## Configuring physical drives

If you are configuring physical drives, arrays and spanned arrays, you might want to review the following information:

- Creating arrays and hot-spare drives

- Understanding creating arrays

- Creating spanned arrays
- Understanding creating spanned arrays
- Working with controllers and arrays
- Recognizing the Custom configuration physical drive icons
- Overall order of steps for configuring the ServeRAID controller

The Main Tree displays only ready drives. The system icon is the root of the Main Tree. From the root, the tree expands in the following order:

1. Controller
2. Physical drives
3. SCSI channel
4. Drive

The Main Panel (that is, the right panel) displays a tree with the controller as the root. This tree shows the following:

- The arrays that will be defined when you complete the configuration.

- The hot-spare drives that will be defined when you complete the configuration.

- The size of all the arrays.

- The size of all the physical drives.

- Which physical drives are defined within each array.

- Which physical drives are defined as hot-spare drives.

There are two types of items in the right tree: new items and existing items. You can change new items if they are not in the configuration yet. You cannot change or delete existing items.

If you want to create a spanned array, click the Span array box. When you click Next, the Main Tree still displays the system icon as the root of the Main Tree. From the root, the tree expands to the controller and its arrays. The Main Panel (that is, the right panel) displays a tree with the controller as the root. This tree shows the following:

- The spanned arrays that will be defined when you complete the configuration.

- The size of all the arrays.

### Tool bar

Current topic
View context-sensitive help for a panel.

### Menu bar

View ==>
  Tool bar
    Turns the tool bar on and off. The default is On (that is, checked).
  Status bar
    Turns the status bar on and off. The default is On (that is, checked).
Actions ==>
  Any action that is valid for the selected Main Tree icon displays in this menu.
    Note: If there are no valid actions for the object you selected, the Actions menu is grayed out.
Help ==>
  Current topic
    View context-sensitive help for a panel.
  Find
    Finds one or more specified words in the help system and displays a list of topics that include the words.
  Index
    Displays the help system index.
  Contents
    Displays the help system table of contents. You can use the contents to acquaint yourself with help system topics.
  About ServeRAID Manager
    Displays the ServeRAID Manager version number, copyright, and legal information.