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I have a server with two 1.5TB hard drives. I was going to install a Windows Server 2008 R2 and create software RAID1 using Windows Disk Management Utility.

I instaleld Windows, open this console and that is what I see: https://i.stack.imgur.com/KoC9a.png

Setup program created a System Reserved Partition at my second HDD.

I don't understand now, how can I create RAID1, because space, which supposed to be used for copy of disk C, now is used for this hidden partition.

So is there any way now to create correct RAID1? May it is possible to move this partition to the Disk 0, where I have plenty of free space?

Unfortunately I can't reinstall Windows and apply other options at the disk management step of the installation, because installation image is not longer connected to the server and I have no physical access to server, only remote desktop.

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There's really no problem with any mirroring you want to do next. The soft-mirroring works on a partition basis so you can mirror C: to the second disk by just right-clicking it and selecting the right options (add mirror I think) - no problems there.

Also, you can create a second partition D: in the free space on Disk0 and then add a mirror to it on Disk1 as there's enough space...

...if you want to mirror both C: and create a new D: volume and mirror that one too - make sure to make it ~100MB smaller on Disk0 so the mirror will fit on Disk1 (or create it on Disk1 first to have it calculated for you ;)

The hidden partition is used to boot the system when you apply full-disk encryption (Bitlocker) and so on, which is recommended on remote systems with less than stellar physical safety ^^

Generally, install the server with the second disk unplugged if you're going to add software mirroring to the installation, it should do the trick. What probably happened is that disk1 is set as the first boot disk in BIOS Setup and you selected the other disk to install to during Windows setup perhaps?

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    Thank you, Oskar But I'm not sure this mirror will be fully functional. Let's assume I mirror my C partition to the second drive. What if Drive 0 fails? Will it be possible to boot the computer only from the Drive 1? If Drive 1 failes, will the server boot from Drive 0? As far as I understand, hidden partition contains some system files which are required to boot system? So how do I have to mirror this partition to make 2 drives independent, replacable and bootable?
    – Artyom Krivokrisenko
    Dec 30, 2010 at 21:01

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