To create a new volume

1. Right-click a dynamic disk in the tree view, the right pane, or the Disk View tab, and select New Volume from the context menu that comes up.

   You can also select the command from the Actions menu or click the New Volume tool on the toolbar.

2. The New Volume Wizard appears.

   Click Next to continue.

3. The Assign Disks for Volume panel appears. Complete the following:
   

   Group Name	A default dynamic disk group appears in the Group name box. If you want to create the volume in a different dynamic disk group, select it from the drop-down list.
   Site Preference	Specify the Site Preferences as Siteless, Site Confined, or Site Separated by enabling the required radio button against each of the respective options. For more information, See Administering volumes for site-based allocation .
   Select Site from	Select the Site from the displayed list. If you have specified Site Confined as Site Preference, then you can select at the most one site or maximum one site from the displayed list of sites. If you have specified Site Separated as Site Preference, then you must specify at least two sites or more from the displayed list of sites. Press Ctrl on the keyboard to select multiple sites. If a single site is selected for a Site Separated volume, then an error message to select at least 2 sites is displayed.
   Auto Select Disks	Automatically selecting disks is the default setting. Available disks are automatically assigned for volume creation.
   Manually select disks	Select this option to manually select disk or disks. If you had selected one or more disks when you invoked the New Volume command, the disk selection method is set to manual.
   Disable Track Alignment	You may also select Disable Track Alignment to disable track alignment for the volume. If you select this, then the volume does not store blocks of data in alignment with the boundaries of the physical track of the disk. For more information about Track Alignment,
   Disable Caching	SmartIO is a feature of SFW that helps in improving I/O performance of applications and Hyper-V virtual machines by providing a read-only I/O cache created on Solid-State Devices (SSDs). Caching is enabled by default for a new volume. To disable caching on the volume, select the Disable Caching check box.

   Click Next to continue.

4. On this panel, select the attributes listed below for the volume.

   Note:

   If you find the volume layout that you want is grayed out, it is most likely because not enough disks have been selected. Click the Back button and return to the previous panel to select more disks.

   

   Volume Name	Enter a name for the volume in the Volume name text box. The volume name is the internal Storage Foundation-specific name that is used in some SFW commands. If you enter a volume name, SFW automatically assigns the file system volume label the same name. If you later change the file system volume label through the File System command, the Storage Foundation volume name and the file system volume label will be different. However, it will make little difference because the GUI identifies the volume by the file system label name except for the one entry that is listed as "Volume Name." If you use the command line interface to create a volume, the file system name is not automatically set to the name of the volume. Note: A volume name is limited to 18 ASCII characters. It cannot contain spaces, slash mark (/), backslash (\), exclamation point (!), angle brackets (< >), or equal sign (=). Also, a period cannot be the first character in the name.
   Size	Provide a size for the volume. You can use the pull-down list to the right of the Size entry box to select sectors KB, MB, GB, or TB for indicating the volume size. If you click the Max Size button, a volume size appears in the Size box that represents the maximum possible volume size for that layout in the dynamic disk group. For a given dynamic disk group, the maximum volume size depends on the type of layout selected.
   Layout	Select one of the following volume layouts: Concatenated If this option is selected for a Site Separated volume, then an error message is displayed prompting you to select a Mirrored layout. A Site Separated volume cannot be created without the mirror option. Striped RAID-5 Mirrored Select this option for a Site Separated volume. A Site Separated volume cannot be created without the mirror option. Mirrored Striped (RAID 0+1) - choose Striped and the Mirrored check box If you create striped or RAID-5 volumes, the Columns and Stripe unit size must be specified. The stripe unit size is expressed as a number of sectors. Default values are provided. Additionally, you may specify to have the stripe across disks done by Port, Target, Enclosure, or Channel. For a Concatenated or Striped volume, you may also specify a mirror volume with the following optional attributes: Number of mirrors Enable logging Mirror across disks by Port, Target, Enclosure, or Channel Note that the operation to create a new dynamic volume fails if the appropriate resources are not available to support the selected attributes to mirror across disks. For more information about the volume layout types,

   Click Next to continue.

5. On the Add Drive Letter and Path panel, select one of the three choices described below.

   Note:

   For cluster-shared volumes, ensure that the selected drive letter for the new cluster-shared volume is available and not in use on any of the cluster nodes.

   

   Assign a drive letter	Accept the default drive letter assignment or assign a drive letter by using the drop-down list.
   Do not assign a drive letter	Select this option, if you may prefer to do this task later.
   Mount as an empty NTFS folder	Select the option and provide a folder name or browse to select the folder name. This creates a new folder for you if you click the New Folder button in the Browse for Drive Path dialog box.

   Click Next to continue.

6. On the Create File System panel that appears next, indicate your choices for the file system selections that are described below.

   Format this volume	Select this check box if you want to format the volume using NTFS, FAT, FAT32, or ReFS. You can undo the selection if you want to format the volume later.
   Select a file system	Make sure the file system type that you want is highlighted if you want to format the volume now.
   Allocation size	If required, change the allocation size. The default size is recommended. Note: To set the appropriate allocation size for an application on your system, refer to the documentation for the application or Microsoft documentation concerning the application.
   File system label	If required, type a file system label. If you do not enter a label, no default label is provided. You can enter a label for the file system later. Select any of the following options: Perform a quick format Select this option if you want to perform a quick format. If this check box is not selected, then the volume is formatted with normal formatting. Enable file and folder compression Select this option if you want to enable file and folder compression. This option is available only if the volume is formatted with NTFS. Note: If you plan to use this volume to install SQL Server, do not select the Enable file and folder compression check box. The SQL Server installation cannot copy files on a compressed or encrypted folder.

   If you want to format the volume, create a file system label, or change any of the volume settings, right-click the volume and select File System and the subcommand New File System from the volume context menu. You can make your choices from a panel that has the same selections as the one above.

   Click Next to continue.

7. Check your selections on the final panel and click Finish.

   If you chose to format the volume, Storage Foundation begins the formatting process. Click the Tasks tab in the bottom left corner of the lower pane to see a text entry indicating the status and progress of the formatting process.

   By default, the dynamic volume is created as a read/write volume. To make the dynamic volume a read-only volume, right-click the volume and check Read only in the Properties for the volume.