Member Avatar for ShaggyDogg

Does anyone suggest a way of getting a HP Proliant ML110 first generation server to recognise 2TB SATA hard drives? The spec sheets read it only supports storage up to around 320GB, but would ideally like to get it running without any other expense.

The machine is a standard build G1 tower that I’ve bumped up the RAM to 3GB, Windows Server 2008 OS and successfully installed 2x 160GB ATA drives.

This is the bit I’m stuck with; I have 2x Western Digital 2TB hard drives (model WD20EADS) that I have plugged in via a PIX SATA controller. They are both recognised in the BIOS and configured as RAID0. When I boot up, in the OS Disk Management console the RAID drive is visible as offline, but get an error when try to make online. I cannot tell from here if the RAID drive is or is not the WDs.

Can someone suggest a way to get this set up going? Please ask questions if you need more info.

Thanks

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Short follow-up and practical context for anyone hitting the same problem (thanks to for the controller suggestion and to for posting the final result that cleared up the issue).

Old server firmware, controller drivers and partitioning can all conspire here. The common partitioning limit is the MBR barrier (about 2.2 TB for 512‑byte sectors); disks or volumes larger than that need GPT, and booting from a GPT disk requires UEFI, not legacy BIOS. See Microsoft’s writeup on support for disks larger than 2 TB. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/support-for-hard-disks-exceeding-2-tb)

When Windows Disk Management shows a drive as “Offline” it often isn’t a physical failure — Windows will take disks offline to avoid duplicate disk signatures (cloned copies or reused images), and dynamic disks moved between systems show up as “Foreign.” Right‑clicking the offline disk to go Online will cause Windows to assign a new signature; importing foreign dynamic disks will restore their dynamic configuration. Mark Russinovich’s explanation and the Microsoft Disk Management troubleshooting notes explain the exact behavior and risks (changing signatures can break boot entries if done to a system/boot disk). (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/markrussinovich/fixing-disk-signature-collisions) (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/troubleshoot-disk-management)

Quick, practical checklist

  1. Confirm the drives are detected in BIOS/RAID BIOS.
  2. If a controller RAID metadata is present, clear it (or detach and connect each disk as a standalone) so Windows can see raw disks.
  3. In Windows Disk Management: right‑click Offline → Online, or Import Foreign Disks for dynamic disks.
  4. Use DiskPart to view/change signatures if needed (don’t change the OS/boot disk signature unless you know how to repair BCD). Example commands: 
diskpart
list disk
select disk X
uniqueid disk      (shows signature)
uniqueid disk id=5f1b2c36   (set new MBR signature)
exit

If you want a software stripe (RAID‑0) in Windows, convert the two drives to dynamic and create a striped volume (Windows docs show how). Backups are critical — RAID‑0 has no redundancy. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/uniqueid) (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/establish-striped-volume-raid-0)

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Member Avatar for dimsums

You need to change your controller.

Member Avatar for mark40

Thank you

Good post

Member Avatar for ShaggyDogg

Thanks, but as it turns out I didn't need to replace or add anything.
The issue may have been the controller chipset not liking drives that size.
I removed the machine RAID I had configured leaving both as independend drives. The Windows OS is on a seperate drive again, so when it started, both individual drives were recognised. I was then able to carry out a striped RAID on the 2 large WDs in the server OS.
Sorted.

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