Before you can store data on a Windows SBS 2011 hard
disk, you must create at least one volume on it. You create your first
volume, which becomes the C drive, during the operating system
installation process, and Windows SBS 2011 uses that volume to store
all the default system, application, and data files. Although it is
possible to create additional simple volumes from within the setup
program, many administrators wait until after the installation process
is complete. You must also wait if you want to create non-simple
volumes, such as mirror sets and RAID-5 arrays.
Loading Disk Drivers During Installation
The first opportunity that you have to manipulate the storage
subsystem on a server running Windows SBS 2011 is during the
installation of the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. When the Where Do You Want To Install Windows? page appears, as shown in Figure 1, it displays all the disks that the setup program was able to locate using the device drivers supplied with Windows.
Windows Server 2008 R2 ships with a large collection of disk
drivers, and if you purchase an original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
version of Windows SBS 2011, that collection might be augmented with
drivers for the specific hardware included in the computer. The result,
in the majority of cases, is that you can see the disks in the computer
during the installation without any special manipulation.
There are times when this is not the case, however. If the Where Do
You Want To Install Windows? page should appear with some or all of the
computer’s disks missing, this means that the system lacks the drivers
it needs to access some or all of the storage subsystem.
If your computer has a drive or array that Windows does not support
with its included drivers, you can at this point load additional
drivers yourself by clicking the Drive options (advanced) link. The additional controls that appear, as shown in Figure 2, include a Load driver
link that enables you to supply a CD, DVD, or flash drive containing
driver files that you have obtained from the manufacturer of your
hardware.
Creating Volumes During Installation
By default, selecting a disk
during the Windows Server 2008 R2 setup process causes the program to
utilize the entire disk to create a small system volume and a C volume,
on which it installs the entire Windows SBS 2011 environment.
However, the additional controls on the Where Do You Want To Install
Windows? page also enable you to create your own volume for the
installation, using only part of an existing disk. If, for example,
your server has a single 500 gigabyte (GB) disk drive in it, you might
want to create a 150 GB volume for the Windows SBS installation and
save the rest for data storage you might need at a later time.
The main restriction on these volume controls is that you
cannot create anything other than a simple volume during the Windows
Server 2008 R2 installation. Therefore, you cannot create a mirrored,
spanned, striped, or redundant array of independent disks (RAID) volume
and use it for your Windows SBS 2011 installation. If you want to use
these advanced volume types to protect your data, you must wait until
the installation is complete, create the volume using the Disk
Management snap-in or the Diskpart.exe utility, and then move your data
to the protected volume. 
