Upgrading mirrored array with 2 larger drives Win 11 Pro advice requested please!

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 30, 2007
Messages
368
On my PC I am running Win 11 Pro OS on a Samsung NVMe 980.
For storage I currently use 2, 6TB HDDs running 'Mirrored' using Win 11 Pro Disk Management.
This array has 6 partitions (Data, Photos, Video, Music, Archive, Backup)
I just ordered 2, 16TB HDDs to replace the 6TB HDDs as they are nearly full.

Here's my plan for the upgrade since I don't own anything voluminous enough to backup the current RAID data to externally:

1. Plug one of the new HDDs into an open SATA port, format it, partition it, and then copy the data from the current mirrored array into the corresponding partitions.
2. Once this is complete, shutdown and remove the mirrored disks from their SATA ports (0 and 1)
3. Install the formatted 16TB into SATA port0 and the other 16TB HDD into port1
4. Reboot and then select the 'rebuild mirrored array' (or whatever the Win 11 prompt is to accomplish this) from the HDD on port0.
5. Run PC until the rebuild is complete, keeping the old HDDs as-is until I know the rebuild is 100% OK.

Thoughts?
Is there a better method when I don't have a way to backup externally prior to expanding this mirrored array with bigger HDDs?
Thanks!
 
Do you have another pair of SATA ports that support RAID1 (for BIOS-level mirror) or just any 2 available SATA ports (for Win11 mirroring?) If you do, plug in the two new HDD's, mirror them either in BIOS/UEFI or with Win11 and then copy the data from OldArray to NewArray. Once you are sure everything came across, you can either repurpose the older drives or just leave them as another available array.
 
I will have to open the case and check, not certain.
Thanks, that's a good idea.
 
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