Question about storage

[Bigb]

I am not sure what forum or topic this should be in but I have a question about storage volumne limits. I know some of you are using large amounts of storage for your data, but was curious how you are configuring it in Windows Server 2003.
Here is my problem... I am running Server 2003 Enterprise edition and want to have 6 - 2TB Drive in a Raid 5 for 12TB miss 1 drive for parity for a total of 10TB. After formatting the drives it will be less than 10TB of storage. This is the problem....In Server 2003 you can use Basic or Dynmanic Disk. If you use Basic Disk 2TB is max volumne size. If using Dynmanic Disk for greater than 2TB volumne size and not having hardware raid 5. I have hardware raid 5. will sage read dynmanic disk great than 2TB or........
Do I have to have multi volumne of 2TB?

Thanks
Bigb

[davephan]

Do you have a RAID card, or are you using software RAID?

After you setup your volume, try opening "Disk Manager", then select "Revert to Basic". Make sure to format using 64k block size.

Dave

[Bigb]

Yes I am using raid card and it is a 3ware 9650-8. I have done 3 - 2TB in raid 5 for 6TB less parity for a total of 4TB. windows disk manager is splitting that up into 2 different paritions of 2TB and 1.9 TB because they are basic disk and 2TB is the largest volumne or parition server 2003 can have unless you use dynmanic disk. What I read in Technet if you use dynmanic disk only use software raid not hardware raid. Also I understand if you use dynmanic disk it take a performance hit.

So I guess my question what is your configuration for more than 2TB disk?

Thanks

[paulbeers]

I use dynamic disks spanned together to create a 4TB+ partition with 4 1.5TB drives in Raid5. While I have never done a comparison test between basic disks and dynamic, my RAID5 w/ dynamic disks is still faster than I need (sharing DVD's to my various extenders) and I would rather have 1 partition rather than 3 so even if there is some performance loss the pros out weigh the cons.

[Bigb]

OK thanks

I had to convert from Basic to GPT then to Dynmanic disk and it is formatting now. I wanted to find out what others were using and if there was a problem with the Dynmanic disk setup with the HD200. I also had rather had 1 large volumne than multi volumnes.

Thanks