Add a disk to a cluster shared volume on a Windows failover cluster

This article describes how to add a disk to a cluster shared volume on a Windows® failover cluster.

Prerequisites

• For Windows Server® 2012 and earlier, the disk you want to add must be a basic disk and partitioned with NTFS.
• For Windows Server 2012 R2 and later, the disk you want to add must be a basic disk and partitioned with either NTFS or ReFS.
• The drive letter of the system disk for all cluster nodes must be the same.
• You must enable the NTLM authentication protocol for all cluster nodes. This protocol is enabled by default.

Limitations

You cannot use the cluster shared volume as a cluster quorum witness disk.

Note: You must be a user with administrative privileges for the server to make these changes.

Add the disk to Available Storage in Failover Cluster Manager

1. Click Start, type Failover Cluster Manager, and press Enter.

2. In the left-hand pane of the Failover Cluster Manager, expand the cluster name for which you want to add the disk.

3. Expand the Storage section beneath the cluster name.

4. Right-click on Disks and select the option to Add Disk.

5. Select the disk you want to add from the list and then click OK.

You can now add the disk, assigned to the Available Storage group, to the Cluster Shared Volume.

Add the disk in Available Storage to the Cluster Shared Volume

1. Click Start, type Failover Cluster Manager, and press Enter.

2. In the left-hand pane of the Failover Cluster Manager, expand the name of the cluster.

3. Expand the Storage section beneath the cluster name.

4. Select Disks.

5. Select the disk that you assigned earlier to Available Storage.

6. Right-click on the selected disk and choose the option Add to Cluster Shared Volumes.

The disk is now assigned to the Cluster Shared Volume group and is visible to each cluster node as a mount point under the %SystemDisk%ClusterStorage folder.