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I have two HDDs in RAID0, on a Gigabyte EP45T-DS3R motherboard. I'd like to install Windows 7 RC on a solid state drive, and use the HDDs as data storage. The HDDs are full of data (which I'd like to keep), so ideally I'd like to avoid formatting them.

Can I simply plug in the RAID0 drives after the upgrade, and access their data? Or is it a bit more complicated than that?

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Personally, before I changed anything, I would get a big external drive and back up all my files off the striped array. Then, I would remove them all, put in the solid state drive as the primary partition for Windows 7 and blow away the striped array. Then create a mirrored array (raid 1) for the data file storage (this will cost 100% drive efficiency of course) and restore the backup from the external drive to the raid 1. I think that's the safest way to go.

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Agreed, you definitely want to have a backup when dealing with striped raids. There's always a significant chance you're going to lose data when dealing with changes to any raid. – David Snyder Jul 16 '09 at 23:27
Yes, you're absolutely right. RAID 0 without a backup == pain somewhere down the road. But, I was wondering if there's a (straightforward) way to just use the disks without formatting them? – sblair Jul 16 '09 at 23:48
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