Windows Server 2003 x64 RAID5 3.6TB

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Gawd
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Mar 15, 2002
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I've been just confused about something for the past couple of days.

Right now there is a Dell Poweredge 2950 III with single quad core Xeon 4GB RAM and with five 1 TB SATA drives in a RAID5 config Perc 6i for a total of around 3.6TB of usable space. Now I am installing windows server 2003 R2 x64 edition, and I get to the partitioning part and make my 20GB C: partition and then it won't let me make anymore partitions from the remaining space. So I went ahead and finished the install thinking I could maybe go into windows and use disk manager to partion the rest of the space.

Well it appears windows sliced the remaining space into two seperate chunks. I can partition the 2TB chunk but nothing else. So I have just over a TB of space I cannot partition. I thought only the 32bit version of 2003 server had the 2TB limit. Am I missing something here. Any advice.

Thanks.
 
MorfiusX said:
I believe you have to convert the disk to GPT.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/LUN_SP1.mspx
http://www.carltonbale.com/2007/05/how-to-break-the-2tb-2-terabyte-file-system-limit/

PS: Your system drive can't be GPT. So, I would create one RAID5 LUN for the system disk, and a seperate RAID5 LUN for the rest.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Hey, I thought by going with x64 version I can get around the 2TB limit. We just purchased a x64 copy just for this reason. Does the x64 have the very same 2TB limit as the 32 bit version of windows?

In light of this I don't konw what to do now. I'm going to look into the GPT idea. The thing about doing two RAID5 arrays is that I only have 5 drives I would have to do a RAID1 and a 5, right?
 
the limitation isn't really with the version of windows - it's with the type of partition the array uses. traditionally, drives have used MBR, but that has a 2tb limit. windows server and vista allows you to use GPT instead of MBR, and GPT doesn't have this limit
 
Depending on the controller, you might be able to carve out 20gb of each drive as your first volume, then the remainder as your second volume. Some controllers will allow you to do this, some won't.

This isn't a 32bit/64bit issue, it's an MBR issue. Unless I have a single file that is larger than the 2tb limit (god help me if I ever did...), the I prefer to create several smaller LUNs and distribute the files. It becomes a little easier to manage. A rebuild or CHKDSK will take very long time on a large volume.
 
Thanks MorfiusX I was able to get the server configed. I simply made 3 RAID5 configs. One LUN 1=20GB(WIndows) LUN 2=1.7TB LUN 3=1.9TB. This worked out perfectly. Thanks again to all for all the advice here.
 
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