Can I move a RAID1 drive from one port to another?

[idata]

Hi

I have the following setup on my ASRock Z68 Pro3 M board (with Intel Z68 chipset, obviously):

SATA 6gb port 0 - 90 GB SSD

SATA 6gb port 1 - 160 GB WD Caviar SE (part of RAID1 volume)

SATA 3gb port 2 - 160 GB WD Caviar SE (part of RAID1 volume)

SATA 3gb port 3 - DVD-Writer

SATA 3gb port 4 - Empty

eSATA (port 5) - Empty.

I want to add another SATA 6gb drive, but obviously its performance will be hindered if I add it to port 4. What I want to do is change the drive in port 1 to port 3 or 4 to make room in port 1 for the upcoming drive. However, I don't want to break the RAID array.

I have searched the forum and couldn't find this info. All I found was an advice that if I'd want to move the array to another computer, I should use the same ports as before.

Is Intel RST "smart" enough to see that the drive has the same serial no. and silently accept the change?

Would it be better to manually remove the drive from the array (in console or OROM) before changing the port and add it back in the array afterwards?

[DArce · Accepted solution]

Hello,

You should be able to move the hard drive to another port and the metadata on the disk should still identify it as part of the RAID 1.

Still if any problem occurs, this is a RAID 1 which will not imply any data loss if the RAID structure fails.

[idata]

Thanks. Went ahead and moved it in the port, the OROM and OS didn't complain about anything!