Dell with Arch
 

OK so I bought a dell precision workstation m3800 that came installed with Ubuntu. I want to switch out the hdd with a ssd and put Arch OS on there. It has no optical drive to install with a CD, so my question is if I can use a usb external optical device to install arch, and what problems might I run into?

My google string was. "Install ARCH from an USB stick" the top hit was
http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Arch-Linux

Every distro can be installed with a USB stick, you don't need an external USB drive ;)

Simply download the distro's ISO (in your case, the Arch linux ISO) and "burn" it to an USB stick.

First of all, delete all the partition of the USB stick.
Then, if you're on Windows you can use the UNetbootin utility, if you're on Linux you can simply run:

Just make EXTRA SURE that you've got the right drive, because doing that will erase ALL DATA on the disk.

(Technically, some of it might be able to be recovered by testdisk or photorec, but that's a different story.)

So if I take the hard disc drive that already has Ubuntu Installed on it, and replaced it with a SSD to install Arch on there, I should not have to worry about the Ubuntu unless I want to put it in a different laptop.

Correct. If you remove the original drive and install a separate hard drive, then nothing you do with the Arch will ever affect the Ubuntu install.

marshen,

Before you proceed with your Arch installation, I strongly recommend reading these two official Arch guides.

Arch Beginners' Guide:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide

Arch Installation Guide:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

Also have a look at post #3 here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...es-4175540082/

Finally, make sure you are familiar with using nano:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/42980...e-text-editor/

And if that documentation gives you the horrors, use Bridge which is Arch with a conventional installer.