3TB Raid, one 2048GB partition, will not let me create a 900GB one?

[Guest Andy]

Hi there.

 

A year ago or so we built this monster server for files with a RAID-5 array

it has just about 3TB of disk in it total.

 

I just noticed today in Disk Management that we actually only partitioned

2048GB of it (I guess the limit for a single filesystem?) and that there is

almost a 900GB 'unallocated space' block sitting there unused.

 

Windows will not allow me to create an additional partition in that 900GB

space.

 

Any advice?

 

-Drew

[Guest James Park (pencil_ethics)]

RE: 3TB Raid, one 2048GB partition, will not let me create a 900GB one

 

RE: 3TB Raid, one 2048GB partition, will not let me create a 900GB one

 

Drew,

 

If you are using MBR for the RAID array and a 512-byte sector size, you are

capped by a 2 TB limit owing to a hard MBR limit of 2^32 blocks (2^32 blocks

× 512 bytes per block (the standard sector size) = 2 TB). See

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/LUN_SP1.mspx. You may also be

interested in

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/7e567bb0-59c7-413d-914d-cdcb55c1bbda1033.mspx as well.

 

Hope this helps.

 

- James Park (pencil_ethics)