## Creating spanned arrays and hot-spare drives with physical drives

You can create spanned arrays to improve security, performance, and reliability.

1. Create spanned arrays by dragging physical drives from the left tree to an icon in the right tree that is labeled either:

- Add new array
- New array followed by a letter (such as, New array B).

  > Notes:

  > 1. You also can drag an entire channel , if you want to move all the ready drives in that channel.
  > 2. If you want to remove a physical drive from a new array, drag it back to the left tree.

2. Create hot-spare drives by dragging physical drives from the left tree to the icon labeled hot-spare drives in the right tree. The icon in the left tree will change to the hot-spare icon and the drive will appear in the hot-spare drives branch in the right tree as a New Hot spare.

   Tip: If you want to change a New Hot spare back into a ready drive, drag it back to the left tree.

3. After you define all your spanned arrays and hot-spare drives, click Next to custom configure your logical drives. You might want to verify that there are no remaining ready drives first.

Click Back to return to the selection window for Express and Custom configuration modes.
Click Cancel to leave Configuration mode and return to the System Management Information window.

### See also

Understanding creating spanned arrays

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