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Add stand alone sata drive to Dell PE 1900 w/ Raid 5

I have a Dell PE 1900 running ESXi. For this question I don't believe the OS matters (for now). This server has a Perc5/i with 3 drives in a raid 5 configuration. I'm very low level when it comes to raid setup so bare with me. I want to simply add a single sata drive to this server for storage. If I plug it in to any of the sata ports on the motherboard it doesn't seem to be recognized. If I plug it into the raid controller I shows as a ready drive in the PD mgmt area of the raid bios but not online like the others in the raid 5. Is the raid controller where this drive should be attached? If I would have had a 4th drive in the raid wouldn't it have to have been attached to the motherboard since there are only 4 places for drive attachements? Does the raid card take presedendce over the motherboard for drives? As you can see by my questions I have no clue how to make this drive work. To summarize, does the drive connect to the raid controller or the motherboard and if the raid controller, how to configure it.
Could someone please give me a step by step best practice for attaching this drive so it's seen.
Sorry for the noob rambling. I hope I was clear enough.
Thanks!
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Seth Simmons

it says ready because it's not part of a raid array or hot spare; fine being connected there
to use it standalone, you need to create an array of raid 0 for that drive only

Paul Montgomery

ASKER

Thanks Seth!
How do I create that raid 0 array with that drive? I can't see any way of doing it in the raid controller bios.

Seth Simmons

if you select the disk and press F2 does it have the option there?

Paul Montgomery

ASKER

F2 gives me these choices... Rebuild, LED Blinking, Force, Online Force Offline, Make Global HS (which is highlighted) and Remove Hot Spare. The highlighted one seems to be my only choice (Global Hot Spare) as I can arrow to any of the other choices.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

PowerEdgeTech

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Paul Montgomery

ASKER

Thanks PET! That's what I was looking for. Under advanced should I leave all the defaults? Element Size: 64KB, Read Policy: No Read Ah, Write Policy: Write Back. The Read Policy is the one that's confusing.

PowerEdgeTech

If you don't know a specific reason for changing the defaults, don't change them. You need only check Initialize from the Advanced section.

Paul Montgomery

ASKER

Also is it possible to just add an additional drive to the motherboard sata rather than the raid controller and have it regognized? I initially tried that and couldn't get it to recognize the drive.

PowerEdgeTech

Typically the RAID controller will override onboard SATA for hard drives in most Dell servers, but if you want to try it, make sure to enable the SATA port in the BIOS (it will be off by default).

Paul Montgomery

ASKER

Hopefully it's ok to comment again on this post...
Revisiting this question and PowerEdgeTech's last comment regarding the additional sata drive outside of the raid controller.
Are you saying that the only way to find out if a drive will be recognized as being connected directly to the system board would be to just try it and see? Is there no way of know if this will work or not? The issue I have is the raid controller is full and I need to add another drive. And what is the max hd size the bios will see on this system (PE 1900 II running ESXi 5.5)
Thanks

PowerEdgeTech

Max size is "probably" 2TB on the chipset. There is no documentation on whether or not it will work to attach a drive to the onboard SATA ports with an integrated controller installed - the only way is to try (including finding someone else who has tried). Because the controller is "integrated" (not embedded - integrated), the onboard ports may only work with optical drives. Just be sure to post back if you try it so we "know".

Paul Montgomery

ASKER

Will do, thanks!