Here's something I've never seen before: New server, hardware-level RAID1, 2x146gb drives), I set the C: partition as 20gb when installing the OS. After using the Disk Administrator to set D: as 30gb and E: as the remainder, the upper pane of the window displays 19.8 gb as the C: partition size but the bar graph below shows it as 4gb. Explorer properties for C: also show it as 4gb (500mb of space remaining), as does a Dir from the command line... I'm unable to set the Page File on C: with only 500mb available, so the question is what happened to the other 16gb, and why is the table view pane in disk admin showing the correct size (the size I set) where the partition bar graph pane does not? I've configured about 100 servers for production use and have never seen this. Thanks.

I would look at the disk controller driver as a possible source of the problem. Are you up on all of your service packs? Did you ask Dell about it? Knowing the correct answer and giving a correct answer, are two different things

Thanks Wanderer; I actually reinstalled from the Dell setup disk, choosing the option to erase all disks and again setting the C: partition as 20gb, and again with the same result. The BIOS version is the latest, and this occurs before I run the WIndows updates (haven't tried that, but don't think it likely to resolve the issue). Since Windows Disk Administrator can se 20 gb, bit only address 4gb, I think it's the OS and not the actual partition created by the Dell Raid controller utility. I've found a couple of knowledgeBase articles that reference similar issues, but not specifically what I'm seeing.

I ran into this same problem yesterday. After reading this post I decided to call Dell. We determined that the Dell Server Setup required Windows 2003 Service Pack 1. If SP1 was not on the CD, when it came time to install the updates, MS OS updates does something to the disk configuration. I obtained the correct W2K3 CD with SP1 and installation was successful. 20GB remained 20GB after all OS updates were applied.