I have three disks. Disk0 (boot), Disk1 and Disk2. Disk 1 and 2 are both unformatted and unallocated drives. I am trying to mirror Disk0 to Disk1. They are both Dynamic and are both the same size (1TB). When I select Disk1 to be the mirror I get the error "There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete this operation". I have spent several hours searching for a solution but have not found one. Why do I get this error when they are both the same size?

EDIT: Shrinking the volume size on the boot disk by 100MB allowed me to get past this error. From what I read the mirror drive needs to be the same size or larger than the boot drive. So I am confused why that change worked. However, I now get the error " all disks holding extents for a given volume must have the same sector size and the sector size must be valid". I believe this is because the drives are different and one has 512B and the other is the Advanced Drive that is 4KB. What the different sector sizes cause both problems? If I got the same disks would both issues go away?

link|improve this question
I don't understand the down votes... this is a legitimate issue that I cannot find a solution for. Instead of just down voting could you also provide a comment that can help make this question better. Thanks! – northpole Feb 8 at 16:58
feedback

1 Answer

A RAID1 array can only be as big as the smallest disk. Make sure that the volume you wish to mirror is the size you want it to be, then create volumes on the other physical disks that MATCH the size of the smallest disk. After all volumes are the same capacity, you should be able to create this array without issue.

This article here should help clear up some of the procedural steps:

http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Creating_and_Managing_Windows_Server_2008_Mirrored_(RAID_1)_Volumes#Creating_a_Mirrored_.28RAID_1.29_Set_using_Disk_Management

Let me know if I can do anything else to help!

link|improve this answer
Thanks for the response! Right, so the two disks I am using are identical in size (1TB) but have different sized sectors. The boot disk has one volume which is the full size of the disk. Disk1 (the mirror) is completely unallocated. When I shrunk the size of the boot partition 100MBs I got passed the original error. Now I get the sector size mismatch error. – northpole Feb 8 at 17:42
These two drives, are they identical in terms of Manufacturer, Make, Model, Size? – JohnThePro Feb 8 at 17:45
The drives are the same size but different Manufacturers (so different make model as well). – northpole Feb 8 at 20:07
If you don't mind, can you provide me that information? As a rule of thumb, when building RAID arrays, you want to have identical drives, and even better identical drives from the manufacturing run. – JohnThePro Feb 9 at 18:34
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.