibility "check" - I could not believe how much SW, and even some drivers, got flagged (mainly non music related SW/HW).

Same of SW that works FINE in Win 7 (64) but makes Win 8.1 whine baffles me (e.g., image management programs like Paperport Pro, MP3 CD applications, all Steam games mark as incompatible (admittedly that is probably just a Steam re-install), some SW that is specialized math/stat apps, but I fell out of my chair when it even whined about:

"SONAR 7 Producer Edition
Cakewalk Music Software, Version 15.0

Paid update available"


But Sonar 6 Pro and Sonar 8/8.5 Pro are fine, WTFO?

If this SW really DOES NOT work in Win 8.1, and in-turn Win X, it's going to cost me a lot of money for new SW (not the Sonar stuff) if I have to get them all for WIN X, a lot more than a couple hundred bucks for two new drives.

If it turns out that the Win 8.1 pre-warning/whining is mainly just false flags and hiccups, and at least most SW is fine, and drivers for ALL external HW work (don’t want to get sucked into another round of HW buys - Firewire, USB, and RS-232), then I'll set up a triple boot: Win XP, Win 7, and Win X and keep it that way until MoBo fails, or external HW that requires Win XP and some SW that also needs XP are retired.

Probably ought to sled the HDD's them like we do at work so we can simply pull drives from front of case - was going to do that when I built this PC but got lazy.

Win10Pro,i9,64GB,2TBSSD+20TBHDDs,1080TI,BIAB'24,Scarlett18i8,Montage7,Fusion 8HD,QS8,Integra7,XV5080,QSR,SC-8850,SPLAT,FL21&others,Komp.14,IK suite&others, just a guitar player-AXE FX III &FM9T, FishmanTP, MIDIGuitar2, GK2/3'sw/GI20