Seeking advice on installing OS on a large drive

[alfordjj]

I have purchased a couple of HP Proliant ML115 G5 servers for my company. In one of them I stuck 4-1TB drives and set them up for RAID5 giving me slightly under 3TB worth of drive. Then, after installing and updating the OS, found that Windows could see, but refused to do anything with (like format), the space that is grater than 2TB. Doing some research I found that MBR partitions won't see above 2TB and that Server 2003 Standard won't install on a GPT partition.

The Proliant ML115 G5 RAID adapter will only see 4 drives total. This will be a file server, so I would prefer to have it in a RAID5 and have the OS partition RAIDed. So that cuts out setting up two sets of mirrored drives. I think my best bet is to have it as all one "physical" BIOS drive and have Windows partition it out.

Any suggestions on how I can use this "lost" +700GB space on my server? Is there a way to force Server to use it? How about a good 3rd-party software that will do it? Perhaps another configuration that I haven't thought of?

Thanks for your tips!

 

[58sniper]

Never put the OS and the data on the same set of spindles.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[schtek]

yer looking at the specs it does say low end entry level...

think i would install a pci sata card buy 4 x 80GB drives set it up on the card then introduce your TB hard drives for storage use


"Practice makes Perfect"
("la pratique rend parfait")
CPO rt'd RN

http://twitter.com/schtek

 

[Zelandakh]

Install the OS onto a disk / disk set / partition of 20GB. It doesn't need more. Use the rest for data storage.

 

[alfordjj]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. It appears that I've stuck myself in this situation and must live with it. I don't think we're going to get enough data to fill 2TB before we need a new server, so I'm going to run with what we have.

Thanks again!

 

[Zelandakh]

Resize the partition?

 

[alfordjj]

Tried that. Server won't do anything with the partition. It sees it, even gives me a "Properties" of it. I just can't do anything with it. It's like MS is laughing at me and saying "If you would have given us a few hundred dollars more, you could have done that, but nooooooo.....

 

[Zelandakh]

Use 3rd party stuff instead.

 

[alfordjj]

I'd love to. I don't know of any that will force Server to see it. At least, none claim to be able to. (That I can tell, anyway.) If you know of one that will, I'd love to know the name of it. I work for a small company and we can't afford to spend $$ on a program that may, or may not, work.

I hope that doesn't come off "snotty", I'm not trying to be. I'm just frustrated with the situation.

Thanks!