SCSI configuration

[Aphotic]

I have 3 18 gb hard drives that I would to like to stripe for RAID 5. My controller is an Adaptec AIC - 7899 Ultra160/m PCI SCSI. I also have a 72 gb hard drive that I wanted on this server but separate from the RAID configuration.

When I installed and booted, My Computer showed one disk drive, the one that I installed the OS on. However, my device manager shows all four hard drives and says they are working properly. But I cannot access them. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[itsp1965]

Before your drives can be made available to you in My Computer you will need to create partitions on them and then format them with NTFS.
I am assuming you will be performing software RAID since your adapter doesn't seem to be raid controller (I could be wrong though).
Either way you will need to go Disk Administrator to prepare the drives for Windows (Right Click My Computer->Manage->Disk Administrator)
Hope this helps.

 

[Aphotic]

That was exactly what I was looking for thanks alot

 

[Aphotic]

I was able to configure the drives so that they are not foreign to the OS.

However, now I have one 18 gb drive that I boot from and it is partition with type being basic. I have two 18 gb drives that are mirrored, with type being dynamic. and then i have a fourth drive that is 70 gb.

my last question would be is it possible to mirror the 18 gb drive that has my OS on it with the two other 18 gb drives? i would like to do this without reinstalling windows if possible. basically i am aiming for a raid 5 configuration . . . thanks alot!

 

[itsp1965]

If you are using hardware mirroring then you will need to re-configure the 3x18GB drives as a RAID-5 array (thus requiring re-installation of the OS)

If you are using Windows 2003 Raid;
1. You will need to 'break' the mirror for the two new mirrored 18GB disks (I am assuming you haven't formatted them and added any data to these disks yet)
2. You will need to convert your boot disk from basic to a dynamic disk and configure for RAID-5
3. During the RAID-5 config add the other disks other two disks.

As always.. make sure you have a valid backup before proceeding

 

[Aphotic]

I broke the mirror and changed my boot disk to be dynamic. I rebooted , and was getting ready to reinstall the OS. I was just wondering where I have to configure this as RAID-5? Because the only menu I am given is the SCSISelect Utility. The only other place i saw was in the setup menu, under integrated devices. my SCSI controller is enabled, but when i try to enable my RAID controller and reboot i get a message stating that no disks can be found. is there another menu that i can simply mirror all three disks?

 

[itsp1965]

Aphotic.. re-read my message
- If you are enabling hardware raid, then you will need to re-config your disks to see it and you will need to re-install the OS.

Check the documentation for your adapter. Your adapter may only support RAID-0 and RAID-1 configs and not RAID-5

 

[Aphotic]

sorry, im a noob at this kind of software raid. i am not seeing under my computer-->manage-->disk management where i can reconfigure my drives for raid