[SOLVED] raid 5 via windows storage pool says drives are in operation

[Kdolghier]

Well then ive tried quite a few things and I cannot get raid 5 or any raid to work using the windows storage pool. I have 3, 6 TB WD harddrives that I bought for a video storage center. They show up perfectly fine in disk manager and I can format then, or unformat them, or create partitions etc. The harddrives seem fine. When I open up storage pool, I select the three drives and then windows says

"Can't Prepare drives, close all applications that are accessing the drive and then try again. "

I've tried leaving the drives formatted, and unformatted, it doesnt work. I tried starting the storage pool initially, nothing works. I literally just got a fresh install of windows Pro (the trail version), so nothing would be using the drives.
Also I looked at the resource manager, and there is no data being transferred to or from the drives from start up. The drives are unformatted, there is nothing on them. Also I don't want to use MiniTool partition wizard as I cant get the crack working and I'm not going to spend $100 just to do something I can do with Linux/windows for free.

Please help
Thanks!

 

[Deleted member 1272431]

Hi.
Just going on a stretch here but here's some ideas.

Why using Windows? Don't you have the option to configure a RAID controller before (at BIOS or RAID controller level) and setup logical volumes onto which you THEN install Windows?

Have you tried using another bootable disk from which you run the OS and configure the RAID onto the completly empty disks or are you trying to configure the RAID when the OS is already installed in some of them? It seems to me as your OS is using the disks and won't let you configure a RAID that way...

 

[Kdolghier]

Hi.
Just going on a stretch here but here's some ideas.

Why using Windows? Don't you have the option to configure a RAID controller before (at BIOS or RAID controller level) and setup logical volumes onto which you THEN install Windows?

Have you tried using another bootable disk from which you run the OS and configure the RAID onto the completly empty disks or are you trying to configure the RAID when the OS is already installed in some of them? It seems to me as your OS is using the disks and won't let you configure a RAID that way...

I actually tried to enable raid with the bios, but I’m not exactly sure on how to do it, most of the options were greyed out. Also I don’t have a raid controller, I want to do software raid.

and I have windows installed on my SSD, the hard drives are unformatted and there’s nothing on them so...

 

[Deleted member 1272431]

Do you know raid 5 is available only on Windows Enterprise versions?

 

[Kdolghier]

Do you know raid 5 is available only on Windows Enterprise versions?

Actually I didn’t, but that still doesn’t really help me, becuase shouldnt windows storage pool still give me the option at least for raid 0 if it worked?
my problem is that the windows pool storage can’t even select my hard drives becuase it says they’re “in use”

 

[Deleted member 1272431]

Actually I didn’t, but that still doesn’t really help me, becuase shouldnt windows storage pool still give me the option at least for raid 0 if it worked?
my problem is that the windows pool storage can’t even select my hard drives becuase it says they’re “in use”

sorry if I’m not being of much help here.
please let me try to understand better.
I assume you have looked into guides such as this one: http://techgenix.com/windows-10-storage-spaces/
Your disks are thus formatted to NTFS, correct?
you have created a pool (virtual volume) but are unable to select it? Could you provide a screenshot?

 

[popatim]

Have you disabled your A/v solution when you do this?

 

[Kdolghier]

sorry if I’m not being of much help here.
please let me try to understand better.
I assume you have looked into guides such as this one: http://techgenix.com/windows-10-storage-spaces/
Your disks are thus formatted to NTFS, correct?
you have created a pool (virtual volume) but are unable to select it? Could you provide a screenshot?

https://imgur.com/kG9tInW

View: https://imgur.com/kG9tInW

https://imgur.com/ZoNHw34

View: https://imgur.com/ZoNHw34

here's the screenshots
ive found it deosnt change if they are formatted or not. If they are formatted I can only extend the volume.

 

[Kdolghier]

Have you disabled your A/v solution when you do this?

Hey what do you mean by "A/V" solution? Never heard of that lingo

 

[popatim]

Anti-Virus

 

[Kdolghier]

Anti-Virus

Just turned off windows defender and all the other built in windows security and restarted. Still same thing

 

[Kdolghier]

Do you know raid 5 is available only on Windows Enterprise versions?

I just booted up an enterprise version and it worked perfectly, thanks for the help!!

 

[Deleted member 1272431]

I just booted up an enterprise version and it worked perfectly, thanks for the help!!

Happy to help.

And just remember, software RAID tends to be slower than hardware RAID. Since some processing power is taken by the software, read and write speeds of your RAID configuration can be slower. Software RAID is specific to the OS, also, replacing failed disk in the software RAID is a bit more complex.

Take care