HP NetRaid 8 - RAID5 volume problem under NT 4 Server

[David Klein_2]

Hello,

I was hoping someone could help me out with a problem on our NetRaid 8 Array. We are trying to bring a new volume online under NT Server 4 but the volume is not being recogized correctly.

We have allocated 4x9.3GB drives, and configured them as RAID5. We should get approx. 27GB. NetRaid Assistant shows this as being done (26027MB), but NT Server (Disk Administrator)is unable to create a volume past 17GB (17359MB). However, it does show the remaining space on the volume as Free Space (8668MB). (This is Logical Array 2, or E: in NT Server.)


Is this a limitation of NT or could there be anything I haven't configured correctly under NetRaid? Here is the information provided by NetRaid (Logical and Physical views):

Physical View:

Physical Devices:

Channel 0
0 -A0-0-Online
1 -A0-1-Online
2 HOTSPARE
3 HOTSPARE
8 -A2-0-Online
9 -A2-1-Online
10 -A2-2-Online
11 -A2-3-Online

Channel 1
0 -A1-0-Online
1 -A1-1-Online
2 -A1-2-Online
3 -A1-3-Online
8 -A1-4-Online
9 -A1-5-Online
10 -A1-6-Online
11 -A1-7-Online

Logical Devices:

Array 0 - Ch0 ID0
- Ch0 ID1

Array 1 - Ch1 ID0
- Ch1 ID1
...
- Ch1 ID11

Array 2 - Ch0 ID8
- Ch0 ID9
- Ch0 ID10
- Ch0 ID11

Global Hot Spare Pool:
Ch0 ID2
Ch0 ID3

Any assistance would be appreciated, as I'm not confident in bringing this volume into production until I'm sure the volume is reliable.

Dave Klein
Network Analyst,
Toronto Catholic District School Board
(david.klein@tcdsb.org)

[Marco Hogeveen · Accepted solution]

David,

Did you maybe convert this logical drive from a RAID5 of 3 disks to a RAID5 of 4 disks?
It looks like diskadministrator has had a partition on it before, equal to the size of a RAID5 of 3*9 GB.
Here's what you can do:
- If there's any data on it that you want to keep: back it up.
Start Netraid Assistant and select the logical drive 2.
Right click on it and select Initialize.
This will destroy all your data on it!!!
Wait for the initialize to finish (it can be a few seconds for Netraid 1si/3si and newer to 30-60 minutes for Classic Netraid or Netraid-1.
After it is initialized, reboot the server and start diskadministrator.
It should mention that a new disk is found (and maybe that an old disk is missing) and asks you to write a signature: select Yes.
Now you see the new disk, select it and create a 27GB partition on it.

This should work, let me know if it doesn't.

Good luck!

Marco.