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Does the ICH10R support RAID capacity expansion?

idata
Employee
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I believe it does not, but I'd like to confirm it. According to http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022304.htm this "What features are supported on each I/O controller hub (ICH)?" grid, only the ICH10DO chipset supports capacity expansion. Does the ICH10R actually lack the hardware to accomplish capacity expansion?

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idata
Employee
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Hi Karl,

Well it definitely states that the ICH10R does not support capacity expansion.

I was reading in the TPS, the chipset for ICH10DO is /Product.aspx?id=34394 Intel® 82801JO I/O Controller

And for the ICH10R is /Product.aspx?id=34395 Intel® 82801JR I/O Controller

Probably in the corresponding datasheet from the http://ark.intel.com http://ark.intel.com you may get your exact answer.

All the best,

Regards,

Aryan

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idata
Employee
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Only a $2 price difference between those I/O controllers! Guess my Asus P5Q Deluxe motherboard isn't so "deluxe." Thanks for the information!

idata
Employee
2,271 Views

Hi, Karl. fyi, capacity expansion does in fact appears to work on Intel(R) ICH10R - I was playing around with it and discovered this (hence the reason the web content hasn't been updated yet).

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idata
Employee
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Thanks for the response, Elizabeth. Do you have any ideas then why the "Volume Capacity Expansion" checkbox is always grayed out in my Intel Matrix Storage Manager? I have the latest version (8.8) and 3 1.5 TB drives. I tried many permutations, including creating a 1TB RAID 5 volume and then attempting to expand it, but the checkbox was never enabled.

Furthermore, I was never able to create more than 2 RAID 5 volumes, which is odd, since I thought the ICH10R could support up to 4 volumes.

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idata
Employee
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Bumping to get an answer to my question. Shame that Intel doesn't appear to monitor their own forums!

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idata
Employee
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karl,

There are a couple of reasons the checkboxes to add an additional drive may be disabled. First of all, it is only supported for RAID0 and RAID5 volumes. If you have a matrix array (two volumes on the same array) and either of the volumes is not RAID0 or RAID5, then you won't be able to add a disk.

Next, the software will look at the partition information. It will only expand a volume that is partitioned with MBR (Master Boot Record). Now, MBR can only support disks/ volumes that are up to 2TB in size. Therefore, in order to protect your data, expansions that would result in a volume greater than 2TB are not allowed.

As far as not being able to create more than 2 volumes, you are correct that most systems will support up to 4 volumes. There are only 6 ports on the controller, thus limiting you to 6 disks, and RAID 5 requires at least 3 disks. You can, however, have up to 2 volumes per array.

--Mike

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idata
Employee
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Thanks for the details, Mike. Hopefully in future chipsets, the 2 RAID 5 volume limit can be increased, as many add-on RAID controllers support 4 or more RAID 5 volumes.

Last, I'm still left wondering why I cannot expand a volume in my 3 1.5 TB setup with a fourth 1.5 TB drive if I'm using MBR and the volume I'm expanding is less than 2TB?

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idata
Employee
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How large is your RAID5 volume with the 3 disk configuration (how many GB)? Is there more than one volume on the array? If so, what raid level is it?

Thanks,

Mike

Message was edited by: Mike&# 13; I just re-read your earlier post where you stated you were setting up a single 1TB RAID 5 volume. I would have thought adding a disk in this scenario would have been supported. Perhaps the array free space is the issue here. I'm not sure if the free array space is used up on a capacity expansion. If so, the resulting size of the volume would be greater than 2TB in your case, which would prevent the expansion.

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idata
Employee
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I'm only using RAID 5. I tried every size for the first volume that I thought reasonably tested the ICH10R chipset: 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB. Regardless, the second volume would only consume the remaining space (the option to set the size was always greyed out).

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idata
Employee
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So is there going to be a firmware update to mahe the 2Gb limut bigger? I am running 6 x 500Gb on my controller, and can just use 5 as RAID5...

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idata
Employee
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The 2TB limit doesn't come from the RAID stack or driver. It's actually a limitation of the way a hard drive's partition table is set up. MBR (Master Boot Record) is a standard way of defining partitions on a disk. It's been around for a long time. It has a limitation that it can only address up to 2TB of disk space. Therefore, MBR can not be used on disks/ volumes that are larger than 2TB.

If the RAID driver did allow an expansion of an MBR volume to greater than 2TB, in the best scenario you would be limited to 2TB of space, but in some scenarios the OS will fail to recognize the volume altogether.

