I have 8 1TB Drives in my machine, set up as RAID 5
The raid controller is a 3ware 9650 SE 8LPML
http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata2-9650.asp
I'm not sure if its important, but the mainboard is:
http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=472
As far as i know, i've configured a 6TB array – in the menu when i pressed ALT + 3 during the boot phase.
I then tried to install Windows Server 2008 on this, to no avail
It said it couldn't see any drives etc…
I tried a few drivers, none of them worked. All said invalid drivers.
Eventually, I gave up, and installed Windows Server 2003 x64 – which, after messing about with drivers and a usb floppy drive, went in ok.
However – i could only see the volumes in the device manager -> disk management thing, and even then, they were split into 2 or 3 chunks….
Is this something to do with converting to GPT? if so… how do i do that?
My problem is, I would really like to install Windows Server 2008
Anyone have any idea as to what driver i need? Is it a problem with my BIOS or this 3ware raid controller?
Best Answer
Alex-
Are you trying to boot to the 6TB array or just use it as a data volume? You would need to partition it with a Guid Partition Table (GPT) in order to address that much space, and you can only boot to a GPT volume if you are using EFI instead of a legacy BIOS (not sure what that Tyan board has... EFI is still pretty uncommon). Some more information here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT-on-x64.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx