GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 and 3TB RAID 1 Array

[Gone2Maui]

OK, I thought this would be a lot easier than this. I have two 2TB hard drives in a RAID 1 array in my system today as my data store and run the OS and apps off an SSD drive. I want to replace these two drives with two 3TB hard drives again in a RAID 1 array. I thought I could just swap the drives out and create a new array in the BIOS and Win7 64bit would be OK. But when I go into Disk Management from the Control Panel, it only sees the first 2TB of the RAID and sees another 700GB+ for the remainder. I don't see an option for partitioning the array as GUID. If I work with the drives as stand alone drives, then I can partition them as GUID for the full drive size. I'm using the GSATA3_5 and 6 ports for the array.

What I am doing wrong?

And the second part of my problem. I thought I could take either one of the 2TB drives that were formerly part of my RAID 1 array and pop them into another SATA port and copy the files to the new array. However, when Win7 sees these drives now it says they have to be formatted. I thought the whole purpose for RAID 1 was for both drives to carry the same data and allow for easy recovery and no lose of data if one of the drives fail. How do I get at the data on these drives once they are not part of the array?
Thanks for any help.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

You are hitting the same problem that a lot of people are starting to find now, that of trying to get 3TB drives to work in a RAID array. There is not a lot of good information about this on the web and so it is usually a case of try and see. Try doing a search of the forum for other members who have tried and see if there is any help there.

[F5BJR]

*
For question 1 : that is possible normal if you have 2 * RAID ( 2 TO + some 800Mo and not GPT ôssibility for mount only a partition )

You can run without problem only if you have a raid a failure it will take longer to repair the 2 * RAID set in same time !!

*

For question2 : that is possible normal if you have not connected your old disks before to the Marvell port ( GSata3 port is not a INTEL port but Marvell )

You can restore datas only with disks connected to the same ChipSet port

Pierre

[Aussie Allan]

  I said it once ,....I'll say it again........but this time with a quote out of a link for those interested in 3TB+ support

           However, there still may be an issue you have to deal with: Not all applications can handle GPT, even on 64-bit systems. As a result, Western Digital has supplied a workaround: a HighPoint Rocket 620 internal half-height SATA card, which it ships with the 3TB drive. The card has two SATA 6 ports and handles the emulation, if needed, to allow software to work with the larger 3TB hard drive.

  And here's the artical I pulled it off with due credits!...   http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qi8d9Pa13qoJ:review.techworld.com/storage/3258087/western-digital-3tb-caviar-green-hd-review/+3TB+drives+highpoint+640&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&source=www.google.co.uk

  And for my two bob's worth!

  Yet again where at the cross roads of one area of computers,  that......... has jumped ahead substantially........even Intel is struggling to keep up with multipul TB drives and there support in system.

 In the mean time,  alternatives will have to be used if we want to take advantage of monster storage ..........PCI-E based SATA cards , IBIS ans NAS are just three that have work a rounds , currently and about to be released.

 QNAP (NAS) have just had a firmware version release to tackle this very problem of 3TB+ support

 I purchased the HighPoint RocketRaid 640 PCI-E card for several reasons.......seeing the storm clouds brewing for over 2TB HDD support was one.

 Why the 640 over the cheaper 620.......performance!  The 640 has 4 SATAIII ports against 2.......... and 2 controllers against 1 on the 620.

 So connecting up 2 or 4 drives on the 640 has a much higher overhead (through put overheads that is).........presently I have 4 Samsung Spinpoints F3 (203HJ) in raid0 for a photo storage drive and get 540Mb/s read/write...........and "Yes" these are sataII drives.......bang for buck! ....  these drives are under £30 a pop!

  Part two question! .....  Raid1 allows you to suffer a drive failure and pop in a replacement, it will then go on it's merry way and rebuild to the new drive (this is the short,short version) this is where the parity come from .... do more then this .....well there is several paths , all differing in cost and complexity.

 To cover this situation and several other possibles, ... I use "Acronis True image Home 2011 with the "Plus Pack" add on .... the add on allows me to clone a complete Hard drive to a "dissimilar or similar hardware configuration"

 So in your predicament I can clone a logical drive to another physical drive.... even in the same or different machine , I can even add F6 drivers after the format just prior to the actual cloning process..... very cool feature!

 this is just one method of many .... I'm sure other people can weigh in with some free app knowledge to gain the some or similar  result    

 Aussie Allan