Change from RST-E to RST drivers without reinstall of Win7?

[CAsht2]

System is:

Asus P9X79 Pro MB, 32GB RAM

Boot and only drive is 2x512GB Samsung 840 Pro in RAID-1, on Intel 6GB/s ports

Running Win7-X64 SP1

I just updated the Asus Bios from 2104 to 4502 and it seems I now have the possibility to use the Intel RST RAID driver instead of the RST-E driver.

Currently I have the RST-E V3.5.0.1092 driver. I was thinking maybe to install the RST V12.9.0.1001 driver (the latest, dated 12/12/201313) because I have read many reports that say RST drivers are faster than RST-E.

My question is, is it possible to do this without having to re-install Win7? If so, what procedure do I use?

If necessary, I have no problem with doing a temporary migration of my boot drive to a non-Raid drive, then migrate it back again after changing to RST. I just don't want to have to re-install Win7 if it can be avoided.

I Googled around and I can find no clear answer to this question.

[Silvia_L_Intel1]

RST-e was design to work specifically with the chipset X79, which is the one that comes on your motherboard. If you want to switch to RST, it is not necessary to install the operating system again, however we haven't performed this kind of test since this is an OEM system.

[CAsht2]

Thanks Sylvia. I received a reply from Asus tech support saying I DO have to reinstall Windows 7.

Actually after some more research I suspect both answers may be partly right. My *guess* is that switching from the RST-E OROM to the RST OROM probably means that my existing RAID-1 boot array will no longer be recognized. It will have to be recreated under RST, meaning loss of all data.

Anyway my plan is to temporarily clone the existing boot drive to an HDD hanging off the Marvell SATA controller on the board. Then I can boot from Marvell, and change the drivers for the now-unused Intel controller. Then re-create the RAID array under RST and clone from the temporary HDD back to the new array.

Maybe I'm making extra work for myself, but at least I'm fairly sure this will work.