Im trying to get a Raid 5 array going... i have an old High Point RocketRAID 230xPM controller that is seeing all 4 2TB HDDs (showing 6000.94GB - 6TB). It says that its status is Uninitialized... and the controller doesnt have any options to fix it... that i can tell. It is running on a Windows 7 Home Premium, has 8GB of ram and all its doing is acting as a server... what am i forgetting to do? any thoughts would be greatly appreciated Thanks
yes, i partitioned the volume and it shows 5 and some change TB (close enough). my understanding is that if the array is uninitialized it does not have the parity bit and thus its redundancy for the whole purpose of a RAID 5 array.
Did you remember to do step one of "creating RAID arrays" in the manual - initialising the disks in the RAID card BIOS (not the motherboard BIOS)? If not, delete the array, initialise the disks, recreate the array and you'll be golden.
i deleted the array and rebuilt it - there was a "background initilization" option... PXL_20250804_003315317 by disturbed13 posted 3 Aug 2025 at 19:53 and after i selected that i ended up where i started... PXL_20250731_211227078 by disturbed13 posted 3 Aug 2025 at 19:53 i even tried the no initilization option thinking i could initilize it after the creation... that didnt work either
D'you see the tabs across the top of the screen? Create, Delete, and so on? Do you see the one at the very right, Initialize? That's what you need, according to the manual. Delete the array. Press the Right Arrow key until you're on Initialize (not Create, not the Background Initialization in the Create menu, the Initialize across the top) and hit Enter. That'll let you initialise the disks, *then* you can go into Create to make your array. To quote The Fine Manual:
please enjoy the irrefutable evidence that the instructions in the manual does not work and gets me back to square 1 thanks for your time and patience
Well, that's... weird, innit? The only other thing I can think to try is to zero the disks so they're uninitialised again then try again. (This is one of the reasons I recommend against hardware RAID...) EDIT: Aha! Here we go! Sauce. Turns out you can't finish the job in the card BIOS, you need to install the software! (Why that information isn't in the section on creating an array... well, I assume Highpoint hates its customers.)
