3TB RAID1 array problem

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
V

vin_g

Distinguished
Jun 26, 2011
77
0
18,630
Building a new rig:
Asus P8Z68-V Pro/GEN3
i5-2500K
2 - 3TB Seagate Barracuda (SATA 6 - on Intel controller)
CM H80
16Mb Vengeance C9 (4x4)
EVGA 560 OC
CM TX650M

Followed the mob manual in setting up RAID in BIOS, then went to IRST utility as instructed. The screen displays accurate info as the RAID volume is None Defined and the Physical devices do indeed show the two 3TB drives. I hit enter to Create RAID Volume. I'm able to select RAID1 (mirror) option but when selected the Disks: item is grayed out and does not allow me to choose the disk to include. Same for RAID0, only Recovery level enables access to Disks:

What am I missing?

 
Sort by date Sort by votes
L

lafontma

Distinguished
Jan 4, 2006
218
0
18,710
Verify if you can find a BIOS update for your motherboard. RAID with Intel controllers with 3TB HD are hit and miss because of GPT paritions.

You need a bios update that will support hard disk bigger then 2TB to be used in RAID mode.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
V

vin_g

Distinguished
Jun 26, 2011
77
0
18,630
According to the Asus support site, current BIOS is 0402 and that is what my BIOS is showing. Called tech support and they think it may be a bad utility - please let them be wrong as I can NOT afford to RMA this board. Build needs to go out next week.

HELP!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
L

lafontma

Distinguished
Jan 4, 2006
218
0
18,710
When you are in the RAID configuration utility, what version is it? You need 10.5 or higher to configure HD bigger then 2.2TB. If you have a lower version you need to get ASUS to update their BIOS
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
V

vin_g

Distinguished
Jun 26, 2011
77
0
18,630
I'm not sure if the BIOS is certified, although it is the latest per the mfg site. I can't imagine that I"m running into these issues due to the drive size.

I have not tried plugging them into the Marvell controller.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
L

lafontma

Distinguished
Jan 4, 2006
218
0
18,710
Go in the disk management, delete any paritions and make sure you use GPT and not MBR.

Yes your issues are because of 3TB drives. 2.2TB is where you run into limitations. To boot off a drive bigger then 2.2TB you need an EFI BIOS and to use more then a 2.2TB parition it needs to be GPT
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
L

lafontma

Distinguished
Jan 4, 2006
218
0
18,710
Not following... you have 2 drives or more? The drive with Windows on it is already initialized...

What does the disk management console look like? Your C drive is what size? Can you post a screen capture of disk management?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
L

lafontma

Distinguished
Jan 4, 2006
218
0
18,710
Yeah this board doesnt support direct images... files needs to be uploaded somewhere and a link attached..

What does your drive with Windows on look like? a 2TB partition and some empty space and the end? Second drive should be totaly empty at this point
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
V

vin_g

Distinguished
Jun 26, 2011
77
0
18,630
Top Section
C: Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (Boot, Page File Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

Below:
Disk 09
2794.39GB Online - Unallocated

Disk1
2794.52GB Online - C: 2047.99 GB NTFS (Healthy, etc....); 746.52 GB Unallocated.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
L

lafontma

Distinguished
Jan 4, 2006
218
0
18,710

Yup.. this is normal for a Windows installation on a 3TB drive.

By default your installation used a MBR partition of 2TB and left the rest as unallocated. Naturally Disk 09 has nothing on it at the moment.

2 options:

1 - Allocate the remaining space as a D: drive of 700GB and the disk 09 as E: and use an GPT on this one for 3TB

2- Redo the whole thing and when you get to the disk selection of the installation, you will need to do some manual commands to create the GPT parition since the windows installation does NOT have the option to do it... You would then have a C: of 3TB and the a D: of 3TB
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
V

vin_g

Distinguished
Jun 26, 2011
77
0
18,630
What do mean by "Redo the whole thing?" And what manual commands will I need to perform? Will they be easy to recognize? In the end. we I have a single partition on each drive (with the exception of the space for the System Reserved where OS is, that will show just under 3TB?

Sorry, being a new builder, as you can see, I need a little "hand holding"

THANKS!!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
L

lafontma

Distinguished
Jan 4, 2006
218
0
18,710

By redo the whole thing, I mean reinstall Windows by booting off the DVD and doing some manual steps when you get to the screen where you choose the disk that you will install to.

When you get to that screen press Shift-F10 and follow the following guide:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297800

Is it worth doing all of this? not sure unless you really need to have 2 paritions that are the same and that it is not acceptable to have

c: 2TB
d: 700GB
e: 3TB
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom