Rapid Storage Technology
Intel® RST, RAID
2046 Discussions

No 'Increase Size' Option for RAID 5 Array in RST - Why is this missing?

idata
Employee
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I swapped out all of my 2TB drives for 4TB drives, waited for the array to rebuild each one. I have available space now but I do not see the option for Increasing the Size under the RST application.

Where do I go to increase the volumes raid size?

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idata
Employee
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Here's another screenshot..... RAID 5 with hot spare....

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idata
Employee
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Please let me know if you need more information on the current RAID configuration.

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idata
Employee
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Here is the SSU information.

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idata
Employee
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I haven't found a solution yet.

MOBO: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/MAXIMUS_VII_HERO/HelpDesk_Download/ MAXIMUS VII HERO Driver & Tools | Motherboards | ASUS USA

Can someone tell me how to confirm which I/O Controller Hub is on my MOBO? So No the following information doesn't explain why it isn't working>

I found the following which might explain why this doesn't work. But why wouldn't the application detect this and tell you via a visible button with a tooltip that tells the user that this isn't supported with your hardware? I'm hoping that I'm wrong.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005807/technologies.html?wapkw=ich+raid RAID Features by Chipset or Controller Hub

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idata
Employee
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Hello Brian41c,

 

 

I understand that you are having problems increasing the volume size of the array.

 

 

Regarding this, I was researching and I found out that there seems to be a compatibility problem. Please download the Intel ® Rapid Storage Technology from the motherboard manufacturer's website, current version installed is not supported by the chipset/Rapid Storage Technology version combination.

 

 

Here is a link where you can download the version that I mentioned, however, make sure to first fully uninstall the version you have:

 

 

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/MAXIMUS_VII_HERO/HelpDesk_Download/ https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/MAXIMUS_VII_HERO/HelpDesk_Download/

 

 

* Please be aware that the content on that site is not controlled by Intel*. This information is offered for your convenience and should not be viewed as an endorsement by Intel* for the merchants or services offered there. *

 

 

 

Regards,

 

David V
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idata
Employee
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I was on version 13.x previously and it wasn't showing the button to increase the volume size either. I upgraded and it resulted in the version 16.x which didn't show the button correctly either. I've downgraded as requested to version 14.x which was installed by the manufacturer (ASUS) site but still I don't see anything that allows me to increase the size of the existing volumes. I am not able to find anything or any reason why I can't upgrade other than the Intel application blocking me from being able to increase the size. Any help getting this resolved would be much appreciated. I personally, don't believe that it has anything to do with which version of the software that I'm running since 13, 14 & 16 have resulted in any different results for me.

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idata
Employee
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Hello Brian41c,

 

 

Thank you for your response.

 

 

I was checking the details you have provided so far and I can see that I did not request a report which would be great to get more information about the Intel ® Rapid Storage Technology you are using, this would be the system report. Please refer to the link below for instructions on how to create this report:

 

 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006351/technologies.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006351/technologies.html

 

 

Please attach the report to this thread. Also, I would like to request a screenshot of the disk management of your computer.

 

 

I hope to hear from you.

 

 

 

Regards,

 

David V
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idata
Employee
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Here you go.

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idata
Employee
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Disk Management.

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idata
Employee
1,656 Views

Hello Brian41c,

 

 

Thank you for your response.

 

 

Since there is a matrix RAID, the option to increase size is not available. You must erase the second RAID volume, increase the size, and once the size is increased, create the second volume again.

 

 

IMPORTANT: The information from the second volume will be deleted, make sure to backup any important data.

 

 

 

I hope this helps.

 

 

 

Regards,

 

David V
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idata
Employee
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Ok, that makes sense but the button should still exist and tell the user that it can't perform the action due to .......

So does it make more sense with the larger drives to run "RAID5 + spare" or "RAID10 no spare" as (3x RAID 1 / 3x RAID 0). The space isn't that much different which is why I ask.

