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Welch
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RAID 5 > GPT

Fri Feb 14, 2014 8:51 am

Here is what I've got to work with.

Asus P9D-V Motherboard
4 x 2TB SATA Hard Drives
Server 2008 R2 Standard

Wanting to do RAID 5, using a single RAID container with a 5TB partition (1tb for Parity of course). Is this possible? If so I'm curious why I'm not able to format using GPT. If not able to use a single 5TB parition, how about a 1.99 OS partition (or smaller) and the remainder as a data drive. Short of having to remove the drive from a single RAID container and instead having a single drive as the OS (not an option), what can be done or what should I be doing in order to fully utilize the drives at hand.
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Welch
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Fri Feb 14, 2014 9:03 am

Well as I've found out, no UEFI boot option so that means NO to GPT.... Why in gods name have a server motherboard in-capable of UEFI?

So if I were to keep this as MBR under a RAID 5 with all 4 drives, instead of getting 5TB of useable space I'd only get 2TB... But I'd assume the benefits of RAID 5 would still exist?
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Bauxite
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where to start...actually don't start

Fri Feb 14, 2014 9:10 am

You shouldn't mix mode with non-raid partitions (sounds like you are trying) and booting off the array is a bad idea™

software raid on unix can be awesome, on windows its not so hot, especially raid5

Is this for a filer or something?
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Fri Feb 14, 2014 3:59 pm

Unfortunately there are many server boards found brand new today that don't support UEFI. The problem isn't a server problem. All other OS's really don't care. You should break up the array container anyway. RAID 1 for OS drive (100 GB) + RAID 5 or whatever for the files. Are there any older drives laying around that you could use for the OS partition?
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Fri Feb 14, 2014 4:32 pm

Welch wrote:
Why in gods name have a server motherboard in-capable of UEFI?


Why would UEFI be needed on a server? There should be a boot mirror then a storage array or SAN storage.
 
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Fri Feb 14, 2014 4:45 pm

Flatland_Spider wrote:
Welch wrote:
Why in gods name have a server motherboard in-capable of UEFI?


Why would UEFI be needed on a server? There should be a boot mirror then a storage array or SAN storage.

This.

Boot from a mirror, setup your data storage separately. Never boot from your storage arrays.
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Welch
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Thu Feb 20, 2014 5:46 am

Well that's been my solution, just now checking back on this post. I already picked up on two drivers and am going to run the boot drive in RAID 1 and the data drive as the original RAID 5.

Running the data via a NAS or SAN isn't really needed for this particular setup.
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Thu Feb 20, 2014 10:12 am

What you could have done is RAID 5 the whole array, set up several partitions. OS(100GB) then separate the rest out in to logical partitions. Then make those a volume set inside of disk manager and pull them into one large volume within windows. I have done this frequently to get around the 2TB limit in MBR partitions. I am not worried about a volume set failing since RAID 5 is underneath. Think of them as stripped disk with no parity...and no striping.
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Thu Feb 20, 2014 10:54 am

You don't need UEFI to boot from a GPT partition. You just need a boot loader that has GPT support and it so happen that is part of the UEFI spec.
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Thu Feb 20, 2014 11:23 am

I'll chime in too. Yes, boot from a separate set of drives and have the storage array be storage. Two drives, even in software mirror, are adequate for boot. Are you using a RAID card? There are a lot of 'if' cases that can be solved by using a RAID card. Also think about a hot spare and have a replacement drive on hand. May you never need to use it.
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Welch
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Re: RAID 5 > GPT

Thu Feb 20, 2014 9:44 pm

zgirl wrote:
What you could have done is RAID 5 the whole array, set up several partitions. OS(100GB) then separate the rest out in to logical partitions. Then make those a volume set inside of disk manager and pull them into one large volume within windows. I have done this frequently to get around the 2TB limit in MBR partitions. I am not worried about a volume set failing since RAID 5 is underneath. Think of them as stripped disk with no parity...and no striping.


Interesting way to do it, I thought of something like that as well but knew there was a better more "best practice" way to do it, although this was similar to my initial fix. On another note, I updated the BIOS and there is some reference to UEFI now.... yet I don't think it supports it as there is no reference in the printed or electronic manual that I saw or on the features for that board. I'll take some screenshots next time around to show what I'm talking about for the new UEFI reference.

Since its a server motherboard for a SMB I'm using the on-board controller, which consists of 6 SATA ports, 2 x 3gb/s ports and 4 x 6gb/s ports. So the RAID 5 is on the 6gb/s ports and the new RAID 1 on the remaining 2. My only issue was not having another SATA port for an optical drive lol. Not a big deal as I simple made a flash drive installer of server. Fun fact, if you put your optical drive on a PCI SATA controller, windows may or may not recognize your RAID via an on-board controller even after you provide it the proper AHCI/RAID drivers that it recognizes on an external flash drive or the optical drive. Went around for a little over an hour with that issue last night until I just made a USB bootable Windows installer and then magically it wasn't an issue :x .
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x

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