Hello,
I'm having problems trying to get a Raid 5 set up in vista 32 ultimate. I have vista installed on a solo 500gb boot drive and am trying to set up a 3TB raid 5 on 4 x 1TB Western digital drives. My motherboard is Asus P5N32-SLI Premium. I have tried it 2 different ways now. At first I tried setting it up through my Promis FastTrak TX4310 raid card. I created it through the raid controllers bios, and this worked but it wouldn't create an array larger than 2.1 TB for some reason. I went in computer manager and made it a GPT but couldn't expand it to its full size. Next I tried creating the array in the WEBPAM software that came with the controller card. This worked and showed the array size as 3TB, just what it should be. But then when I go to computer manager to format the array, the array shows up as unreadable and only 2 GB, not TB, GB.

The next thing I tried was giving up on the raid card and using the onboard raid controller on the motherboard. In the bios, I created a raid 5 using the 4x1TB drives but the size of it came out to only 746.62 GB. In computer manager, I then set this to be a GPT drive. But then how do I expand the size of it after I set it as a GPT drive? I dont see any option for expanding in computer manager, and in the bios my only option is to recreate the array in which case it still sets the maximum as 746.62 GB? Please help, I have been trying to get this working for weeks and upgraded to Vista for the sole capability of a larger than 2TB raid 5 array.

This article discusses how to break the 2TB limitation:

http://www.carltonbale.com/2007/05/how-to-break-the-2tb-2-terabyte-file-system-limit/

What I'm not sure of is whether your controller is capable of 64 bit LBA addressing.  They mention the 4TB capability using 2 controllers so I rather doubt it supports larger than 2TB.  My guess is that you'll need a different controller.

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Velocity Micro Cinemagix Grand Theater, C2Q, 2GB, 2 TB, 3 DCT, 2 HDHomeRun
Homebuilt C2Q, 2 GB, 1.5 TB, HVR-1600, FireSTB
Dell E1705, T7600, 2GB, 250GB, HVR-950
WHS, WRT600N, DMA-2100, DMA-2200, XBox360

With Windows Vista there is no longer a 2TB limitiation I have a 6TB Raid 5 Array.  The drivers must be installed when installing the OS in order for it to allow you to install on the Raid 5 array.  Some drivers such as the intel ones are built into windows vista so no need to install them. Which intel southbridge (ICHXXX) are you using? Are you installing your OS on to this array also or do you have a separate drive for OS?  I just did this recently so I know all of your headaches but have got it working flawlessly now.

ask the vista forum

I'm not sure what (ICHXXX) I'm using, how do I find this out?  I searched ICH in my manual and it didn't find anything. I'm not trying to install the OS on the raid, just using it as data.

Following this thread...  I have a 2TB Raid with 3 x 1TB drives (using the RAID controller built into my motherboard on my Velocity Micro box), I'd love to be able to expand that......  I didn't think an NTFS volume could be over 2TB though?  Vista or not....  If I'm incorrect, that's good news... 

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myspace.com/patsowellproject

Velocity Micro Z70:
Vista Ultimate 32-bit
Core 2 Quad Q9450
4GB DDR2-800
512MB ATI Radeon 3450
2 x ATI OCUR DCT's
HDHomeRun dual QAM
300GB 10k RPM for OS
2TB RAID5
2 x Xbox 360's
52" LCD 1080p
40" LCD 1080p

Go to the motherboard manufacturers website and it should tell you with southbridge controller you are using.  The basic steps for getting this going are though, 1) turn sata controller on in bios 2) creat raid using Control-I in bootup screen (outside of windows), use disk managment in windows to initialize, assign drive letter and then format raid array.   May want to also download newest intel matrix storage manager (8.5) as it allows you to monitor the creation of the array inside windows.  All this is if you have an intel chipset, an nvidia or other raid controller will have its own way but steps are basically the same.    Can anyone confirm using the newest intel matrix storage manager to expand a Raid 5 array without losing data?

