"I can press CTRL+C to access the SAS configuration utility, but not CTRL+R to access a RAID configuration utility." The SAS 5/6 controllers use CTRL-C to access the configuration utility.  The SAS 5/iR and 6/iR support RAID (R = RAID) and non-RAID, but the SAS 5/i does not support RAID at all.  If you do not have an option to Manage Arrays/Containers or create an integrated mirror or stripe (IM/IS), then you have the SAS 5/i. The PERC 5/6 controllers use CTRL-R to access the configuration utility.  If you do not have a CTRL-R, then either your PERC is not working or you do not have a PERC controller. You can purchase a PERC 5/6 and replace the SAS 5. Without hardware RAID, you cannot create a single 146GB volume to present to the OS.  You can still "stripe" the data across the drives, but you will need to convert the "disks" to dynamic and do it with Windows Disk Management.  Do you want RAID 0 (striping) for the extra disk space or for the performance?  If the space, you can create a "spanned" volume; if the performance, you can create a "striped" volume. Personally, I wouldn't do RAID 0, and I would probably upgrade to a PERC - they can be found for fairly cheap nowadays.
Hey all, A friend gave me a few Dell PE2950s that he was not going to use. I have racked them and placed two 73GB HDDs in each server. I would like to stripe the install of Windows Server across these two HDDs, but cannot find a RAID utility in the BIOS of these machines. When I boot, I am prompted with "Dell SAS 5 Host Bus Adapter BIOS." I can press CTRL+C to access the SAS configuration utility, but not CTRL+R to access a RAID configuration utility. I have researched across the Internet and have come to the (premature) conclusion that these machines do not support hardware RAID. Is this true? How can I tell if this is true for these machines? Is there another way I can install Windows Server (striped) on two drives, making the C: drive appear as 146GB (2x 73GB)? Thank you guys for your help, I am fairly new to the whole server business. - Alex
PE2950 RAID?