WorknPlay said:
The procedure below is how I recently transferred a pair of 300GB mirrored RAID 1 multi-partition bootable drives (1 failed) to a pair of 320GB drives (maintaining Windows without having to "repair" it). (NOTE this will only work with broken mirrored RAID 1 volumes where the working drive is smaller to or equal in size to the new drive).
I’m going to assume your mirror RAID was bootable and not simply mirrored storage.
If you’ve identified your dead drive (fairly easy to do) remove it and install one of your 1TB drives.
Boot your PC and once in Windows go to the Computer Management Console / Disk Management and setup the 1TB drive for use on your system (set the drive to basic – not dynamic). Remember, Windows is going to go through it's "found new hardware" routine while you’re doing this and will want to reboot – ignore it. If you have problems booting, I’d double check the boot drive sequence in your BIOS.
Once you've set the new drive for basic use, exit the Computer Management Consol and enter Intel's Matrix Storage Consol (IMSC).
IMSC may identify the new 1TB HD as a candidate for use in recreating the broken mirrored RAID 1 set and will ask you if you want to use it – I think you know what to do. If IMSC doesn’t prompt you, this can be done manually (see IMSC help). In any event, you should be able to tell IMSC to use the new drive to re-create the old RAID mirror set which it will do. With the size of the old mirror set I’m guessing this will take about 1.5-2 hrs. Great thing about IMSC is you can continue to use your computer while it re-creates your mirror – just don’t do anything that would cause a crash (though IMSC usually recovers and just continues on where it left off next time you re-start your computer).
Once your RAID volume has been re-created with the 500GB/1TB pair, shut down your computer, unplug the 500GB drive (don’t remove it) and add the 2nd 1TB drive – if you didn’t before, I would suggest placing the bootable TB drives you just added on to your 1st & 2nd SATA channels and move your 500GB to the 3rd channel (leave it disconnected). I typically have my SATA CD/DVD-RAM on the last SATA channel.
Start your computer. If you have problems booting, double check your BIOS for the bootable device identity and set the bootable accordingly.
Once you're back into Windows, follow the same procedure to recreate your mirror RAID set as you did above (this time with both 1TB drives). I'm guessing this is going to take about 2-4 hrs for the RAID set to be created.
Once your 1TB RAID mirror is created and IMSC is reporting 100% health, enter IMSC and rename your new 1TB RAID volume to something differing from the original 500GB setup.
NOW .. what you will find after all of this is you're using only ½ of your 1TB drives (the other ½ remains unused).
If you don’t need to add any of the unused space onto an existing volume you can simply create a new partition (volume and drive letter) in Windows Disk Managment utility.
IF however, you want to add the unused space to an existing volume(s) (partition(s)) without destroying the data on the existing volume, you’re going to need HDD partitioning software (like Partition Magic which I use and trust) – Windows Disk Manager DOES NOT allow you to add empty space onto an existing partition without destroying the existing partition first (and any data contained therein).
So, now your 1TB RAID 1 is working.
I suggest you leave the working 500GB disk unpowered and disconnected for a week or two until you’re completely satisfied with how your 1TB RAID is working (consider it’s existence as an insurance policy if something were to go wrong). Once you’re happy, re-connect the 500GB drive and upon rebooting, enter the Intel RAID setup [ctrl]+
during the POST and delete your 500GB RAID configuration - this will release (but not erase) the 500GB drive for single drive use (you won't get a constantly annoying warning from IMSC in Windows that your 500GB RAID volume is broken when the drive is connected).
You will find when you return to Windows, despite the warning in the RAID setup utility, that data on RAID 1 volumes does not get destroyed when deleting mirrored RAID 1 sets – only data on RAID 0 (stripped) volumes is destroyed (duh!). I think who ever writes the software for this utility needs to clarify this. The point being you’re going to see copies of each partition with your 500GB drive attached – enter Disk Manager and delete (or re-format) your volumes on the 500GB drive as necessary.
Footnote: I recently discovered that a RAID pair being moved from a system with Intel's ICH8DO Southbridge to a system with the ICH8R Southbridge retained it’s pairing (I didn’t have to re-create the RAID pair). Will this work for say an ICH8R to ICH10R sys? Possibly, but with the differing chipsets, you won’t be able to boot into Windows without a repair to install the new chipset drivers.
Good luck.