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Dynamic
Disks
The dynamic
disk format can be accessed only by Windows 2000 and Windows
XP Professional operating systems.
You convert
basic disks to dynamic by using the Disk Management snap-in
or the DiskPart command line utility. When you convert a
basic disk to dynamic, all existing basic volumes become
dynamic volumes.
Dynamic
disks provide features that basic disks do not, such as the
ability to create volumes that span multiple disks (spanned
and striped volumes) and the ability to create
fault-tolerant volumes (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes).
NOTES FROM THE FIELD] –
Windows 2000 Servers and the
up and coming .NET server line provide fault tolerance on
dynamic disks in the form of software-based (operating
system) disk mirroring (RAID-1) or striping with parity
(RAID-5).
Windows XP Professional does
not provide fault tolerance.
Hardware
devices that support fault tolerance, such as RAID
controllers, can make a Windows XP Professional fault
tolerant, but it is this third party hardware solution that
is providing the fault tolerance, not the Windows XP
Professional operating system.
Windows XP
Professional supports dividing dynamic disks into volumes,
which can consist of a portion, or portions, of one or more
physical disks.
There are
five types of dynamic volumes: simple, spanned, striped,
disk mirroring (RAID-1) and striping with parity (RAID-5).
Mirrored and RAID-5 volumes are fault tolerant and are
available only on computers running the Windows 2000 Server
family of operating systems.
When you
have converted a basic disk to dynamic storage, you can
create Windows XP Professional volumes, of which there are
three different types that can be utilized on the local
system:
Simple volumes. All of the disk space from a single disk is
used and it is not fault tolerant.
Spanned
volumes. Includes disk space from multiple disks up to a
total of 32. Data is written to a spanned volume on the
first disk, completely filling the space, and continues to
the next until it is full and then the next, and so on,
through each disk that you include in the spanned volume.
These volumes are not fault tolerant either. If any one
single disk in the whole entire spanned volume fails, all
the data in the entire volume is lost.
Striped
volumes. Combines areas of free space from multiple hard
disks (up to 32) into one logical volume. In a striped
volume, Windows XP Professional optimizes performance by
adding data to all disks at the same time in succession, a
direct contrast to spanned volumes. If any one single disk
in the whole entire striped volume fails, all the data in
the entire volume is lost.
Some of the
properties and characteristics of dynamic storage are
outlined below.
- Extend a simple or spanned
volume. - Reactivate a missing or
offline disk. - Check disk properties,
such as capacity, available free space, and current
status. - View volume and partition
properties such as size, drive letter assignment, label,
type, and file system. - Establish drive letter
assignments for volumes or partitions, optical storage
devices, and/or removable drives. - Establish disk sharing and
security arrangements for volumes and partitions formatted
with NTFS.
[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] –
Do not modify the structure of dynamic disks with the
DiskPart command line tool because you might damage your
partition table within the dynamic disk structure.
