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Configuring the disk drives

The primary logical drive, which contains the operating system, is the only drive on the server that is configured during the operating system installation. Additional space that is not partitioned is also located on the primary drive. This nonpartitioned space and any additional disk drives on the server must be partitioned and formatted using Disk Administrator before they can be available for use.

If an array controller has been purchased with the server, see "Configuring array controllers" for procedures.

  1. Click Start, and then select All Programs>Administrative Tools>Computer Management.
  2. Expand the Storage directory, and then select Disk Management. The disk and logical drive information appears on the right side of the window.
  3. If the new logical drive created by the ACU does not appear on the bottom right side of the Computer Management window as unallocated space, click Action, and then click Rescan Disks.
  4. On the bottom right panel, right-click Disk 1 and then select Initialize Disk.
  5. On the Initialize Disk screen, select Disk 1, and then click OK. The disk is identified as a Basic disk.
  6. Right-click the box containing the disk size amount, which is labeled Unallocated, and then select New Volume (Simple, Spanned, Striped, Mirror).
  7. At the New Partition Wizard screen, click Next.
  8. To use the maximum disk space, click Next or at the Specify Volume Size screen, enter the amount you want for the partition size.
  9. Click Next to accept the drive letter assigned by default at the Assign Drive Letter or Path screen. The Format Partition screen appears.
  10. To format the drive, select the appropriate file system format (the default selection is NTFS) and the Allocation Unit Size.
    1. Enter the Volume Label or accept the default label.
  11. (Optional) Select Perform a quick format and Enable file and folder compression.
  12. If the drive will not be formatted, select Do not format this partition.
  13. Click Next.
  14. At the Completing the New Partition Wizard screen, click Finish. The partition is formatted to the file system that was selected and is labeled Healthy at the completion of the format.

For more information on configuring the new disk drives and upgrading to dynamic disks, see the operating system documentation.