How to migrate a DELL XPS 420 RAID 1 array, replacing the existing hard drives with two larger

drives. 1 There are two Intel downloads that are essential before you start - install both 'Intel Matrix Storage Console' and 'Intel Rapid Storage Technology' on your machine before you commence. You might need one, the other or both from step 15, but hopefully only the Matrix Storage Console will be required. Remove one of the hard drives, replacing it with one of the new larger blank drives (I removed the drive in slot 1 - I don't think it matters but I just wanted to be sure there remained SOMETHING bootable in slot 0) Boot the pc and be ready to enter Ctrl+I when prompted. The status will show RAID Degraded - select the option to rebuild the RAID volume and reboot Leave the pc to rebuild the raid array using one of the existing, and one of the new larger disks. (this will take approx 2 hours) Reboot the machine and ensure the status reports NORMAL and not REBUILD before you proceed. While the RAID status screen is still visible, enter the RAID option untility by pressing Ctrl+I Select Option 3 - Reset Disks to Non-RAID Highlight the larger drive and take note that the warning message "WARNING - Resetting a disk causes all the data on that disk to be lost" does not apply to RAID 1 - the data on your newly rebuilt disk will be safe BUT ONLY ON THIS PARTICULAR OCCASION (see step 14). Click YES to confirm then turn off the system. Remove the remaining smaller drive - the pc will now boot using the larger disk operating as a non RAID drive but at the original disks smaller capacity - we need to do something about that. Using Parted Magic or other third party partitioning tool, re-size the partition to the maximum it will go to, then save,exit and shut down Now before your boot back into Windows, insert the second large hard drive WARNING!!! DO NOT use the Ctrl+I utility to rebuild the RAID volume this time - if you do, the warning message at step 9 DOES APPLY AND IT WILL DESTROY ALL OF YOUR DATA Yes, doing this creates a RAID 1 array with the full capacity of the two drives, but the drives will have been totally erased, which is NOT what we want. Wait for the pc to boot into Windows - if you go into my computer you will see both drives with only one drive as bootable - the other one remains blank - for now. Now it's time to run Intel Matrix Storage Console - you can use Intel Rapid Storage Technology utility apparently but I was unable to create a RAID volume with this utility as it is supposed to have a CREATE button - but it wasn't there. I googled this SNAFU and someone with the same problem managed to make the CREATE option appear by shortening the newly enlarged partition by a couple of gigabytes - supposedly this free space will now be detected by the utility and then it will allow the CREATE button to appear, which I was about to try, but I noticed that you can create a RAID volume using the Intel Matrix Storage Console, that DID have a CREATE option, which you access as follows: With Intel Matrix Storage Console up and running, click Actions > Create RAID volume from existing hard drive A dialog box pops up saying Welcome to the Create RAID volume from existing Hard Drive Wizard. Click 'Next' Set RAID level to RAID 1 and click 'Next' Select the source drive by moving the source drive listed in the 'available' box using the right arrow button to the 'selected' box. Click 'next' Select member hard drive using the procedure described in step 20 Hopefully, you will now get a Migration progress dialog box appear with a progress bar and estimated time remaining to completion calculation. Wait for the process to complete, shut down - wait for the RAID status to appear during boot, hopefully reasing NORMAL. NOTE If you try to expand the partitions of the larger drives while they are still part of the RAID array, the PC will not boot. You MUST make the disk NON RAID before you attempt to do this.

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