Accessing the Disk Management Tool
1. Log in to the NAS Manager as an administrator.
2. Click the Disks tab.
3. Click Disks to manage disks.
4. When the Remote Desktop session launches, log in as an administrator.
5. When the Computer Management screen displays, click on Disk Management to manage disks.
Initializing a Disk
When you create a virtual disk and perform a rescan in a hardware-RAID or external storage configuration or when a new disk is discovered on a system with
a software-RAID configuration, the disk appears with a Disk Type of Unsigned Disk. The unsigned disk cannot be used until it is initialized.
To initialize a disk, right-click the unsigned disk. A menu displays showing the Initialize Disk command. (The Initialize Disk command appears only if a disk
does not have a signature on it.) Select this command to write a signature on the disk.
After a signature is written on a disk, the disk displays as a Basic Disk. You can create partitions on the basic disk, or you can upgrade the disk to dynamic to
create volumes on it.
Upgrading a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk
Because only dynamic disks can be used for online volume extension, it is recommended that you use the Disk Management tool to upgrade all data disks on
your system to dynamic. The upgrade includes new disks, which are added to the system as basic disks.
To upgrade a basic disk to a dynamic disk, perform the following steps:
1. Right-click the disk you want to upgrade, and then click Convert to Dynamic Disk.
2. When the Convert to Dynamic Diskwindowappears,selectthediskstoupgradeandclickOK.
3. When the Disks to Convert window appears, select the disks that you want to convert to dynamic and click Convert.
Reactivating Dynamic Disks
A dynamic disk might appear as a missing disk when it is corrupted, powered down, or disconnected. You can reactivate a dynamic disk to bring it back online
by performing the following steps:
1. Right-click the disk marked Missing or Offline dynamic disk.
2. Click Reactivate Disk on the menu.
Mark the disk as Online after the disk is reactivated.
NOTE: The NAS Manager default administrator user name is administrator and the default password is
powervault.
NOTICE: In hardware-RAID configurations, the operating system disk must remain a basic disk. However, you can upgrade all data disks to dynamic
during creation by using the Windows Disk Management tool.
NOTICE: In hardware-RAID configurations, the operating system disk must remain a basic disk.
NOTE: After a disk is upgraded to dynamic it cannot be reverted back to basic unless all volumes on that disk are removed. Dell strongly recommends
that you do not revert a disk back to basic after data volumes are present.