That is a lot of really good information. Thank you very much.

I know for certain that my computer does indeed support mirroring, since when the guy built it for me (he was chief engineer at the radio station where I worked) he set it up as a RAID system. The RAID failed and, not being a fan of RAID I changed over to a setup of individual hard drives. Since that time my hard drive storage has increased from 680 GB to 6.7 TB, nearly a ten-fold increase. And of course, every bit and byte stored in my computer is crucially important. Yeah, right.

I still have to shop for the SSD, and am not having much luck finding the Intel or Sandforce models you recommend. Any recommendations as to where to look? Edit: That's because Intel doesn't make a 128GB SSD. They have 80GB and 160GB. If their 80GB is smaller than my 80GB mechanical drive, I can't do the mirror, so I guess I'm looking at the 160GB.

I did have one thought of a minor problem: I am replacing a 3.5" drive with a 2.5" form factor, so of course the mounting hardware isn't going to work. Are there 2.5"<-->3.5" mounting adapter kits out there? There must be.

This really does look to be a straightforward process, unless I run into problems because my BIOS is unhappy with the SSD instead of a mechanical drive, or Microsoft is unhappy because my copy of Windows is registered to a certain hard drive. Hopefully if either of these problems arises it will be relatively easily solvable.

If I move to Windows 7 (no really compelling reason to do so right now) I will bite the bullet and reformat and go 64-bit. I have heard too many horror stories about upgrading to a new OS (rather than nuke and repave) because when you upgrade you are just bringing all the old faults and registry problems along with you. My install is five years old now, and I'm sure there are little things not quite right, lots of software has been installed and removed over the years and we know how that leaves detritus. Maybe next year, when the new SSD is all installed and settled in and I am looking to increase my frustration level by an order of magnitude.

tanstaafl.