The Intel Matrix Storage Manager does support creating volumes greater than 2TB. Note that not all OROMs support this, but you should still be able to create such a volume in the Windows UI even if it's not supported by the OROM. After creating the volume, you need to use Windows Disk Manager to initialize the disk using GPT (GUID Partition Table) which, unlike MBR, does support more than 2TB volumes.

Something to be aware of, however, is that on many OSs, volumes that have been configured as GPT cannot be used as boot volumes-- you would need to boot of a different disk/ volume.

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idata
Employee
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Thx Mike.

Why will the RAID adapter then not see the disk as RAID, it says it is a NON RAID DISK, and I cannot add it to my existing array?

I need to do this before I can do anything with it in Windows. I can see it in Windows Disk manager, but it is not part of the RAID array...

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idata
Employee
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scalci,

Please create a new post for your questions. I'd like to keep this post on target regarding the ICH10R's support for more than 2 RAID 5 volumes and capacity expansion. Thanks.

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idata
Employee
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This is gonna be a longer post but I also played with the capacity expansion so you might want to read it. 🙂

First of all, it is important to understand the concepts and terms correctly. Many people confuse the terms RAID array, volume, disk, partition and mix them up in their posts so reading that is often extremely difficult. Even Intel Matrix Storage Manager has a bit confusing way of working with volumes. You can read a nice article at http://carltonbale.com/how-to-break-the-2tb-2-terabyte-file-system-limit http://carltonbale.com/how-to-break-the-2tb-2-terabyte-file-system-limit

On ICH10R you can create multiple RAID arrays and each of them can contain up to two volumes of different (but "compatible") RAID level (for example, you can't have a RAID-5 and a RAID-1 volume on the same array).

Think of an array as a virtual box. Then think of a volume as a virtual hard disk inside that box. And you can create a box from two or more of your physical hard disks. Actually, you start with creating a volume and selecting which physical disks will be used for this volume. This in turn creates the actual array which is defined by those phisycal disks that you selected, and the volume sits inside this array and is "spread over" these physical disks. So the process is a bit confusing to keep this in mind when you read on (when I say "you create an array and then volume" I really mean that you create a volume because the array for it is then created automatically).

So for example on ICH10R you can use 1 TB Seagate + 1 TB WD and make one box (array) called "Array1". Then inside this array you can make two virtual hard disks (volumes) called "Volume1" and "Volume2" and select the RAID level they will use, for example Volume1 will be RAID-0 and Volume2 will be RAID-1 (if you wanted to create a volume with RAID-5 then you would have to use three hard disks when you create the array).

You can repeat this and create another array with your other two hard disks, for example 1 TB Hitachi and 1 TB Samsung. Again you can create two volumes inside this array with the same or different RAID levels.

You must understand that at this point you are not dealing with partitions or MBR / GPT volumes. This is not a part of creating RAID setup. Intel Matrix Storage Manager does't care how big your volumes are. It can work with big and small volumes equally well. It will not gray out options because of the size of the volumes or because of MBR/GPT (it may only do so because of the RAID level you use on them). MBR and GPT don't even exist yet at this point. You will have to worry about partitions and MBR / GPT (virtual) disks later in Windows Computer Management / Disk Management as you initialize them and partition them. The only thing you need to know before you create the volume is that you can't boot from it if it is larger that 2 TB.

So after you create one or two volumes in the array, you can go to Disk Management in Windows. There you will see these volumes shown as empty uninitialized virtual hard disks with no partitions on them. Then you can intialize those virtual hard disks as MBR or GPT partition style, depending on how you want to use them. If the volume (virtual hard disk) is 2TB or lower then you can initialize it as MBR and create partitions on it. These partitions can be bootable and you can install Windows on them. But if the volume (virtual hard disk) is bigger than 2TB then you must initialize it as GPT. You can then also create partitions on it but they will not be bootable (except if you have an EFI BIOS and 64-bit OS, but that's another story).

Now to my story:

Currently as I write this, the newest version of Intel Matrix Storage Manager software and drivers is 8.?9.?0.?1023 (release date 7/17/2009). And this is what I have found out doing tests on my computer (Intel Matrix Storage Manager option ROM 8.0.0.1038):

I have built me a new PC with an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard with X58 chipset and ICH10R southbridge. I put in four 1TB SATA drives and used them to create a RAID array with two RAID-5 volumes (I did that in Intel Matrix Storage Manager option "BIOS" ("IMSM BIOS")). The available capacity was therefore around 3TB. I had to create two volumes because I couldn't use one big 3TB volume since Windows cannot be installed on it. So I created one 50 GB volume and the second volume took the rest of the available space (you can't change that - second volume always takes ALL the remaining space).

