Expanded a RAID Array Windows Won't Recognize New Capacity

Hi Guys,

I had 3 x 2TB drives in RAID 5. Added a 4th 2 TB drive to the Archive R: array and migrated the data using Intel Rapid Storage. Expanded the volume in Disk Managment. But windows doesn't seem to see the new size?.How do I get Windows to see the new capacity?

Peter

I haven't used RAID in a long time. (I once used RAID 10: 4 identical disks, with the total capacity of 2 of them.)

RAID 5 effectively has one redundant disk. (The parity information is distributed, so all disks are equal.) If one disk fails, the remaining disks contain all of the data.

That means that if you have N identical disks, the capacity of the array is (N-1) times that of a single disk.

If you want 8TB from your 4 disks, you'd have to go to RAID 0. That's not recommended, as there is no recovery from a failed disk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

You should have had 4TB (3.725TB in Windows) with the 3 disk RAID 5 array.

bobkn said:

I haven't used RAID in a long time. (I once used RAID 10: 4 identical disks, with the total capacity of 2 of them.)

RAID 5 effectively has one redundant disk. (The parity information is distributed, so all disks are equal.) If one disk fails, the remaining disks contain all of the data.

That means that if you have N identical disks, the capacity of the array is (N-1) times that of a single disk.

If you want 8TB from your 4 disks, you'd have to go to RAID 0. That's not recommended, as there is no recovery from a failed disk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

You should have had 4TB (3.725TB in Windows) with the 3 disk RAID 5 array.

You need to re read my post, and look at the picture I've posted. I wasn't expecting to get 8TB. I had 3 x 2TB disks giving me 4TB in RAID 5. I added another 2TB drive which means I now have 4 X 2TB giving me 6TB. As shown in Disk Manager I have R: ~5.8TB but windows only see 3.6TB

spunk said:

Go to Settings/System/ Storage/Manage Storage Spaces. Or Control Panel/Storage Spaces.
Create a new Pool and storage space

Will this delete the data on the drive?

PeteyBoPetey said:

You need to re read my post, and look at the picture I've posted. I wasn't expecting to get 8TB. I had 3 x 2TB disks giving me 4TB in RAID 5. I added another 2TB drive which means I now have 4 X 2TB giving me 6TB. As shown in Disk Manager I have R: ~5.8TB but windows only see 3.6TB

I studied the first post again. I can see that I might have concluded that the capacity of the array as seen by Windows was unchanged, but the language wasn't as obvious as it could have been. My apologies. I couldn't understand how someone could use RAID 5 without a zeroth-order understanding of what it does.

I have never used Storage Spaces, but it appears to be a Win10 means of doing software RAID. I'd be surprised if you could switch from the Intel soft RAID to Storage Spaces without breaking the Intel RAID (and losing the data on the disks).

Sorry, I can't explain how Disk Management sees the correct capacity while Windows 10 does not.