RAID5 Virtual Disk Not Showing In Windows (8344ELP)

[JonElf]

My raid controller is a LSI MegaRAID SAS 8344ELP with 4x7200.11 750GB Seagate harddrives. I have the drivers installed and the storage manager software. I can see that it is Array 0 on Virtual Disk 0, all the drives are visible in the storage manager software but nothing in Windows, not even under Disk Management. Looking at the manuals too I can't find anything so far. Hopefully someone knows what's going on.

 

[Goldfish4209]

have you formatted the array?

 

[JonElf]

Haven't got that far yet, I would normally think to format it from Computer Management in Windows. I tried booted off a Ubuntu 8.04 CD and use gparted to create a partition, but it only let me select 44GB and left 2TB untouched. Also it didn't do anything. If there is any other way I should go about formatting it please advise, I'm probably just being dumb

 

[JonElf]

Been staring at it for so long now, I have no clue what I'm missing :/

 

[JonElf]

And now my Western Digital I got in late December that I wanted to back up died, PERFECT

 

[Goldfish4209]

Well, I'm running vista, and the disk management thing that comes with vista is pretty good for formatting things. what are your options at this point?

 

[JonElf]

Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management, but it doesn't show up.

 

[JonElf]

Called LSI they're no help at all tell me to call HP, called HP, they're even more useless. Please say someone knows what's going on.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Might be a stupid question, but have you installed the drivers for the RAID controller? In device manager, does it show your RAID controller or do you have a yellow items (the yellow exclamation or question mark--can't remember which)?

 

[RebateMonger]

It's been a while, since I no longer do RAID 5 arrays. But don't you have to initialize them before you can partition/format them? My recollection is that this takes a while with RAID 5.

 

[Nothinman]

If the array is created and it shows up in Ubuntu then it's a Windows driver issue.

I tried booted off a Ubuntu 8.04 CD and use gparted to create a partition, but it only let me select 44GB and left 2TB untouched.

That seems backwards but if you're using a PC BIOS partition table then the largest partition you can create is 2TB.

 

[JonElf]

Figured it out, XP has a 2TB limit, that's why it couldn't see my array (slightly over 2TB)