Is there a restriction to the number of drives you can create

[twicki]

I have a 900GB raid 5 array and have created 10 drives on it but only 7 of them report drive name and disk space on them but the remaining 3 wont report disk size or display the drive details in computer management yet i have deleted all these drives and recreated them and all are simple volumes?????????????

 

[baddos]

Is this connected using direct attached or on a SAN? There could be a host mapping issue. Are these drives part of a cluster?

 

[twicki]

No it is a HP ML350G5 server with 8 146gb disks configured into Raid 0 for the system drive and paging file and the remainder of the disk is set to raid 5 for the 900GB. Windows was then loaded onto the system and using windows created all the drives for the Raid 5 partition.

 

[baddos]

So you created 2 volumes in your local raid controller, and then created 10 windows partitions? If that is the case, I'm wondering if you formatted the patitions or didn't mount them to a drive letter. If they are visible in Disk Managemnt in the Server Manager mmc, you should try formatting and checking to see which drive letter it should be assigned to.

 

[twicki]

it is just an array and each simple volume is formatted and given a letter. the first seven are fine but after that they show correct in my computer but not in the disk management mmc as though the mmc doesn't handle so many volumes

 

[baddos]

If the remaining 3 don't show up in disk management, then how did you create a simple volume, format and assign a drive letter?

 

[daspazz1959]

Question why so many drives?

Do you need your 900 gigs broken down into 10 drives?

Did you know that you can use the HP RIAD management software to make 10 logical drivers on the hardware so the OS see 11 total logical drives? This would more correctly facilitate what ever you are up too.

 

[twicki]

Because the drives work but it is the MMC that doesn't seem to be able to cope with it so the drive reports correct except by the disk management console.

The reason for so many drives is we have multiple companies and if we don't control the disk space allocated to them they just dump crap and fill it. Yes I am aware of the multiple volumes now in RAID but this doesn't allow extensions of a drive like Windows can.

 

[TheLad]

I wouldn't put your OS on a RAID0, a single disk failure and your server is lost...

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[baddos]

Can windows 2008 disk quotas work out for you instead? Making that many drives just to manage disk space seems like more work than it should be. Windows 2008 has a better quota system now, so you should look at that.

 

[daspazz1959]

twicki (TechnicalUser) 24 Jun 08 8:31
Because the drives work but it is the MMC that doesn't seem to be able to cope with it so the drive reports correct except by the disk management console.

The reason for so many drives is we have multiple companies and if we don't control the disk space allocated to them they just dump crap and fill it. Yes I am aware of the multiple volumes now in RAID but this doesn't allow extensions of a drive like Windows can.
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Thats not true you should be able to do physical and logical volume extenions if you have the correct RAID controller. I have been testing Compaq/HP storage controllers for almost 8 years. I know a little!

 

[twicki]

Thanks for the advise, doing it at Raid level is to late now as the server is already live but will look at Quotas and see if any good. Still curios to if there is a restriction set by Microsoft.

 

[daspazz1959]

There should be no drive limit set or if there is it would be around 26 volumes, but you should still be able to mount unlettered volumes.

I expect the "quotas" would be your best influence on what they can and can not do.

But I know very little about quotas and how to enforce them.

 

[twicki]

They are only any good for restricting size of all folders within a drive ie if you put a 25mb quota on the drive all folders would restrict users to 25mb per folder but mine can vary deoending on company

 

[baddos]

That is changed in Win2008. You can do quotas on a per folder basis now.