Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of robinsonbud
robinsonbudFlag for United States of America

asked on

Windows Server 2012 splits RAID 10 into 2 separate drives

I'm trying to setup a new server, but Windows Server 2012 isn't properly recognizing the RAID 10.  It's an Intel server with an Intel RAID card and 4 x 3 TB SATA drives plugged in.  I've configured the RAID 10 on the RAID card.  I boot to the Server 2012 installation disc and then to Custom install and then on the disks it shows 5.5 TBs unallocated just as it should.  However, when I add the 60 GB partition for the OS, it then shows: System partition of 100 MBs, 60 GB partition that I created and then 2 unallocated of about 2.5 and 3 TBs each (not sure of exact numbers as I'm recalling from memory).  So something just went wrong there.  It should just show one unallocated space of 5.4 TBs.  
I've tried allocating the entire 5.5 TBs to the C: drive, but then when I boot into the OS Disk Manager still shows another disk as if it's seeing 2 RAID 1's instead of one RAID 10.  
I called Intel and they had me upgrade the firmware on the RAID and verify the firmware on the server, but still get the same issue.

Any ideas?  Is this an issue with the RAID card or some limitation or quirk with Windows?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Member_2_231077
Member_2_231077

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of robinsonbud

ASKER

AndyAlder, you are absolutely right.  The behavior was due to the 2 TB limitation of the MBR initialized disk.  
I found instructions at http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/gpt_white_paper_1_0.pdf
that describe how to install an OS using GPT on Intel Hardware RAID under uEFI.