Disk Allignment and Spanned dynamic disks

Question

My question concerning alignment with spanned disks is this; I have a situation where I am adding space to existing spanned volumes in a Windows server. When I presented a disk to the server my thinking was to align the new disk then extend the volume. This did not work since the new disk is seen as a simple volume, I had to delete the partition the I could add it the spanned volume. I assume I lost my alignment when I did this but I felt I had not other choice. It was the third or fourth disk on the set and quite large. Is there a more preferred way to extend large disks yet keep them dynamic so I can get drive of 3-4TB and larger without loosing the data? Additionally if the first dynamic disk in a set has been aligned ( I assume you can align a dynamic disk? ) then would the additional disks that get added in a span need to also be aligned or would they not need this? Any insight would be appreciated.

calle2 · Answer

To get the ball rolling do a search for an EMC White Paper: Using diskpar and diskpart to Align Partitions on Windows Basic and Dynamic Disks

It is rather old but I believe still holds true. See if this answers any of your questions in the first instance.

Carl

kelleg · Answer

Also see the section about aligning file-system in the Best Practice guide:

EMC CLARiiON Best Practices for Fibre Channel Storage: FLARE Release 26 Firmware Update - Best Practices Planning

http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/White_Paper/H2358_clariion_best_prac_fibre_chnl_wp_ldv.pdf

regards,

glen kelley

CLARiiON

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