The RAID volume rebuild with Intel Storage Manager worked, and maintained the contents of the drive(s). I ran to Wal-Mart and snagged a 3 TB external drive (surprisingly inexpensive) to backup the RAID rive contents first, just to be safe. Those external HD's sure are SLOW!
I had to upgrade the BIOS to use drives greater than 2 TB when I originally installed the 3 TB drives, so I don’t know why I had to do another BIOS upgrade, because all I did was disconnect all the drives while I was installing Windows on the SSD. I reconnected them
exactly the same way immediately after the Windows installation.
But it’s over now and it’s a big relief. I’m 99% back up and running. Just a couple minor infrequently used apps to install. I’m not sure operation with the SSD is significantly (noticeably) faster than when the computer was new, running from a conventional HD. And it positively doesn’t shut down near as fast as it did when it was new. But shut down is a non issue, and it’s good to have a new-like, responsive system again
Many many thanks for all the assistance!