Virtual Disk Drive - 2008? 2TB limit?

[boe]

Hello,

I set up a copy of 2008 on my home PC and everything seemed normal to me but
then again I don't have a disk array on my home PC. I have a dell 2900
with a 6i controller. It was set for RAID 5 when I got it with two virtual
drives in the controller set up. I wanted to be able to partition it any
way I wanted.

The server has about 3.5 TB usable space. I deleted the virtual disk in
the controller set up and installed a single 3.5 TB vitual drive. When I
installed Windows 2008, it saw the single drive and I created a 75GB
partition for the OS. When I finished installing the 2008 and I logged in
for the first time, I went to disk management. It shows the C Partition,
and two unused partitions - one about 2 TB, and the other about 1.5TB. Is
there a way to have it create a 3.5 TB partition with no break in it? I'm
pretty sure I could have it extend the partition 2 TB to the 1.5 TB but I'm
not sure why the partion is there or if I shouldn't have used a virtual
drive to begin with.

I don't want to go any further in the install till I know what is the nature
of 2008.

I had originally tried not creating a virtual drive in the array controller
utilty on boot up but when I had no virtual drive, Windows 2008 didn't have
any drive for me to install on.

Thanks

[boe]

It looks like 2008 still has the 2TB limit. I'll create a small array for
the boot OS and then create a larger one which I can convert to a guid
partition GPT supports larger partitions but not if they are the boot OS for
windows.

[WorldMir]

Perhaps it has to do with how you are formatting your disk drive (full article details can be found here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../dd163551.aspx for Windows Server 2008 or later:

Physical Drives
Whether you use individual drives or drive sets, you'll need physical drives. Physical drives are the actual hardware devices that are used to store data. The amount of data a drive can store depends on its size and whether it uses compression. Typical drives have capacities of 100 gigabytes (GB) to 500 GB. Many drive types are available for use with Windows Server 2008, including Small Computer System Interface (SCSI), Parallel ATA (PATA), and Serial ATA (SATA).

The terms SCSI, PATA, and SATA designate the interface type used by the hard disk drives. This interface is used to communicate with a drive controller. SCSI drives use SCSI controllers, PATA drives use PATA controllers, and so on. When setting up a new server, you should give considerable thought to the drive configuration. Start by choosing drives or storage systems that provide the appropriate level of performance. There really is a substantial difference in speed and performance among various drive -specifications.

You should consider not only the capacity of the drive but also the following:
· Rotational speed A measurement of how fast the disk spins
· Average seek time A measurement of how long it takes to seek between disk tracks during sequential input/output (I/O) operations
Generally speaking, when comparing drives that conform to the same specification, such as Ultra320 SCSI or SATA II, the higher the rotational speed (measured in -thousands of rotations per minute) and the lower the average seek time (measured in milliseconds, or msecs), the better. As an example, a drive with a rotational speed of 15,000 RPM will give you 45 percent to 50 percent more I/O per second than the average 10,000 RPM drive, all other things being equal. A drive with a seek time of 3.5 msec will give you a 25 percent to 30 percent response time improvement over a drive with a seek time of 4.7 msec.
Other factors to consider include the following:
· Maximum sustained data transfer rate A measurement of how much data the drive can continuously transfer
· Mean time to failure (MTTF) A measurement of how many hours of operation you can expect to get from the drive before it fails
· Nonoperational temperatures Measurements of the temperatures at which the drive*fails
Most drives of comparable quality will have similar transfer rates and MTTF. For example, if you compare Ultra320 SCSI drives with a 15,000 RPM rotational speed, you will probably find similar transfer rates and MTTF. For example, the Maxtor Atlas 15K II has a maximum sustained data transfer rate of up to 98 megabytes per second (MBps). The Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 has a maximum sustained data transfer rate of up to 96 MBps. Both have an MTTF of 1.4 million hours. Transfer rates can also be expressed in gigabits per second (Gbps). A rate of 1.5 Gbps is equivalent to a data rate of 188 MBps, and 3.0 Gbps is equivalent to 375 MBps. Sometimes you'll see a maximum external transfer rate (per the specification to which the drive complies) and an average sustained transfer rate. The average sustained transfer rate is the most important factor. The Seagate Barracuda 7200 SATA II drive has a rotational speed of 7,200 RPM and an average sustained transfer rate of 58 MBps. With an average seek time of 8.5 msec and an MTTF of 1 million hours, the drive performs comparably to other 7,200 RPM SATA II drives. However, most Ultra320 SCSI drives perform better and are better at multi-user read/write operations, too.
Temperature is another important factor to consider when you're selecting a drive—but it's a factor few administrators take into account. Typically, the faster a drive rotates, the hotter it will run. This is not always the case, but it is certainly something you should consider when making your choice. For example, 15K drives tend to run hot, and you must be sure to carefully regulate temperature. Both the Maxtor Atlas 15K II and the Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 can become nonoperational at temperatures of 70°C or higher (as would most other drives).

Preparing a Physical Drive for UseAfter you install a drive, you'll need to configure it for use. You configure the drive by partitioning it and creating file systems in the partitions, as needed. A partition is a section of a physical drive that functions as if it were a separate unit. After you create a partition, you can create a file system in the partition.

Two partition styles are used for disks: Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT). Although both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008 support both MBR and GPT, the GPT partition style is not recognized by any earlier releases of Windows Server for x86 or x64 architectures.

The MBR contains a partition table that describes where the partitions are located on the disk. With this partition style, the first sector on a hard disk contains the Master Boot Record and a binary code file called the master boot code that's used to boot the system. This sector is unpartitioned and hidden from view to protect the system.

With the MBR partitioning style, disks support volumes of up to four terabytes (TB) and use one of two types of partitions—primary or extended. Each MBR drive can have up to four primary partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition. Primary partitions are drive sections that you can access directly for file storage. You make a primary partition accessible to users by creating a file system on it. Unlike primary partitions, you can't access extended partitions directly. Instead, you can configure extended partitions with one or more logical drives that are used to store files. Being able to divide extended partitions into logical drives allows you to divide a physical drive into more than four sections.

GPT was originally developed for high-performance Itanium-based computers. GPT is recommended for disks larger than 2 TB on x86 and x64 systems[/COLOR], or any disks used on Itanium-based computers. The key difference between the GPT partition style and the MBR partition style has to do with how partition data is stored. With GPT, critical partition data is stored in the individual partitions and redundant primary and backup partition tables are used for improved structure integrity. Additionally, GPT disks support volumes of up to 18 exabytes and up to 128 partitions. Although underlying differences exist between the GPT and MBR partitioning styles, most disk-related tasks are performed in the same way.

[cdsofttest]

There is no limit on windows 2008,2 TB limit is MBR limit,not gpt,you can test this on 2T Disk Simulator