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I am trying to create a software stripe setup with two physical disks (underneath they are 128K stripe, RAID5 for each). I've read that one can use diskpart, but I am unable to come up with a command that works. This is on Server 2k3 SP2.

I was trying

create volume stripe disk=2,3 align=1024

Diskpart errors out:

The arguments you specified for this command are not valid.

P.S. Tried successfully with a basic disk and a primary partition.

Please reply,

-Greg

Ben Pilbrow
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GregC
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  • Running /? returns Microsoft DiskPart version 5.2.3790.3959 Copyright (C) 1999-2001 Microsoft Corporation. – GregC Jun 24 '09 at 23:57
  • http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;923076&sd=rss&spid=3198 It says file version where align is introduced is 5.2.3790.2763 (SP1) – GregC Jun 25 '09 at 12:47

2 Answers2

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Is sure looks like the "align=" option wasn't added to DISKPART for creating striped volumes until Windows Vista (it's in there for basic disks back to W2K). Having said that, you might have a shot at doing this by booting a Windows Server 2008 DVD on your machine, breaking out to a command-prompt with Shift-F10 and using DISKPART from there.

Edit:

I spun up a VMware Server 2.0 VM with two (2) SCSI hard disk drives and the W2K8 Standard x86 install DVD image. I booted, dropped out to a command prompt via repair, and did:

diskpart
select disk 0
clean
convert dynamic
select disk 1
clean
convert dynamic
create volume stripe disk=0,1 align=1024
assign volume 0
exit
format c: /q /u /fs:ntfs

After formatting the new volume I shutdown the VM, then attached the two (2) SCSI disks to an existing W2K3-based VM I had sitting around. I booted the W2K3 VM, logged-on and opened "Computer Management" and found that the foreign disks were detected. I imported them and found that my striped volume was accessible. I copied some files to it and found no problems.

Give that a shot. Worst case, if you don't have a W2K8 DVD laying around, download the W2K8 120-day demo DVD and use that.

Evan Anderson
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  • Align feature is promised to be in Server 2003 SP1. I was successful using it with a Basic disk, and a Primary partition. – GregC Jun 24 '09 at 23:49
  • I'm going to give it a go w/ a W2K8 ISO on a VM right now. I'll try a W2K3SP2-based BartPE as well and report back. – Evan Anderson Jun 24 '09 at 23:50
  • Thank you for your advice. I'll give it a shot. Do you think Server 2003 will be OK with a partition made by Server 2008? – GregC Jun 24 '09 at 23:51
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    Yeah-- the NTFS verison number wasn't bumped on server 2008, and there's no change that I'm aware of to the dynamic disk functionality. If you're wary, cobble together a script to copy a large file (say, an ISO image) onto the volume a few (hundred) times and compare the resulting copies with the original. It's certainly not a foolproof test, but it might give you some confidence. I'm still working on my VM here-- I'll know in a second if I can mount this stripe set on a W2K3 machine. – Evan Anderson Jun 24 '09 at 23:57
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    I am not seeing the ability to use the "align=" argument on "create volume stripe" w/ W2K3 SP2's DISKPART. – Evan Anderson Jun 25 '09 at 00:09
  • that's a totally amazing answer! Thank you so much. One last thing... Could you run dmdiag /v from Server2003? I am looking to confirm the partition offset. – GregC Jun 25 '09 at 00:16
  • I'm not sure that the offset is right! Admittedly, I don't have scads of experience reading the output from dmdiag. Have a look: http://mx02.wellbury.com/misc/dmdiag.txt – Evan Anderson Jun 25 '09 at 02:50
  • This is what I had in mind: http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay/archive/2008/12/04/disk-partition-alignment-sector-alignment-for-sql-server-part-4-essentials-cheat-sheet.aspx – GregC Jun 25 '09 at 12:37
  • Sum of numbers under rel sec column yields exactly 16M. – GregC Jun 25 '09 at 12:38
  • Thank you for all your help. I'm sure other people will find it useful as well. – GregC Jun 25 '09 at 12:48
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I tried that and I have two comments:

1- (Minor comment): "assign volume 0" is not a valid command. You need to write "assign letter=n".

2- (Important comment): I tried it in both Windows 7 pro and Windows Server 2008 R2 and although DISKPART will let you do it without generating an error, it will not align the partitions at all. Both msinfo32 and "AS SSD" will tell you that your partitions are not aligned. I tried with align=1024, align=2048, 4096, 8192, 16384 and 65536 and none of them worked.

I hope somebody will prove me I am wrong.