paulHTPC

Hello,

I am using an Asus P5W DH Deluxe Main board, Vista, E6600, sli3132 port multiplier and 5 Western Digital 1tb Drives. After taking a day and a half to finish the Raid, the complete drive looks to be partitioned 3 ways and only visible in Disk Management. I have now formatted one of the partitions and it now shows up in my computer. Does anyone know if this is correct? Before I format the other partitions in the Raid.

Thank you.

tlarkin

Is this a software RAID? Otherwise you configure it in the RAID controller's BIOS, and it should show up as 1 volume in windows after wards, but you can make many partitions.

This isn't a desktop computer is it?

SirKenin

First, it's a desktop computer

Second, it's hardware RAID 5 (the board supports it natively).

So, it needs to be configured in the RAID controller BIOS. You join all the disks to the array, then it will be one drive in Windows. Currently you're seeing separate drives because it's not configured (at least not properly anyways).

tlarkin

why do you want to run RAID 5 in a desktop?

paulHTPC

Yes, this is a desktop and it is software RAID. The problem is the RAID seems to have split the 5 drives into 3 and the largest partition can't be formatted.

paulHTPC

I don't know any other way of backing up 5TB.

tlarkin

5TB, damn that is a lot of porn, even in HD its a lot!

I don't really know of any software solutions that do RAID 5, I know there is dynamic disks, but for RAID 5 I suggest you go out and buy a PCI-E RAID 5 controller. Be prepared to spend some $$$ too.

OR

Go buy an external FW RAID 5 array. Those are easy to set up. I had one for back up on an older mac server at work made by Lacie. It was a 2TB RAID 5 firewire array. Actually not a bad product at all.

**EDIT

I google'd your motherboard and did not see native RAID 5 support, so you must be running software level RAID. What software solution is it?

SirKenin

It does RAID 5 through the ICH7 Southbridge (I have this board in my spare computer).

nyhk

If you use the standard partitioning scheme (MBR) you cannot partition a logical unit larger than 2TB. That might be your problem if you cannot partition and format the whole thing.

But luckily Vista has support for GPT. With that you can break that barrier

paulHTPC

I thought the only way to RAID 5 using this particular port multiplier was to use Silicon Image RAID software. Something isn't working with this software, as it is partitioning all 5 drives into 3 and only 2 out of 3 partitions are showing up in vista. If there is another way, please advise?

Thanks.