upgrade Raid-1 ICH5R to ICH8R, XP, non-raid to raid

[jhoro]

This is one of those FYI threads on how to upgrade the motherboard if you have ICHxR raid install. It also covers (in passing) converting non-raid system to Raid Ready system.

my setup:

existing (old) computer:
motherboard: ICH5R based P4P800
hard drives: 2x250GB Seagate in Raid-1 (there are no other drives present)
OS: XP-SP2 on volume residing on the Raid-1 array

new computer:
motherboard: ICH8R/ICH7R based / C2D CPU
hard drives: the same 2x250GB and keep them in Raid-1
OS: keep XP installed on the Raid-1 array

My path was:
1) Disconnect one of the drives (e.g. HD2)
2) RESET the other drive (HD1) to non-raid - use Ctrl-I on the ICH5R machine
3) Install the new motherboard (CPU, mem, video)
4) Plug in the reset drive HD1
5) In the BIOS of the new machine set the SATA controller to RAID
6) Perform XP install with F6 using the new ICH8R floppy
7) Press the R option for recovery during the XP installation - this preserves all programs and settings
8) Boot in XP and install the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager
9) Add the second drive (HD2) and recreate the Raid-1 (I first deleted all partitions from HD2, probably not needed)
10) Reinstall SP2 for XP
11) I also enabled write-back cache on the Raid volume (in the Intel Matrix Manager right-click on the volume)

I'm not sure if RESETting the drive in (2) was needed, but it allows you to boot XP in non-raid mode if need be. The ICH Raid menu gives a warning that you'll lose your data, but this is bogus. Do not Delete the raid array, just use Reset.

The (2-9) steps are also a way to convert a non-raid system to a RAID ready one.