This post is more than 5 years old
1 Rookie
•
13 Posts
0
17294
October 10th, 2016 12:00
Dell PowerEdge R320 Server RAID Configuration
We purchased a Dell PowerEdge R320 Server which has three 2 TB SAS hard drives with the hope of configuring RAID 5. However after selecting BIOS mode and re-imaging with Windows Server 2012 R2( via a USB drive) we could not realise the full RAID 5 space as there was some unusable unallocated space( about 1.6 TB). Upon research on the internet, it was suggested that the server would have to be re-imaged with the UEFI option in order to create drives greater than 2TB and to make use of the unallocated space in disk management.
However the following error is encountered when the UEFI boot option is selected:
Boot Failed:
Please ensure compatible bootable media is available. Use the system setup program to change the boot mode as needed. Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 system setup, F11 for boot manager.
Any help will be most appreciated.
Yamful
1 Rookie
•
13 Posts
1
October 11th, 2016 02:00
Please where do I do this conversion to GPT, the server has the PERC H310 Mini configuration utility.
Yamful
1 Rookie
•
13 Posts
0
October 12th, 2016 02:00
Thanks Robert, but the issue is still unresolved.
After deploying Windows Server 2012 R2 three partitions are created: System Reserved ( 350 MB), C: ( 2047.66 GB) and Unallocated (1677.00 GB). I'm unable to extend the 2047.66 GB to the unallocated space. And there's no option to delete the unallocated space and convert to GPT using the GUI. When using diskpart via command prompt, all the three partition appear as one disk( 3725 GB) but this error was encountered when the clean command was run:
Virtual Disk Service Error:
clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot, system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume.
When gpt was run we got:
Virtual Disk Service Error:
The operation is not allowed on a disk that contains a pagefile volume.
Any help will be most appreciated.
Yamful
1 Rookie
•
13 Posts
0
October 14th, 2016 11:00
Thanks to everyone for your inputs, I was able to successfully re-image the server and reclaim all the RAID 5 disk space after preparing the USB drive with Rufus, selecting UEFI boot in BIOS and UEFI from the boot manager. In creating the Windows Server 2012 R2 USB with Rufus, I selected GPT partition scheme for UEFI and maintained all the default options. So now I have access to all the 3.7 TB hard disk space I expected.
Yamful
1 Rookie
•
13 Posts
0
October 10th, 2016 14:00
Thanks Robert, the controller is able to create the RAID five virtual disk. How do I create the GPT partition under the UEFI mode?
theflash1932
9 Legend
•
16.3K Posts
0
October 12th, 2016 07:00
You will need to reinstall Windows. You MUST first change the boot mode to UEFI instead of BIOS, THEN Windows should automatically convert the "disk" to GPT for the install.
You cannot use a disk larger than 2TB unless it is GPT.
You cannot boot to a GPT disk unless installed on a UEFI-enabled system
GPT/MBR is a DISK setting and cannot be applied to individual volumes or partitions on a disk.
Yamful
1 Rookie
•
13 Posts
0
October 12th, 2016 12:00
When the Boot Mode is changed to UEFI is System Setup, and the UEFI Boot Menu is selected from the Boot Mananger, the error below is encountered after selecting to boot from the flashdrive.
Boot Failed:
Please ensure compatible bootable media is available. Use the system setup program to change the boot mode as needed. Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for system setup, F11 for boot manager
When the Boot Mode is changed to UEFI in System Setup, and the BIOS Boot Menu is selected from the Boot Mananger, the operating system gets installed alright but an error is encountered when the server restarts to complete the OS installation.