I then booted from the Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit install DVD and the setup program detected my two RAID volumes as Disk0 (50 GB) and Disk1 (2744 GB). I didn't have to load any special RAID drivers so that was nice. Windows 7 could only be installed on Disk0 so I selected that and installed the OS (the setup partitioned it automatically). Once inside Win7 I installed the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software and checked my RAID configuration. It looked ok. I then went and initialized the other volume (Disk1) in Disk Management. I had 2 options: MBR and GPT. If I selected GPT, the drive was initialized and I had 2.7 TB of Unallocated space ready to be partitioned as one or multiple partitions. But if I selected MBR, then the disk got split into two parts of Unallocated space, one of size 2048 GB and the other 696 GB. So I could then create one or more partition in the "left" Unallocated space and one or more partitions in the "right" Unallocated space. The difference is that I could not have one single 2.7 GB partition like on a GPT initialized disk. And don't be fooled, even though I did initialize this disk as MBR and created multiple partitions smaller than 2 TB on it (even set active), I could NOT install windows on the partition on this drive. This is because the disk itself (the volume created the RAID array) is larger than 2 TB. You can use such a disk (volume) in Windows but you can't boot from it on a regular PC with a regular BIOS.

I then powered off the PC and removed one of the drives. When I turned it on, the IMSM BIOS reported the RAID-5 volume as DEGRADED but it continued working of course. Once in Windows I hot-plugged the drive back. The system recognized it and also re-inserted it into the RAID array as a member and then started the rebuild process. I didn't wait for it to finish but let's say it would have went through 100% and returned to normal.

I then deleted the RAID array and Windows as well. I brought in another 250 GB SATA drive, installed Windows on there and then had all the other four 1TB drives free for some more RAID tests.

I decided to test the Volume Capacity Expansion feature since I read this thread prior and wanted to see if it is really grayed out on ICH10R. As we know by now, Intel's table at http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022304.htm http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022304.htm says that ICH10R does NOT support capacity expansion. But in fact, the option in my IMSM WAS available but as I found out, it does work differently as one would expect.

This is also one thing (as I mentioned before) where Intel confuses the user with the options. In IMSM they call it Volume Capacity Expansion.

Anyway, I used three drives to create an array with 50 GB RAID-5 Volume0 (for example I had Windows installed there) and the rest of the space (1813 GB) was used for Volume1 (also RAID-5) (for example I had data there). I then wanted to add another 1TB drive to this array so that I could then extend Volume1 to cover all the newly added space. I would expect this option would be available if I right-clicked on the array name in IMSM but it wasn't. I had to right click on Volume1 in IMSM and select Modify volume. That is kind of counter-intuitive. I then ticked the Volume Capacity Expansion option and then selected ONE of the following (this is also documented in the user manual of IMSM):

- Utilize 100% of available array space

- Add one or more member hard drives

I selected "Add one or more member hard drives" since I already had the two volumes using 100% of array space. I then selected the drive to add and clicked Finish. The drive was then added to the array containing my two volumes. The 50 GB Volume0 started migrating immediately (only spre...

idata
Employee
2,271 Views

Perplexer,

Nice disseration! Especially for a nube like myself.

I bought a ICH10R mobo so I could do RAID 5 and after some trial and error, I have a 3 drive RAID 5 with 2 RAID 5 volumes and am running XP Pro SP3. I'm using 3 identical 500gig HD.

I would like to add a 4th identical 500 gig drive to the array.

My question is: Do I need to put the drive in, boot to BIOS IMSM and add the new drive to the existing array? OR, should I HOT swap in the 4th drive and use the IMSM Windows Console to add the drive to the array?

Capacity expansion is not my concern although with 4 500 gig HD I'm right at 2tb. My main concern is how to add the drive without messing up my system.

Can you give some advice or point me to a forum, FAQ, manual or some resource to learn how to add the 4th drive?

idata
Employee
2,271 Views

The reason that both volumes expand themselves is the same reason that you cannot have a mirror and a raid 5 on the same set of disks. The raid volumes have to "line up" or use the same number of disks. Why this is, I do not know. But, its 25 gigs of space you did not have before.

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SDavi22
Novice
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I just tried Perplexor's instructions and thought I'd share the results.

I have an ASUS P6T motherboard with ICH10R OROM 8.0.0.1038 and MSM 8.9.0.1023 installed on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

I attached 4 2 TB drives to the SATA ports.

I boot from a separate IDE drive.

Going into MSM I created Volume0 (RAID5) as the smallest I could get using 3 out of the 4 disks - something like 37GB.

I also marked this volume bootable.

Then I created Volume1 (RAID5, again) using the rest of the space - something like 3700GB.

I chose this config because I planned on building another machine with just the RAID having a small boot and a huge data volume, and this was essentially a test to see if I could actually use this config and expand it when more space was needed.