Caudio18:

Go to the motherboard manufacturers website and it should tell you with southbridge controller you are using.  The basic steps for getting this going are though, 1) turn sata controller on in bios 2) creat raid using Control-I in bootup screen (outside of windows), use disk managment in windows to initialize, assign drive letter and then format raid array.   May want to also download newest intel matrix storage manager (8.5) as it allows you to monitor the creation of the array inside windows.  All this is if you have an intel chipset, an nvidia or other raid controller will have its own way but steps are basically the same.    Can anyone confirm using the newest intel matrix storage manager to expand a Raid 5 array without losing data?

That was going to be my next question...  how likely is it that I can expand my array without having to format and lose all my data?

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myspace.com/patsowellproject

Velocity Micro Z70:
Vista Ultimate 32-bit
Core 2 Quad Q9450
4GB DDR2-800
512MB ATI Radeon 3450
2 x ATI OCUR DCT's
HDHomeRun dual QAM
300GB 10k RPM for OS
2TB RAID5
2 x Xbox 360's
52" LCD 1080p
40" LCD 1080p

According to the Intel web site, the Intel Matrix Storage Manager does NOT support array expansion.

Even if it did, it would be highly unlikely that you would be able to expand your partition beyond 2TB unless you had originally formatted the partition as GPT type. To be more specific, you may be able to get the array beyond 2TB but you would need to create additional partitions to use the additional capacity.

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Velocity Micro Cinemagix Grand Theater, C2Q, 2GB, 2 TB, 3 DCT, 2 HDHomeRun
Homebuilt C2Q, 2 GB, 1.5 TB, HVR-1600, FireSTB
Dell E1705, T7600, 2GB, 250GB, HVR-950
WHS, WRT600N, DMA-2100, DMA-2200, XBox360

You'll have to start from scratch, unfortunately.

WScottCross:

According to the Intel web site, the Intel Matrix Storage Manager does NOT support array expansion.

Even if it did, it would be highly unlikely that you would be able to expand your partition beyond 2TB unless you had originally formatted the partition as GPT type. To be more specific, you may be able to get the array beyond 2TB but you would need to create additional partitions to use the additional capacity.

That's how I understood it.

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myspace.com/patsowellproject

Velocity Micro Z70:
Vista Ultimate 32-bit
Core 2 Quad Q9450
4GB DDR2-800
512MB ATI Radeon 3450
2 x ATI OCUR DCT's
HDHomeRun dual QAM
300GB 10k RPM for OS
2TB RAID5
2 x Xbox 360's
52" LCD 1080p
40" LCD 1080p

My thread got hijacked... Back to the problem... that cartonbale.com site tells how in theory to break the limit but doesn't give instructions. People were asking what my motherboard chipset is since we have ruled out being able to use my promise raid controller.
My chipset is: NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition
Southbridge: NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI

Does anyone have any more tips for me? Maybe the guy who said he knew my pains and had a successful raid 5 set up and running in vista 32 greater than 2TB?

the problem is that the onboard controller only supports 48bit LBA.  you can get a HighPoint RocketRAID 2310 for about $150 which supports 64 bit LBA, which allows for larger than 2TB.

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Marvin on Disapproving Rabbits

Well unfortunately don't know much about the nvidia chipsets. You really should have no problem using an outboard controller card and this will give you better performance like the other guy said, just have to make sure there are vista drivers for the card.  The onboard nvidia controller should work about the same as intel with some different procedures and options I am sure.  What are your bios options for the nvidia raid controller?   When making the array what option do you have? The array needs to be created outside of windows either way.  Once created it can be initialized and formatted and I said above.  Why yours stopped at a smaller size before I am not sure.  Are the drives new? Have they been formatted ever? Possibly a bad drive or a bad section on a drive caused this.    Also in respone to the Raid 5 online expansion, I read the same thing but the newest storage manager was just released 10 days ago and in the manual it specifically tells you how to expand a raid 5 array. (It doesn't really say whether data will be lost though)