Creating logical drives

Each ServeRAID controller supports a maximum of 8 logical drives.

  1. Click the array or spanned array from the tree for which you want to create logical drives. The pie chart represents the selected array. The amount (in MB) of free space and total space available in the array displays to the right of the pie chart. Free space is purple in the pie chart.

    Note: You can define up to eight logical drives for your array. If you plan to migrate a logical drive, do not define more than seven logical drives. Migrating a logical drive requires one free logical drive.

  2. Select the RAID level that you want to assign to the logical drive from the RAID level list box. You can select RAID level-0, RAID level-1, RAID level-1E, RAID level-5, RAID level-5E, RAID level-00, RAID level-10, RAID level-1E0, or RAID level-50 depending on the number of physical drives in the array.

    Notes:  Typically, the first logical drive that you define will be your startup (boot) drive.

    If you plan to use Change RAID level, you must assign the same RAID level to all logical drives within a single disk array. Refer to Changing the RAID level for more information.

  3. Select a size for the logical drive. To select the size (that is, the size in MB that will be used to store data), do either of the following:
    • Use the edit field to define the size.

    • Use the slider to define the total size as a percent of the total array capacity.

    Notes:

    If you already defined other logical drives for this array, the pie chart shows the existing logical drive sizes and the amount of free space available.

    The actual logical drive size may be slightly different from what you select. The RAID level and the number of hard disk drives determine the size of the logical drive. For example, a disk array consisting of three, 1 GB hard disk drives with a requested RAID level-0 logical drive of 1000 MB will actually contain only 999 MB because the data is striped across all three drives, with 333 MB on each drive.
  4. After you define all your logical drives for each New Array, click Next and proceed to the Summary Screen.

If you want to return to Configure physical drives, click Back.