NP9262, added third drive and migrated to RAID-5...issues

Guys,

I had (when ordered) two Fujitsu 160GB 5400RPM drives that my boss said he wanted me to set up in a RAID-1, just in case something happened. I have a work partition, and a personal partition on the RAID-1. Everything is fine. I'd rather be doing RAID-0, but the laptop was bought for me by my work, so what the boss wants, he gets.

Yesterday, I received the additional drive that I ordered, which is the same model as the two previous drives. After about 10 minutes, I figured out how to migrate the array from RAID-1 to RAID-5, and the Intel Matrix Storage manager took off, and started moving the data. I left the laptop overnight, and when I woke up this morning, the array was a RAID-5. Wonderful!

Except...windows vista does not see the additional space that I have from adding the third drive, and moving to RAID-5. I can't go into disk manager and expand the volumes (partitions) already on the RAID array. Windows Disk Manager will not see it. As a test, I added a RAID-0 to the existing config in Intel Matrix manager, and all of a sudden, Windows wanted to initialize the remaining disk space. Great. I would attempt to use the disk tools that I have available to me to grow the partition, but having tried to resize RAID volumes before, I know this to be a recipe for disaster.

So...If you've thought about adding your third drive (or second if you have a single drive) to your existing configuration, beware. The only way that I can get Windows to see the other available disk space is to create a new partition. I cannot find a way to grow the partitions that are already in place. I believe that this will be the case if you are:

Going from single drive to RAID-0 (can't see the additional drive space without creating new partition)

Going from RAID-1 to RAID-5 (can't see the additional space from the extra drive)

Going from RAID-0 2 drive array to RAID-0 3 drive array.

The only way for me (not necessarily for you) to accomplish what I had set out to do, is nuke my current partitions, and re-install Windows. This sucks, because, as I said, I have a personal and a work partition. I think what I will end up doing is this:

RAID-0 & RAID-5
RAID-0 to be 2/3 of available disk space (personal)
RAID-5 to be 1/3 of available disk space (for work)

Intel Matrix RAID can handle two RAID volumes per disk set, so I'll just have to set them up accordingly, in the Intel Matrix BIOS, then load the RAID driver in Vista setup, and point it at the right partition. Rinse, repeat for the RAID-5 volume for work. Two installs, twice the updates, joining a domain....ugh...this sucks.

You have been warned.

 

I'm no expert of Vista (never installed it yet), but what tool have you used in Vista to see the disk management ? Have you tried using diskpart from the command prompt ?
Can you list the disks (list disk), list the partitions (list partition) and the volumes (list volume) you've got ?

 

you can't even see the uninitialized disk space unless a new raid volume is created. Partition Magic just errors. I ended up nuking my RAID-1 w/ 2 partitions, and going to a 3 drive RAID-0 @ 250GB and a RAID-5 @120GB for work.

 

I may not be understanding your question, but I got a 9262 with 2 HDs set up in RAID 0. About a week later I got a third HD from Frys and installed it. At first I thought there was a problem, but what I needed to do was format the HD for it to show up. It was some kinda thing done via the Control Panel in Windows, but it took longer for the system to format the HD than for me to go to the Control Panel and click on the icons.

Ill bet you can call your vendor and get the details, sorry but I dont remember the details of what I did.

 

yes, i understand exactly what you are saying. i did the exact same thing right after installing the third drive. the problem is, I didn't want another partition. I wanted to expand the existing two that were already there.

i did end up using intels matrix raid capabilities to create both a raid-0 for personal partition, and a raid-5 for work. if any disk fails, the personal partition will get nuked, since raid-0 cannot sustain a drive failure. however, the work partition will be fine. i have the best of both worlds now.

...well, except for that they're not 7200rpm sata3Gbps 320's...oh well. they were free! (as was the laptop)