ICH10R failure, looking to move to another controller

I have upgraded my RAID array from a ICH9R southbridge to a P67 PCH without a problem. Because it's Intel to Intel, I just put the RAID option in the SATA configuration in the BIOS and everything worked fine.

I too have had an intel raid array defined on one ICH10R motherboard (x58) and then plugged it into another Intel-raid ICH10R motherboard (LGA-775), and had the drives come up perfectly.

With intel raid, it does not matter which drive is connected in what order to what port. And the raid "configuration" is stored on the hard drives themselves, so when you connect all of the hard drives in the array to another system, it should come up.

However there are a few small issues to this.

1.) If there is a significant platform change and the system chipset is vastly different (Like for example, moving from x58 to newer Z77), and you are using your raid array for the windows boot partition on your current computer, most likely windows will not "adapt" to the newer platform. You will likely be able to -read- everything out of the array if you boot to another hard drive, but ultimately windows it's self will need to be re-installed, after switching to the new platform, if this is your situation.

2.) X58 has 6 x SATA II/3-Gbps ports, all newer intel motherboards (except some of the high-end LGA-2011 motherboards) have only 4 hard drive ports to connect to the ICH10R chipset / intel onboard raid. If you are using all 6 ports on your x58 system, you won't be able to see the raid array on a newer system, just because physically you would only be able to connect 4 of your 6 hard drives, which would appear as a raid failure when you boot up the newer system, no matter what raid type you had previously.

Most of the newer LGA-1155 motherboards should have the SATA Ports color-coded to coordinate to which sata chipset they connect to. Look at them in the images on websites like newegg, tigerdirect, ebay, etc. You will likely see 4 ports of the same color, and 2 ports of a different color.

This is actually a common myth, while it's generally easier and probably better to re-install anyway, Windows works fine on completely different systems once drivers install themselves, etc. I've used the same install on an AM3+ build, 1155 and even 775.

I've attempted to move windows7 and windows XP installs between machines of different platforms and personally I've never yet once seen it work in all the times I've tried. It always either boot-loops, bluescreens, or comes up with an initial boot error. I could never faithfully suggest or advocate this to anyone, I always suggest a full windows re-install when changing chipsets and platforms, even if it would work. I wouldn't want someone to end up with an unbootable system because of something I told them would work and then it doesn't. That's just me, though.

Honestly, the only AHCI problem I've ever gotten was when AMDs drivers caused my SSD to not boot, it'd just keep cycling the animation forever and ever, but I think that's from the SSD dying.