Dell upgrade questions?

Well I have my brothers dell xps with Pentium D 820 and its a 775 socket. I want to get him a new mobo without re installing windows or wiping the HD. Is this possible? Any way to transfer what is already on the HD to a larger HD mostly to get to a sata raid set up going?

If there is a sticky or some good reading on the subject?

When you upgrade the motherboard you should reinstall the OS. If he is worried about losing data he needs to seriously re-think his back-up policy. It will probably work but not efficiently. To transfer the info to another just get a drive imaging program. There is a good thread going on in the applications section on the subject you should check out.

Without a reformat your Windows install can/will start doing some wonky stuff, chipset drivers etc.

Also I hope you've fully looked into the replacing a dell system motherboard apporach, since in most cases its a lost cause.

I will check out the drive imaging, problem is he has a good $200 worth of games installed and don't have the cd's anymore. If it wasn't a 775 socket I through the whole thing away but new mobo and latter a new cpu it still has life...

Why would you want a new motherboard for an OEM? Most of the Dell motherboards are pretty decent to begin with and secondly you will have difficulty finding a replacement that 1. Fits, 2. Has the correct power plugs. Even my dimension 9100 has a RAID controller built into the MB.

And yes moving windows to another HD or swapping the MB without reinstalling is bad. Expect performance to suffer if it even works.