How to Set Up a RAID Volume When the Operating System Is Already Installed

Operating system is already installed in my system. CCan a new drive be added to the system to use Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) for RAID?

If your operating system is already installed, you can still create a RAID volume if the following requirements are met:

• Your system supports RAID with Intel® Rapid Storage Technology.  This can be confirmed with the system vendor.
• The drive being added to create the RAID volume with the boot drive must be of equal or greater capacity.
• The storage controller is set to "RAID" in the BIOS, not AHCI.

  Caution

  If your RAID controller is not enabled, enabling the RAID controller is not recommended or supported when a drive is the boot drive (contains the operating system). Enabling the RAID controller might cause an immediate blue screen.   In this case, after backing up all data and making updates to the BIOS, a fresh installation of the OS would be required.

If all requirements are met, follow these steps to create a RAID volume:

1. Download and install the proper Intel® Rapid Storage Technology driver/software for the platform. (See the Readme file in the driver packages noted in the Related Articles.)
2. Power off the system.
3. Install one or more additional storage drives.
4. Power on on the system.
5. Boot into the OS and use the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software to create a RAID volume.
   1. Do not create the RAID Volume in the BIOS, as this will result in a loss of data and the drive will no longer be able to boot to the OS.