Server 2011 essentials Perc S300 not detecting HDD size correctly

Hello

The WD40EZRX drive only come up as 1.9TB in the Perc screen. I have the latest firmware(A06) and now the latest bios(2.8.0).

The S300 supports a maximum drive size of ~2TB. I'm not aware of an update that has changed the maximum drive size. Page 25:

NOTE: PERC S100 adapters support HDD physical disks of capacity 2 TB and greater. Current and upcoming releases of PERC S300 adapters will only support upto 2 TB HDD physical disks

I want to put these drives together in a raid 5 but, the WD40EZRX comes across as a Volume disk. More, it will not show as available in the file explorer. I want to set up the new WD40EZRX as another server disk for our files to go into and to be accessible for use.

I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to do here. The S300 does support sliced arrays(multiple arrays across a single physical disk), but if the drive is already allocated as a non-RAID drive then you would first have to delete the non-RAID volume on the disk to be able to put it in another RAID array. That would delete the data on the drive.

I suspect that the Western Digital drive is where your OS is installed. If you change your array around so that your OS is on an array that is larger than 2TB then you should read up on UEFI and GPT. The system board boot mode needs to be set to UEFI and the operating system needs to be using GUID Partition Tables. I would not recommend switching back and forth between MBR and UEFI boot modes without reinstalling the OS. I have done it before by recreating the bootloader afterward, but it may cause system stability issues.

The changes you are wanting to do will likely require backing up all data, recreating the arrays, reinstalling the OS, and then restoring your backup.

Thanks

DELL-Daniel My,

Thanks for your reply. The Western Digital HDD was added just recently and the Western Digital does not contain the OS. The other HDDs came with the purchase of the PowerEdge T110 II server.

This server is used for a small business. The server ran out of storage space and it was my intention to buy a HDD that would allow the server to contain more storage space. 

I apologize for not being clear on my cry for help. I am very new at servers and how they work.

The Western Digital HDD was added just recently and the Western Digital does not contain the OS.

The S series controllers will automatically put new drives in non-RAID mode. That is the default behavior of the controller. That is likely why it is telling you that the drive is already part of a volume and will not let you do anything with it. The drive being in non-RAID mode is considered a volume by the controller. You will need to delete the virtual disk on the Western Digital drive to be able to add it to your existing array.

Thanks