http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=341-2178

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A0158183

Buy a new hard drive for the XPS. ($200)

Preserve the old one as is.

Install the new one.

And restore from scratch using the recovery and distribution media..

If I missed anything, then I have the old one easily accessible to copy from or fall back to.

After everything works, I’ll take an image backup.

This will serve for the next time.

At some point in time, I’ll nuke the extra drive and use it for Linux effort.

Comments?