AF drives with XP in Raid 1

I have twin 5001AALS drives with XP pro and I recently purchased twin WD5000HHTZ drives to upgrade them.

My idea was to remove one, install drive and copy then run the alignment tool and last insert the other raptor to copy over for redundency.

I have a 7 machine and I could preformat it but as of now unless I use partition tools they are split [C/D] so regardless I would have to run the alignment tool.

Luckily with the latest build it WD align sees my raid array just fine so hopefully it will see the AF drive once I make a copy of my OS on it.

Anybody ever try this “slipstreaming” of AF drives into a raid array?

Granted it is Intel RST firmware and not hardware raid, the same should appy though regarding if this works.

Worst case I would have to use RST to break the raid pair after the copy, align, rinse and repeat.

I don’t see why it would not work. 

Thanks, I have two ways to do this, not sure which is better.

Raid 1 will mirror any drive, this should apply both physically and logically.

I could simply copy to the VR and remove the old drive and run WDalign.

Installing the second VR RST should make an exact copy already aligned to the new VR which would be raw.

The longer route would be to format both VR drives in 7 and hope when XP copies over it will in the right  logical sector, if not then WDalign would have to be used regardless to correct the issue.

I read through emulation there is a slight performance hit yet a recent article on a well respected site which tested a AF drive both non aligned and aligned it was not the case.

The non aligned drive did suffer horribibly but once aligned did well and even better under XP then in 7.

Recently it was noted only 8 is actually native 4096, 7 still uses emulation even though it is aware but a recent hotfix is supposed to help make them faster and work better.

I’ll give it a shot, worst case I put both AALS’s back in untouched and either put the VR aside for the future or either return or sell the VR which would be a shame as it is the the fastest and from stats most durable mechanical drive you can purchase besides the RE line.