the_beast

Have you expanded the partition in Disk Management? Does the disk show the correct size in Disk Management? (Control Panel>Computer Management>Disk Management on XP, unsure on Vista/7).

Blinky7

I have decided to exchange my 7x640gb drives to 5x1tb seagate 7200.12 drives.
I got a booting/partitioning question here :

Is there some way to create a raid5 volume using the full capacity of the 5 drives, and then create a small partition on it to boot from, and a large as storage?
I am trying some tests with my current setup and even Windows 7 does not let me install on a GPT drive even though the partition is only 78gb...
Is there some way around this?
I don't want to create a different array to boot from. I know I can create a 100gb array (and also get advantage of raid0 in this...) to boot from and then a large raid5 array with the remaining space for storage, but I dont want to go this route.
You see, this "boot drive" will be temporary. By Xmas I will have bought an SSD drive to boot from, so I want the raid5 array to use the full capacity of the discs as it will become just storage then!

My initial plan was to use the 4 drives in raid5 and keep 1 drive in single mode to boot from until I get the SSD. Once I do get it, then I can expand the raid5 array to use that drive too...And this plan is acceptable.
But, because I don't know when I will get the SSD, it could be much later, I wouldnt mind if there was a way to get advantage of the raid speed on the boot drive too until then...

So, is there any way?

DJZeratul

A NTFS volume can actually be quite large... In its current implementation it supports disks up to 16 TiB (minus 64 KiB). its actually the volume addressing thats limited. MBR is only able to be 2TB, a volume larger than that must use GPT. You cannot boot from a GPT disk, though. But you can partition an active MBR partition in the first 2TB and then add an extended GPT partition after it.

Well, as mentioned above, an MBR partition cant be over 2TB, and your usable space in a RAID-5 on 5x1TB disks would be a little under 4TB. You could have one disk if it were GPT, but its not bootable. You would have to partition it up to have an MBR bootable partition and the rest as GPT, or split it in half and make both MBR.

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the_beast

Why not keep 3 of your 640GB drives, and RAID0 them alongside your main RAID5 storage array and boot from that? You will get much better performance by having separate disk sets. If you are worried about disks failing you could also put a RAID5 partition on those disks & use it to store backup images of your boot partition.

Otherwise you are going to have to rearrange things later on, which could be a lengthy process.

Bitemarks and bloodstains

just plugged my 6i and got to the raid screen but it wouldnt let me any further do I need to do the nail polish trick im running it on an gigabyte G31M-ES2L which is Intel G31 chipset based

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DuckieHo

What happens exactly? You can always just give it a try.


Also, is the mobo BIOS updated?

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To answer most of your questions: (1) a fridge cannot cool a PC (2) 64-bit OS for over 3.4GB (3) If a PCIe card fits, it should work (4) Resolution, not screen size (5) If you have a question, it is not news (6) Report, not respond to Spam (7) Single-Rail/Non-Modular PSUs are not always better than Multi-Rail/Modular (8) Sequential does not matter as much as random for OS drives

{core2duo}werd

yeah, it sounds like it.

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Bonz™

I have the 5/i running on the exact motherboard with no problem. No nail polish trick or anything.

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rand althor

Hi there from Australia,

I've got the card working in my server. One issue though. I upgraded the firmware to the latest LSI firmware, as per DuckieHo's instructions on the first page.

However, MegaRAID Storage Manager wont do anything. I doesnt find the card/array (or
whatever the terminology is)

I tried to downgrade the LSI firmware, as per the first page, but it wouldnt let me downgrade. So I tried the Dell firmware. No luck there. Because I'm runing a x64 bit system and teh Dell firmware file has compatibility issues.

I tried running the LSI CLI utility with the Dell firmware (as per about page 175) and again it had downgrade issues . No downgrade.

So, how do I downgrade this firmware to the Dell firmware, or the LSI firmware (preferred) that will work with MegaRAID Storage Manager. OR, use the DELL storage manager (or whatever it's called)

Apart from this, the array/card is working fine.

Many thanks, Rand Al Thor.

EDIT: I am also using the DELL Drivers (I believe). I tried also to update the drivers to the LSI drivers from somewhere in this massive tome, but it said I had the most up to date drivers already installed.

So, any suggestions?

Rand Al Thor

Bitemarks and bloodstains

I got it working, the card didnt reconise my USB keyboard so I had to dig out a USB-PS2 adaptor , everything setup now so expect benchies soon
EDIT: heres the benches 4 WD 1TB Caviar Green all tests with Adaptive Read Ahead and Write Back enabled
EDIT2: il crop and reupload the pics in the morning its 1.30am here so im off to bed now

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AMD Phenom II 720BE@ 4GHz With 4th core unlocked
British Overclockers Club
Case Mods
Bruised, 300 Lost Souls The Blood Of 1000 Angels