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I want to create a RAID 5 array in windows 8 with 5 Dynamic Hard Disks and it is grayed out.

If this is not possible why not hide that option.
If it is possible why it is disabled?

after your questions i share this article for you ... "New RAID-5 Volume..." greyed out in Disk Management

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  • 1
    Do you have the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers installed?
    – VenkatH
    Oct 31, 2012 at 15:39
  • What specifically are you referring to? How many drives do you have?
    – SLaks
    Oct 31, 2012 at 15:43
  • Do you have at least three disks free?
    – Hennes
    Oct 31, 2012 at 15:43
  • 1
    Do you have enough drives for a RAID5? You'll need at least 2 data drives, and a third for parity.
    – ernie
    Oct 31, 2012 at 15:44
  • Parity is distributed per stripe. So all drives are data disks. And all are parity disks. (Or volumes rather than whole disks if you RAID volumes).
    – Hennes
    Oct 31, 2012 at 16:00

3 Answers 3

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Not knowing your hardware configuration and Assuming you have a minimum of 3 disks available to use for a Raid 5 array.

Go to the Intel Download page and drill down to find it

Active Products (radio button) -> Software Products (product family) -> Chipset Software (product line) -> Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) (Select Product name) -. hit Find

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enter image description here

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Software raid 5 was not supported in Windows 7, I cannot find documentation for W8, but more than likely it is not, but is supported using storage spaces a suggested by Jared Tritsch in his Answer.

Note: Storage Spaces does not support dynamic discs, so you would need to format them as basic disks.

If you want a traditional raid 5 solution, you will need to add a hardware raid controller card that supports R5, then configure the raid in the bios firmaware for that card.

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    why technet microsoft say: After confirming with our product team, it says that RAID-5 is only supported on computers running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 Operating Systems. In Windows 7, only hardware-based RAID is supported. Thus I recommend that you check your computer to see if it meets this requirement and visit the motherboard’s support web site to download the RAID drive controller drivers
    – saber tabatabaee yazdi
    Nov 1, 2012 at 6:12
  • If you do not add more information to your question, no one can answer it accurately. Software raid is completely different than hardware raid and we have no clue what you have because you refuse to edit your question to include this information!
    – Moab
    Nov 1, 2012 at 15:57
3

Just a bit to add, if you have a mobo that supports RAID (has a RAID controller), you can implement RAID and still run your system in AHCI mode. Here's how:

Set BIOS to SATA RAID mode, save and restart. On reboot, Control + I to enter Intel RAID setup. Create your RAID Array. Exit and reboot.

Upon reboot, enter bios and change back to SATA AHCI mode. Save and restart.

At this point, if no OS is installed, when your drives show up at Windows Installation screen, you can browse and install the RAID/AHCI preinstall driver and install your OS on the RAID array if you desire.

If you're only using it for storage, when Windows boots up, install IRST if you haven't already. You should then be able to see your RAID array and create a volume on it.

Cheers.

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3

I just found what should have been done in Windows 8. This YouTube vid from Matt Horner describes exactly how to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcz0mDxsucs&safe=active

My take away is that Windows 8 no longer uses dynamic disks as a requirement for software raid. Using storage spaces (in control panel), it requires that the disks are plain-old basic disks. Then select which disk you want to use in software raid - and if as a mirror, 3 disk mirror, parity (raid 5), etc.

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