Thread: Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000

SUMMARY:

In Windows 2000, a latest style of storage is defined and exposed in the new Logical Disk Management snap-in; earlier versions of Windows NT used only basic storage:

• Basic storage uses ordinary partition tables maintain by all versions of Windows, MS-DOS, and Windows NT. A disk initialized for basic storage is called a basic disk. It can hold primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. Basic volumes contain partitions and logical drives, as well as volumes generate using Windows NT 4.0 or earlier, such as volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, and stripe set with parity. In Windows 2000, these volumes are called spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes, correspondingly.

• Dynamic storage is carried by Windows 2000. A disk initialized for dynamic storage is called a dynamic disk. It can carry simple volumes, spanned, mirrored, striped, and RAID-5 volumes. With dynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management without having to reboot the operating system. Updating a disk from basic to dynamic can be done from the Disk Management MMC. In Programs, go to select Disk Management from Administrative Tools. You may be prompted to update your disks or you can right-click the disk to update it.

Storage types are divided from the file system type; a basic or dynamic disk can contain any mixture of FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS partitions or volumes. Windows 2000 contain both basic and dynamic storage. A disk can have a mixture of storage types. However, all on the same disk volumes use the same storage type.

On a basic disk, a partition is a part of the disk that functions as a physically split unit. On a dynamic disk, storage is separated into volumes instead of partitions.

• A volume is a storage unit prepared from free space on one or more disks. It can be formatted with a file and get a drive letter. Volumes on dynamic disks have one of the following formats: simple, spanned, mirrored, striped, or RAID-5.

• A simple volume uses free space on a single disc. It can be a single region on a disk or consist of several interlinked areas. A simple volume can be extended on the same disk or onto additional disks. If a simple volume is extended across multiple disks, it becomes a spanned volume..

• A spanned volume is produced from free disk space that is linked together from multiple disks up to a maximum of 32 disks. A spanned volume can be extended to extra drives. A spanned volume can not be mirrored.

• A mirrored volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two physical disks. All data on one volume is copied to another disk to provide data redundancy. As one of the disks fails, data is still accessible from the remaining disk. A mirrored volume can not be extended. Mirroring is also known as RAID-1

• A striped volume is a volume whose data is interrupt across two or more physical disks. The data on this type of volume is allocated exchange and evenly to each of the physical disks. A striped volume can not be mirrored or extended. Striping is also known as RAID-0.

• A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped over an array of three or more disks. Parity is also striped on the disk array. If a physical disk fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume on the failed disk can be reconstructed other data and parity. A RAID-5 volume can not be mirrored or extended.

• The system volume contains the hardware-specific files (Ntldr, Boot.ini, Ntdetect.com) needed to load Windows NT.

• The boot volume contains Windows NT operating system files that are located in the %Systemroot% and %Systemroot%\System32 folder.