0

We have a Server in our office with an Adaptec 2820SA RAID contoller in it, and since the day we got it its been purely excellent.

However, we recently wanted to increase the size of our storage options and have bought 4 x brand new 1.5TB drives for a new RAID5 array. But when I went into the controller to configure it, The drives were not "available" to create an array.

It seems like the controller, despite having 8 SATA channels, is only capable of 1 array at a time.

I have tried googling this theory with no result. Is anyone able to confirm this for me?

Improve this question

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
2

Are you on the latest firmware/drivers? those 1.5TB disks are quite new and may not be supported by the version of firmware you currently have, or ever for that matter.

Improve this answer
2

I found the cause. After some more digging I found this on the Adaptec Support page for the 2820SA. As follows:

Capacity: Max. physical disk drive size: 1TB

So obviously a flash of the BIOS isn't going to do me much good anyway (even if the floppy drive in the server WAS working. Thanks for the suggestions though guys.

Improve this answer
1
  • You beat me to it - I was about to post this exact answer.
    – Mark Henderson
    Jul 17, 2009 at 0:36
0

Something similar happened to me before:

Did you set up a RAID on the 4 new drives before? Often, the drives are then marked as "in use" and not available for a new raid until you free them.

Improve this answer
0

If the 1.5TB drives are seagate barracuda, they're desktop drives and they're very well known for having all sort of problems. They behave extremely poorly in RAID configuration, notwithstanding the fact that as desktop drives, they're not supposed to be used this way.

Improve this answer
2
  • I think they are Barracudas, but that being said the previous Array of 4 x 300GB Drives were also barracudas, and worked amazingly well. They just arn't big enough anymore.
    – Ash
    Jul 16, 2009 at 21:59
  • Most barracudas are OK, BUT the 1.5TB model.
    – wazoox
    Jul 17, 2009 at 10:42

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .