Windows XP 32-bit + RocketRaid 622 + 4 x 3TB = not quite a RAID setup

Question

I'm looking to make a 6TB RAID 10 array from my new pile of drives under Windows XP 32-bit, however they are only for auxiliary storage. After adding all the drives to an array, and initializing them XP sees only a fraction of the storage, 2TB. I'm assuming this has to do with MBR vs GPT. Is making a series of 2TB volumes and then spanning my only solution?

Most questions online have to do with booting from this setup, but I'm just using them as extra storage.

Hardware: 4 x 3TB Hitachi Deskstars + RocketRaid 622 + Sans Digital TR8M TowerRAID. The array is connected via eSATA.

Answer 1

You are correct in your assumption. It is the MBR partitioning scheme that is used by Windows 32bit operating systems like Windows XP. Are you also asking about how to make it work? According to the following page, you need an OS that can do GPT, such as XP 64bit, Mac OSX Tiger and higher and a few other *nixes.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2754/~/hard-drives-greater-than-2-tb-do-not-work-on-existing-operating-systems

it is not specific if using an OS like that to partition the drives, and THEN putting them back under XP 32 Bit will work, though I wouldn't be hopeful.

Answer 2

Here's what I ended up doing:

I sliced each drive into 4 equal parts into 1.5TB RAID 10 volumes. (750 mirrored drive 1&2, then striped over drive 3&4) = one 1.5TB RAID 10.

Each disk contains 4x 750GB mirror/stripe set at the controller. This resulted in 4 1.5TB volumes at Windows XP's drive manager. I converted them to dynamic disks, and simply had them spanned. The trick is the mirroring/striping is done across ALL disks at the controller level meaning we get full performance.

I benchmarked it with Windows' striping, and got about 1/3rd the performance of just plain spanning. Spanning it is. Resulting array: 5.7TB, and tested for drive removal/rebuild.

Thanks for the reply, I hadn't considered GPT.