Hello, Everyone-
I'm very familiar and versed with Intel's RST for creating/maintain RAID arrays (RAID1 always in my case) with the Series 8 (and prior) chipsets but have run into a problem on this Windows 7 64-Bit Pro-based Dell OptiPlex 9020.
The tower shipped with a single 500GB HDD with the OS installed on it (as the C drive). As is standard, I created a RAID1 array with two 1TB Seagate hybrid HDDs. First, I simply added the first 1TB drive and fully created the RAID1 array. Then I removed the 500GB HDD and added the second 1TB HDD and rebuilt the RAID array. I then used the Intel RST program (12.8 was the version that shipped with the tower, now upgraded to 12.9.0.1001) to add the unallocated space (500GB) to the original 500GB partition thus creating a full 1TB RAID1 array. Rebooted and everything was fine.
Now the customer wants to upgrade to two 2TB drives instead of the 1TB drives. So, I did the same thing: replaced the first 1TB drive with a 2TB drive, rebuilt the RAID array, then replaced the second 1TB drive with the second 2TB drive and rebuilt the RAID array again. Oddly enough, I did NOT need to add the unallocated space (the additional 1TB) to the RAID array in the Intel RST program to get the Intel RST to see the full 2TB of storage space--the RAID array has 1863GB of space allocated to it. Despite this, the computer does NOT see the full two TB of storage space when looking at the C drive; nor does the Disk Management under Computer Management see the full 2TB of storage space; nor does the Disk Mngmt report any unallocated space for this physical drive (though only 1TB is part of the partition).
What I CAN do, however, is create another RAID1 array in the Intel RST program with the unused terabyte of space. When doing this, Disk Mngmt sees the second RAID1 array as a second physical drive (i.e. it has its own separate entry). So, I can get the full 2TB of space used, but not as one combined RAID1 array but rather through two RAID1 arrays.
Anyone have any idea what is going on here? Is there some kind of limitation I don't know about? Can I get one 2TB partition out of this scenario?
Thanks!