Plus, I'm thinking of running 64k cluster size as I have Hyper V and large files but still have several small files. I have some small files but the 64k or 32k seems to make the most since. I know that I don't want to create the cluster size smaller than 32k with the type of files that I have.

Also, should I just create one volume so I don't hit this issue the next time I swap out the drives?

I'll try removing the second volume and confirm that I can see the 'increase volume' button once that second volume has been destroyed.

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idata
Employee
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Hello Brian41c,

 

 

Thank you for your response.

 

 

I would not be able to tell which option would be best for you, if having one or two volumes. I know for sure that performance and reliability should not be compromised whatsoever whether there is one or two volumes, so it would be your opinion or the way you want to configure them.

 

 

Now, please let me know if the suggestion provided works for you, If not, let me know so we can assist you further with this.

 

 

 

Regards,

 

David V
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idata
Employee
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I have confirmed that once I deleted the second volume, I can now see the 'Increase size' option. I still say that you should be able to see the Increase the size on the second volume instead of deleting the volume to only recreate it larger.

What's the difference in just letting the user increase the existing second volume? Plus there was no option to specify the cluster size from the UI. I guess I will have to delete the volume and boot to the bios to created it with the cluster size I want this to have.

I guess I have more digging to figure out why this failed.

Something is messed up with 2 of the drives. I've never seen that before.

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idata
Employee
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Hello Brian41c,

 

 

Thank you for your response.

 

 

After this issue appeared, what options do you have under "Manage" in the Intel ® Rapid Storage Technology software? Does it allow you to rebuild the RAID?

 

 

Have you been able to re-create the RAID 5 and the new volume? If not, please go ahead and try rebuilding it or recreating it.

 

 

Let me know the outcome, if possible provide me with screenshots of the "Manage" tab.

 

 

 

Regards,

 

David V
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idata
Employee
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The only option I had was to delete the existing volume or create a new volume. Which the creating of the second volume failed. So I ended up deleted both volumes and went into the bios and created both new volumes. This was the only way for me to get to the strip size setting as well. The creation of the 2 new volumes has finally completed this morning. I think I should finally be able to create my volumes GPT and putting my data back. But this does point out that it was a waste of time to attempt to pull each drive and let it rebuild each one to grow the storage. I was unsuccessful in replacing all drives 1 at a time and then Increasing the size of the existing volume as the Increase of the first volume didn't work.

The manage page shows 10MB available space. This is suspect from what the UI did when I attempted to Increase the space as it only left 5 MB available.

Now with new volumes are online, time to put all the data back. This isn't what I would call a successful upgrade to the raid array but it seems to have accomplished what I wanted to do just not a quickly as it should have.

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idata
Employee
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As a side note, here are some differences in the benchmarks between the 2TB vs 4TB drives.

Newer 4TB drives

Newer 4TB Drives with version 6.x

Old 2TB Drives

Old Drive D with Write-cache Disabled

Old Drive D with Write-Cache Enabled

Old Drive F with Write-cache Disabled

Old Drive F with Write-Cache Enabled

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idata
Employee
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Hello Brian41c,

 

 

Thank you for your response.

 

 

Upon reviewing the information I can see that you had problems re-creating the volumes. Do you have them now? Are they working properly? I apologize for any inconveniences you may have experienced during the process, please let me know if you need any more assistance from our side.

 

 

 

Regards,

 

David V
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idata
Employee
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Yes, both volumes are now created again without issues. All is well again. Thanks for the assistance.

I must say that this wasn't the simple upgrade/increase volume that I was looking for in the beginning. It is good that I was able to make a backup of my data before trying this.

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idata
Employee
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Hello Brian41c,

 

 

Thank you for your response.

 

 

First, I would like to say that I am glad you now have the two volumes up and running now. Again, I really apologize for the issues we had in the process, we are going to be investigating to fix problems like this in the future.

 

 

 

Regards,

 

David V
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