I then tried to expand Volume1 by adding the 4th disk to the array.

This of course, as Perplexor stated, will actually expand both Volume1 AND Volume0.

But I don't particularly care that Volume0 will get expanded because it's small and only gets a tiny portion of the extra expansion space.

Anyways, the MSM started chugging away on expanding (rebuilding, actually) Volume0, because, I guess, that volume was created first.

Volume0 finished, and then things went amiss.

Instead of moving on to Volume1, the MSM reported that it was done and wanted to reboot for the changes to be seen properly.

Okay, I complied.

The system locked up during shutdown.

I power cycled my machine.

The system locked up while booting Windows.

I power cycled my machine.

The system came up, and much to my suprise started rebuilding Volume1...except something was horribly wrong...

Volume1 was listed as being 12000-something GB instead of 5000-something GB.

Yikes, that's totally wrong.

I stopped it.

Then I started over thinking I did something wrong.

Same results, even after trying a third time.

Dunnow whether this is Window's or Intel's or Asus's fault but I felt gypped.

So I waited until the components for my newer system to arrive to try it on that one.

The new system is a FoxConn Q45M (which is actually an ICH10DO) board, so I thought it had a better change of getting things right.

Wrong.

Things were worse.

Right off the bat, the OROM refused to create a RAID volume greater than 2TB.

That was a bummer, and, to me, a huge step backwards!

The OROM on this board is 8.5.0.1020 - it's NEWER!

I find it ironic that the older OROM on the ASUS board had no problem whatsoever creating volumes > 2 GB.

To see if I could get around this, I created a small volume using the OROM, and installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64 there.

Then I installed MSM 8.9.0.1023 and tried to create the huge data volume from within it.

It immediately warned me that the volume would be marked as "Incompatible" in the OROM.

Huh?

I dismissed the warning and let it proceed.

It seemed to work, but then a reboot made everything fall apart.

Indeed, the 3 disks in the array were listed as status "Incompatible" during POST, and even worse, the small bootable volume would no longer boot.

Gah!

Why is this happening?

Is it ICH10DO? The particular OROM? A FoxConn BIOS limitation?

Can I get around this or do I need to return this board for an ICH10R board like my ASUS and then limit myself to 1 volume (so capacity expansion doesn't crash on me).

I'd appreciate any input here.

Daniel_T_Intel
Employee
2,271 Views

The OROM does not support volumes over 2TB and won't report the information correctly. You probably want to keep you volume sizes under 2TB. You may also want to upgrade to the latest RST 9.6.0 driver to avoid some random drive FAILED conditions that occur in 8.9.0 and 9.5.0.

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SDavi22
Novice
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After complaining to FoxConn, they delivered a BIOS update (in under a week no less) that fixed the 2 TB limit, and I am happily enjoying my 4 TB RAID 5 array. However, the ability to expand an array containing two volumes still does not work. Like on the ASUS board, an attempt to expand an array with two volumes results in the first volume migrating correctly and then the second volume not being migrated at all, although the second volume gets marked with the new size; this then results (on the next boot) in Windows crashing (because no migration occcured) and the second volume being given a size that is double its real capacity. Then Windows boots again and tries to rebuild the second volume as if it actually had this wrong size (it would be nice to magically have twice the storage). I did not wait for this to complete assuming it would eventually crash.

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idata
Employee
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Hello-

I am replacing my Apple TV/Drobo combination with a media server running Win7_64 (which would be the first windows-only machine I've built or purchased for myself in about a decade ...Job's reluctance to include bluray playback support has resulted in one less mac mini sale).

I will be using Gigabyte's GA-EP45T-USB3P (or something like that...can't remember off the top of my head), which sports Intel's ICH10R southbridge.

I wanted to create a 3x1.5TB RAID 5 array and upgrade to a 5 disk array when need dictates.

If I have read correctly, this thread is (mostly) concerned with expanding an array with multiple partitions. I will boot Win 7 off an SSD and will only have a sole partition on my 3TB RAID 5 array. Will I run into any issues expanding to a 5 drive set up in the future?

I am also a bit unclear about what an OROM is...is this something Intel provides Mobo manufacturers for their firmware? Or is it something I can apply independently? Will I not be able to rock a >2TB volume if Gigabyte has not implemented Intel's updated OROM in their firmware?

From my understanding, I can set SATA mode to RAID, boot into windows, set up a 3 disk partition using Intel's software, and format in GPT to have a partition greater than 2GB. I can later use Intel's RAID software to add two more drives when needed. Is this remotely close to being true?

I hope I haven't derailed this discussion.

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