Partitioning

[plexer]

Just about to install 2008 R2 on my new server.

I have 2 drives for mirroring for the os and then 4 x 450GB SAS drives for data.

I am planning raid6 for those 4 but do I just have one big data partition of 900GB which means it can grow easier in the future or should I split it say in 2?

Ben

[Domino]

haha, fun and games to come then.

For some unknown to me, and IMHO entirely stupid reason if you have more than one disc that it can create that partition on it will create it on a separate disc from the OS. IF you make a change to that second disc like say clearing all partitions your machine not only won’t boot, your previous Windows install isn’t seen by the installer, and apparently can’t be repaired.

So maybe be good to disconnect the second RAID set while installing.

Personally, as its just for data, I'd just chuck it on as one big partition. allows easier expansion with more disk, and unless there's a reason to create smaller partitions, why complicate it?

[Dos_Box]

This is why SANs are brilliant.

[plexer]

Ok well the dell raid card has been set up with 2 virtual disks, 1 made up of the 2 smaller disks as a mirror and the other with the 4 large ones as a raid6 array.

Install went fine.

I have 50GB with the OS on, 80GB for system applications.

Now I'm going to set up the 4 disk raid6 for user data etc...

I also have device showing as a 29mb removable device, dunno what that is looks like it was used for raid driver install.

Ben