RAID Controllers (including Intel RST/Matrix RAID)

[destrekor]

So, like a bonehead not thinking about future adaptability, I chose to utilize the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Matrix RAID - aka software RAID to an extent) to make two RAID volumes using two 2TB HDDs.

So, I have a partition on each drive placed into one RAID volume, which is a RAID 0 volume. The other space on each disk then became a RAID 1 volume.

So, with two disks, I actually created two distinct RAID configurations.

Is there any way to preserve this when moving to a different SATA/RAID controller?
Essentially, is there any RAID controller that makes the same thing possible?
Or if not, what's the most efficient and easiest approach to migrating all that data to a more future-proof storage methodology?

I have applications installed on, and other things pointing to, that RAID 0 volume for speed reasons (things which I don't necessarily need on my SSD, or for some caching where I don't want to waste constant writes on the SSD). And on the other volume, it's my universal storage container - documents, downloads, photos, etc. So, if migrating to an entirely different storage methodology, where I have to break the partitions and nothing is as it was, I envision lots of anguish.

 

[sub.mesa]

Intel onboard RAID, like all onboard/chipset RAID aka FakeRAID, is not hardware RAID. All RAID functionality is provided by Windows-only drivers. This is not bad however, since software RAID is superior to hardware RAID in many respects.

I cannot find a reason in your post that explains why you want to move away from Intel RAID. If you want to expand, then do so?! Intel onboard RAID allows you to turn a single disk into a RAID volume and migrate between RAID levels and expand disks and all that stuff. It doesn't get much better than that; it provides very comparable functionality that expensive hardware RAID controllers provide.

You cannot easily migrate to another RAID implementation with different RAID metadata. The only way to do this, is to re-create the RAID array on the new controller, overwriting the previous metadata. This is extremely dangerous, since things like different stripesize, different RAID level but more importantly different disk order might cause the newly created RAID to destroy or misalign existing data. Especially with redundant RAIDs this is dangerous, since the subsequent rebuild will destroy your data if the new configuration is not exactly the same as the old one.

what's the most efficient and easiest approach to migrating all that data to a more future-proof storage methodology?

Build yourself a ZFS NAS and transfer the data from your legacy solution to the ZFS NAS. This is the safest solution to migrate data. Messing with your current solution always has the chance of destroying data.