MBR over 2 TB's (GPT)

Zaits

Hello Everyone,

I've got a question for you all and I'll do my best to explain it...

I've got 1 server with 6 drive bays filled with 2TB drives each. I want to configure all 6 drives as a single Raid 5. When I'm installing Windows server 2008 R2 I want to partition 50GB of that just for the OS and the remaining I want as 1 partition. My understanding if I want to go beyond 2TB's I need to convert MBR to GPT except windows will not let me if I already have the OS installed on the drive.

My solution to this problem(Although I didn't like it) was to configure 2 drives as RAID 1, partition 50GB for the OS and the remaining 1800GB as storage. I then configured the other 4x 2TB drives as RAID 5 which then allowed me to convert it to GPT and utilize over 2TBs.

Anyone have any suggestions on how I might have been able to avoid doing it that way ?

Thanks,

Devilsbane

If you wanted to, you could look into using hardware raid. That would work better than the RAID built into windows.

You will want to backup your OS data, install the disk in a different machine, convert to guid, and then restore your data.

Zaits

Devilsbane wrote: »

If you wanted to, you could look into using hardware raid. That would work better than the RAID built into windows.

You will want to backup your OS data, install the disk in a different machine, convert to guid, and then restore your data.

I forgot to mention I am using a hardware raid not a software raid.