Raid 1 Conversion.

[_Grid21]

I've this theory for a few months now and no one seems to know the answer so I thought I'd try here. My motherboard is a Asus Z87-A with SATA hotplug and RAID 1 abilities. What I'd like to know is, is it possible while my computer is on to swap an HDD with an SSD, let the Intel Rapid storage software rebuild the raid, then swap the second drive again with another SSD and basically upgrade the raid from two HDDs to two SSDs? Since hotplug is enabled and RAID 1 is a mirroring of two or more drives, wouldn't it be possible to do this without reinstalling Windows 10?

Let me know and thanks in advance!
Grid

[r4tch3t]

I see no reason why it wouldn't work, as long as the ssd is the same size or larger.

Intel instructions for rebuilding if you hasn't seen them yet.

[_Grid21]

5 minutes ago, r4tch3t said:

I see no reason why it wouldn't work, as long as the ssd is the same size or larger.

Intel instructions for rebuilding if you hasn't seen them yet.

 

Really? I was looking into getting the Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD. So it should work to convert to that then?

[r4tch3t]

As far as Intel is concerned a drive is a drive. As long as the replacement drive is big enough.

With over provisioning you might find the 1tb ssd could be a little smaller than a 1TB hdd.

I would advise checking first and if the ssd is smaller you may need to shrink the hdd volume.

Another alternative would be to clone the raid volume to one ssd then build the array with the second drive.

[_Grid21]

3 minutes ago, r4tch3t said:

As far as Intel is concerned a drive is a drive. As long as the replacement drive is big enough.

With over provisioning you might find the 1tb ssd could be a little smaller than a 1TB hdd.

I would advise checking first and if the ssd is smaller you may need to shrink the hdd volume.

Another alternative would be to clone the raid volume to one ssd then build the array with the second drive.

How do you close a raid volume? I'm still kinda new to RAIDs. And honestly I need 1TB because of programs and OS have taken up over 600 plus GB.

[r4tch3t]

If you did need to shrink the volume it would only be a couple hundred megs, just the difference between the drives.

The samsung ssds come with migration software.

What I would most likely do is

install one ssd

Install the samsung software and migrate the raid to the ssd.

install the second ssd

change the boot priority to the ssd and you should be back in Windows

Create a new raid with the two ssds.

 

If it all works you should have a new ssd raid volume, you can then delete the old raid or just keep it as a raid 1 and format it for storage.

[xentropa]

7 hours ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

I've this theory for a few months now and no one seems to know the answer so I thought I'd try here. My motherboard is a Asus Z87-A with SATA hotplug and RAID 1 abilities. What I'd like to know is, is it possible while my computer is on to swap an HDD with an SSD, let the Intel Rapid storage software rebuild the raid, then swap the second drive again with another SSD and basically upgrade the raid from two HDDs to two SSDs? Since hotplug is enabled and RAID 1 is a mirroring of two or more drives, wouldn't it be possible to do this without reinstalling Windows 10?

Let me know and thanks in advance!
Grid

IT should be possible.....

 

Is your HDD already in a raid 1 config?

 

If so, just pull out one of the drives, and plug in your SSD.  Then go to the intel storage software and designate the SSD as a spare drive, and the data will automatically start moving over.

 

Rinse and repeat for the second drive.

[_Grid21]

2 hours ago, xentropa said:

IT should be possible.....

 

Is your HDD already in a raid 1 config?

 

If so, just pull out one of the drives, and plug in your SSD.  Then go to the intel storage software and designate the SSD as a spare drive, and the data will automatically start moving over.

 

Rinse and repeat for the second drive.

 

It is already in a RAID1 config. I'm glad my theory was correct though! Thanks. Should I be aware of any other parts of switching from HDDs to SSDs?

[r4tch3t]

Just that you will wonder how you used your computer so long without them.

[_Grid21]

1 hour ago, r4tch3t said:

Just that you will wonder how you used your computer so long without them.

Hahaha true. But I love the benefits of RAID1. The problem I'm having is when the raid check kicks in my 7200RPM drives actually lag hard and it's annoying which is why I have the raid checked at night when I am sleeping. But since everyone is ranting and raving about SSDs I guess I thought I'd give in but didn't want to mess up my nicely configured computer just to switch which how my theory came into play.