A logical drive is the logical entity you create that will store your data. Use this option to create a single logical drive from either unconfigured capacity or free capacity. With the advent of larger capacity drives and the ability to share logical drives across multiple hosts, you may want to create more than one logical drive per array to better organize your data. Use the Create Logical Drive option for each new logical drive you want to create.
Important:
Accessing the Option
To create a logical drive, select either the Unconfigured Capacity or Free Capacity node from the Logical View; then
select either (1) Create Logical Drive from the toolbar button , (2) Configure >> Create Logical Drive from the pull-down menu option
, or (3) Create Logical Drive from the right-mouse pop-up menu.
Creating a Logical Drive from Unconfigured Capacity
The first step in creating an individual logical drive from unconfigured capacity is to define an array. To define the array, you specify two parameters: RAID level and capacity. The RAID level parameter indicates how the data will be striped across the drives in the array and its level of data protection. The capacity parameter indicates how large you want the array to be (that is, how many drives you want to be included in the array). You use the Select Array dialog to specify these parameters. For more detail, go to Selecting an Array.
The second step is to specify the parameters for the individual logical drive you plan to create on the array. Use the Specify Logical Drive Parameters dialog to specify these parameters. For more detail, go to Specifying Logical Drive Parameters.
Creating a Logical Drive from Free Capacity
Because the free capacity only resides on an existing array, the overall capacity (that is, the number of drives) and RAID level have already been specified. Therefore, the Select Array dialog is by-passed when you create a logical drive from free capacity. When you select a Free Capacity node, the only step that is required is to specify the parameters for the individual logical drive you plan to create on the array. Use the Specify Logical Drive Parameters dialog to specify those parameters. For more detail, go to Specifying Logical Drive Parameters.