Hi All,
I've just received a new DELL PowerEdge 2850 with LSI Logic PCI-X Ultra320 SCSI controller (non-RAID) with 6 MAXTOR ATLAS10K5_146SCA 136.72 GB drives.
The server is to be used for some legacy finance data reporting, which might be used only 2-3 times a year by less than 5 users, which is why performance is not much of an issue, hence for budget reasons, a non-RAID controller was selected. However, we still want some DR capability which is why we are still RAIDing the disks.
We've already created a software RAID 1 from 2 of the disks for the OS, but now I want to create a software RAID 5 from the remaining 4 disks which are aligned. When checking online, it seems possible to create a RAID 5 volume, and to align it as well. However, there are no clear steps as to how to accomplish this using DISKPART.
I can only align a basic disk by using the CREATE PARTITION command, but then how can I convert that to a RAID 5 volume? DISKPART does not have an ALIGN option for CREATE VOLUME, nor can you create a RAID 5 volume on basic disks. I've tried to align my remaining 4 disks, then convert them to dynamic disks and they are still aligned at that point. However, once I use DISKMGMT to blow away the volumes and create a RAID 5 volume, they are no longer aligned.
Can anyone suggest the steps necessary to accomplish this?
Thanks in advance!
Diane.
Diane
