*edit* my apologies, been messing with this stuff for too long tonight and my brain is fried, so I accidently put raid 0 instead of 1 lol
 
 
So I know this board is really old and all...
 
evga nForce 680i SLI (P33 Bios + chipset drivers v15.58)
intel c2q q6600
4x1GB OCX DDR2 800mhz
 
...But I'm currently using it as a server running Windows Server 2008 R2 etc etc.. I have the OS installed on a single 250gb HDD and Im trying to add 2x 4TB WD Red drives in RAID 1 to replace a dying single 3TB drive that Im using for serving video over DLNA.
 
I'm having trouble getting the MediaShield BIOS to create an array of more then 1.99TB. Prior to setting up the array, the drive list shows both HDDs as 3.63TB. When I create the Mirrored array, the array list shows it as 1.99TB, and if I then look at the array detail it shows 2 drives with 3.63TB capacity.
 
I've read that MediaShield BIOS v9.85 supposedly can handle drives larger then 2TB (and I assumed this meant it can use the full space past 2TB), and it shows v9.85 as what bios im running. I'm wondering if its because when creating the array I am only getting an option to 'clear the MBR', no mention of anyting GPT related.
 
*edit 2* just came across this: "RAID is typically limited to 2TB for one array on a OS volume.  This is a limitation to how the operating system addresses the data.  The NVIDIA RAID on the 500, 600, and 700 series motherboards and the Intel RAID on the IHC10R (X58 motherboards) and P55/H57 have this limitation. Please Note:  this is for a bootable operating system volume only."
 
..and since im not using it as a bootable array, it seems to imply that I should be able to get over 2TB
 
 
 
If I clear it, its still 2TB and in windows it asks me to initialize it as MBR or GPT, but it still only shows as 2TB no matter what I do in windows.
If I delete the array and go into windows and initialize the drives each as GPT, then recreate the array and select NO to 'clear the mbr' it still shows as only 1.99TB, and then in windows it also shows the same, while at the same time windows reports it as a GPT disk.
 
 
Is there no way to get the raid bios to create an array of more then 2TB even though it sees both disks individually as 4TB? Ive read through a lot of information trying to figure this out. As for a bunch of suggestions I've found to try, they either dont seem to apply to this board, or they just dont seem to make any difference.
 
Any ideas? or am I just going to be unable to have a 4TB Raid-1 on this system?

ok 330am here and I think I got it.
 
- I ended up creating the mirrored 2TB array in the BIOS (in windows it would show up as an uninitialized 2TB disk)
- Then in windows, I reinstalled the storage part of the chipset drivers
- Followed by reinstalling the geforce GPU drivers. Without doing this the nvidia CP only showed the storage section and even then without any of RAID options, as well as the GPU options no longer showed too. Not to mention the cp became unstable and crashed half the time.
- After that I reinstalled the storage part of the chipset drivers yet again, and during that install I finally started getting notifications that it was detecting an array present. This gave me both the GPU options and the RAID options in the nvidia cp.
- And finally, in the cp I was able to delete the array, and then recreate it (still in the nvidia cp) and now its 3.63TB. Initialized as GPT and formatted as NTFS.

I wouldn't trust a RAID array on Nvidia's controller. Not that it's unreliable, but if the motherboard dies, what are the chances of finding a working Nvidia based board these days just to get the data off the array.

a213m
I wouldn't trust a RAID array on Nvidia's controller. Not that it's unreliable, but if the motherboard dies, what are the chances of finding a working Nvidia based board these days just to get the data off the array.

 
hmm thats a good point that I didnt even think about. Would it be safer then to just use the windows built in RAID functionality instead? or should I not even bother with a RAID to begin with and just use 1 of the 2 drives externally to make backups on?