For my own use (and that of others)
In case anybody else wants to know how to migrate Windows 7 to an Intel "fakeraid" ICH10R ATARAID RAID 0 array I'm going to write the steps down. And yes, I'm trying to seed Google with all the phrases I tried searching for.
[EDIT] Somebody already did all the legwork, so I'm updating this entry. It is now approximately 75% simpler. Thanks, Rainless of OCF!
This assumes that you have: A) Windows 7 installed on a single drive that you want to be part of the array, B) another drive installed to be the second part of the RAID 0 array, and C) a *third* drive to back your installed OS up to during the transfer. Infinite patience would also help.
If you are adding two new drives to make up the RAID 0 volume, skip to part B. If your current drive needs to be part of the array - say, because your third drive is from a family of drives with questionable life expectancy, *cough*WD*cough*Seagate*cough* - start at Part A... you poor, silly bastard.
Part A: The Prep
1) Make sure your BIOS is in AHCI mode (and AHCI support is turned on in Windows - see here to activate AHCI support if it isn't already).
2) Download a nice Linux partitioning LiveCD, like Parted Magic.
3) Boot into said LiveCD.
4) Back up your *entire* Windows 7 boot disk to a spare drive, not just the main NTFS partition. Windows has some weird ideas about where the files critical to boot should go. I used:
"dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc bs=32768 &" where sda is my Win7 drive, sdc is a USB drive temporarily-added internal SATA drive of same size
"watch -n 30 kill -USR1
" to track the progress of dd, which is a quiet little git usually.
4) Reboot into the LiveCD once to make sure the Win7 partitions have all been faithfully recreated on the USB drive temporary SATA drive.
5) Reboot to the temp SATA drive. Windows may ask you to reboot once to deal with the fact that it's expecting to boot off a different disk.
Part B: The RAIDing
1) Do everything here
2) If you've created a RAID 0 array or volume via the BIOS tool, delete it in the Intel Matrix Storage Console
3) Use "Create RAID volume from Existing Hard Drive" option in the Actions menu of IMSC. This is Intel's fancy way of saying "Migrate", and it appears to work. It takes a while, but not as long as all the other stuff I tried.
4) Remove the temp SATA drive and enjoy your RAID 0 performance.
Part C: The Never Doing This Again
1) Just turn on RAID mode before you install anything else, ever. It doesn't matter if you've got one drive or 30. Seriously, save your future self a subjective lifetime in hell and just turn that shit on.
2) Use the time saved to drink a toast to that alternate-reality version of yourself who didn't perform Part C, step 1; that poor, misguided sap is probably still waiting for the Windows Backup and Restore Tool to fail on him again for the umpteenth time.
[EDIT] Somebody already did all the legwork, so I'm updating this entry. It is now approximately 75% simpler. Thanks, Rainless of OCF!
This assumes that you have: A) Windows 7 installed on a single drive that you want to be part of the array, B) another drive installed to be the second part of the RAID 0 array, and C) a *third* drive to back your installed OS up to during the transfer. Infinite patience would also help.
If you are adding two new drives to make up the RAID 0 volume, skip to part B. If your current drive needs to be part of the array - say, because your third drive is from a family of drives with questionable life expectancy, *cough*WD*cough*Seagate*cough* - start at Part A... you poor, silly bastard.
Part A: The Prep
1) Make sure your BIOS is in AHCI mode (and AHCI support is turned on in Windows - see here to activate AHCI support if it isn't already).
2) Download a nice Linux partitioning LiveCD, like Parted Magic.
3) Boot into said LiveCD.
4) Back up your *entire* Windows 7 boot disk to a spare drive, not just the main NTFS partition. Windows has some weird ideas about where the files critical to boot should go. I used:
"dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc bs=32768 &" where sda is my Win7 drive, sdc is a USB drive temporarily-added internal SATA drive of same size
"watch -n 30 kill -USR1
" to track the progress of dd, which is a quiet little git usually.
4) Reboot into the LiveCD once to make sure the Win7 partitions have all been faithfully recreated on the USB drive temporary SATA drive.
5) Reboot to the temp SATA drive. Windows may ask you to reboot once to deal with the fact that it's expecting to boot off a different disk.
Part B: The RAIDing
1) Do everything here
2) If you've created a RAID 0 array or volume via the BIOS tool, delete it in the Intel Matrix Storage Console
3) Use "Create RAID volume from Existing Hard Drive" option in the Actions menu of IMSC. This is Intel's fancy way of saying "Migrate", and it appears to work. It takes a while, but not as long as all the other stuff I tried.
4) Remove the temp SATA drive and enjoy your RAID 0 performance.
Part C: The Never Doing This Again
1) Just turn on RAID mode before you install anything else, ever. It doesn't matter if you've got one drive or 30. Seriously, save your future self a subjective lifetime in hell and just turn that shit on.
2) Use the time saved to drink a toast to that alternate-reality version of yourself who didn't perform Part C, step 1; that poor, misguided sap is probably still waiting for the Windows Backup and Restore Tool to fail on him again for the umpteenth time.