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I have a Dell 2850 and I want to install Windows 2008 Server. Problem is that my C drive only has 16GB of space. The requirements say I need at least 20. I have an open bay for a drive. If I put in another drive, how can I add that to the array and them make it only for the C drive? what do I do?

Thank you.

edit:

I don't want to remove any drives. I just want to add a new one to the existing array. Can I do that and make sure that new drive is for the logical C drive?

Khaled
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johnny
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  • Which RAID controller are you using? What is the disc configuration on the RAID controller? What is the disc configuration in Windows? Do you need to keep the existing data on the server? – Mircea Vutcovici Dec 03 '10 at 16:29

2 Answers2

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The PERC disc controller allows you to reconfigure a RAID and add a disk. To use the free space from the rebuilded virtual disk you will need to resize/move the current volumes. For this you can use GParted Live.

Mircea Vutcovici
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  1. you have to make sure that the drive is the same as the ones that are currently in the system

  2. boot your system into the RAID controller BIOS. after the POST screen you'll get another screen telling you the status of the RAID controller, and it usually tells you to press F# to load configuration

  3. Identify the drives you are working with in the RAID controller configuration, remove the current array, then rebuild the array using the new drives. It's kind of difficult to give you more instruction beyond that.

sauerkrause
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  • I don't want to remove any drives. I just want to add a new one to the existing array. Can I do that and make sure that new drive is for the logical C drive? – johnny Dec 03 '10 at 16:24
  • you have to destroy the current array to add another drive. you're basically deleting the deleting the disk array and creating a new one, adding back the original drives plus the new one. – sauerkrause Dec 03 '10 at 16:38
  • keep in mind that you will lose all data on the array, so back it up if there's anything you want to keep. – sauerkrause Dec 03 '10 at 16:39
  • @sauerkrause seems very different than Mircea's answer. He seems to think you can just add a disk. – johnny Dec 03 '10 at 16:44
  • you might be able to, depending on the RAID controller. figure out what kind of controller you have, and if it supports dynamic resizing of arrays. – sauerkrause Dec 03 '10 at 16:48
  • also, the question really is whether or not you need the data that's currently on the disks. if the answer is no, then it's quicker to just rebuild the array rather than use the method Mircea is describing – sauerkrause Dec 03 '10 at 16:50
  • I need the data. – johnny Dec 03 '10 at 18:10