Solved Only see 1 SDD on a multi-HDD system...What do I need to change?

[Ccaptain Jack]

I only see the SDD on my new build and not the 3 HDD's that are attached also. Do I need to go to the command prompts and enter ......DISKPART commands and setup each drives manually? Also, the drive that I see does not show the max GB of the drives as 256 GB. It show the drive max GB of 238 GB and 216 GB free. Is there something I needed to do to change the drive's size?


1. Using the SSD for Boot/OS/Programs....drive is setup and Windows 7 PRO 64bit is loaded

The next thing I would like to do is get the drives to show so I can do the following:

2. Using the 2 TB HDD in RAID1 for libraries (data/media, my DOCS, Music, Pics, etc.)
3. Using the 1 TB external HDD for backup-Microsoft Sync and Norton backup Utilities

Please Help!!!

System specs:
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 2G DDR5 PCIE 3.0
Cosair GS 700
Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad Core
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing
Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H-MVP mATX LGA 1155
Corsair Vengeance 4GB (2x 4GB) DDR3-1600
Crucial m4 256GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s
Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200 RPM
Seagate Barracuda 2x(1TB 3.5" 7200 RPM)
Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower
Asus BC-12B1ST-BLK/B/AS Blue-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer
WD 1 TB external drive

 

[essenbe]

First, maybe I don't understand, but have you set up your Raid 1 in bios? What is your bios sata controller set to, Raid, AHCI or IDE? Have you installed IRST? If everything is set up, you should be able to go to disk management, see the drives in the lower portion with no drive letter, right click the drive, select 'change drive letter or Path', next screen select 'Add' and assign it a drive letter. Or you can do diskpart, select disk # (where # is the number of the drive you want) type assign and press enter. Do that for each drive.

For example diskpart <enter> wait for the command prompt to respond diskpart.
select disk 1 <enter> wait for the command prompt to respond disk 1 is the selected disk
assign <enter>

If you get any other response, exit and post a screenshot of disk management showing both the top and bottom part so we can see all the disks.

 

[Ccaptain Jack]

Update....I went into disk management and was able to see additional HDD's that I did not see prior. I was given a choice as how to partition those drives and I select GPT over MBR!

 

[essenbe]

Any particular reason you wanted them GPT rather than MBR ?
if you want them to be MBR disks, which I imagine you do, but you will lose everything on them.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26203-convert-gpt-disk-mbr-disk.html

 

[Ccaptain Jack]

No particular reason other than what I have read over the past several days regarding MBR vs. GPT on the net (GPT being better than MBR). All of this is very new to me seeing that all I have ever done with a computer was push the power supply start button and when it breaks take it to the repair shop and gett ripped off. So I decided to learn everything I can about them this year. Therefore, I decided to build a gaming rig and learn from a hands on approach.

 

[essenbe]

No problem, if that's what you wanted. From the link posted above.

Note

Differences Between MBR and GPT Disks:

• MBR disks are supported (readable) by all Windows operating systems.
  • GPT disks are only supported (readable) by Windows server 2003 SP1 +, XP 64-bit, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008.
• MBR disks use the standard BIOS partition table.
  • GPT disks use extensible firmware interface (EFI).
• MBR disks supports up to 2TB per single partition.
  • GPT disks supports up to 256TB per single partition in Windows.
• MBR disks supports up to 4 Primary partitions or 3 Primary partitions and 1 Extended partition with up to 128 logical volumes in the extended partition.
  • GPT disks supports up to 128 Primary partitions.
• Removable disks are MBR disks by default.
  • Removable disks cannot be converted into a GPT disk.

 

[Ccaptain Jack]

Question: the OS is on a 256GB M4 SSD which is partitioned using MBR and I want to load other programs on the HDD's which are GPT after I firgure out how to setup RAID1 on the two 1TB HDD's and will the two partitioning sytles be in conflict with each other? Finally, with spec listed in the op would you even setup RAID 1 or RAID 5? I have a 3TB HHD in the case along with two 1 TB HDDs. (My thinking is I that with GPT partitions on the all the HHD's if a sector became corrupted I would be able to be regenrated the lost data from the MBR sector created within the GPT partition. So that eliminate the need for RAID 1 or RAID 5!)

 

[essenbe]

You'll need help from someone else for raid. I have used it once, but don't know a lot about it. Without raid, I don't know how you would regenerate it. Some forms of raid will. If it is data it can be replaced by backups, no matter how they are partitioned. But, in raid, all members should be the same size disks. It can be done otherwise but you will lose space from the larger disks. At least that's what I understand.

 

[Ccaptain Jack]

Ok. Thanks. I will complete the partitioning first and move on to RAID next. What I noticed about the way I set up the GPT partitioning on 1 of the 1TB drives I have 200MB setup as EFI system partition of the 931.07 GB NTFS under volume letter F. Did I do this correct? Is there a way to split the drive of 931 into equal partitions?