remove a virtual disk raid5 array

First, it is important to understand exactly how you have configured this.  

Either:

1. You do not have your 4x2TB disks in a RAID 5 and are only using them as individually configured disks, or

2. You have created RAID "slices" across your disks - basically 4 separate RAID 5 arrays across your disks.

Second, I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to do.  Is the 187.5GB Disk 3 a separate hard drive or is it its own RAID array?  And are you wanting to move all your system files to it, or have you already done that?  What OS are you using?  What system?

It would be really helpful if you were to post a screenshot of OMSA and your Virtual Disks.  If you don't have it installed, you can get it at the link below, then go to Storage, PERC, Virtual Disks.

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/2684/DriverDetails/DriverFileFormats?DriverId=G2WT6&FileId=2731102719

Download and run to extract the files, then run C:\Openmanage\windows\setup.exe.

Tnx for replay,

I'm using Windows server 2008 Std 64-bit

4x2TB disks in a RAID 5 array. I have attached a screen shot of OMSA, now it is easy to understand my situation. :emotion-1:

I just want to install OS fully on C: (DISK3) disk that is it, very simple. I think that if i remove virtual DISK0 which's partition status is "system", insert Windows server 2008 DVD to DVD drive and repair OS on DISK3. After that i can delete system files from DISK0. is it right ?

So the question is how to remove safely a virtual disk from a raid5 array?

Thanks

If you have cloned the contents previously on Disk 0 to Disk 3, then it may be a matter of simply doing a Startup Repair on the "OS" on Disk 3 (common when cloning partitions).  Deleting VD0 is trivial - just select Delete from the dropdown.  However, once you have deleted it, you won't be able to "join" that space to the space on Disk 3.  The space that was formerly Disk 0, would then need to be recreated as a new VD, and thus a new Disk in Windows.

Judging from the neat 1800GB virtual disks, you have one single massive raid 5 that has been carved into multiple virtual disks (3 x 1800GB and the leftover).

As disk 0 has some system files on it, if you delete it, your OS most likely will no longer boot.

I don't think there is a nice way of doing this (at all). Due to your Windows being split across 2 drives (I suspect boot.ini, ntldr and some other critical files are on D:, and the rest of the OS is on C:), the easiest way out may be to do a full backup and then reconfigure the raid. You'd have to delete all virtual disks, then you create a raid 5 with a first virtual disk for just the OS (C-drive). This will need to be less than 2048GB, but probably be only big enough for the OS, some applications, room for windows patches, etc, and a buffer. Then you do a bare metal restore of the C-drive to this partition. You may then still need to do a repair of Windows to put the boot.ini and such on this same disk. Now you use OMSA to create a 2nd virtual disk that's the whole remainder of the raid 5 (5587GB minus the disk size of your 'new' C-drive). You convert it to GPT in Windows disk manager (do NOT convert to dynamic though), and then you create a single partition for the whole disk.