Windows 2000  Disk Types

Introduction to disk types

• Windows 2000  offers the use of both basic and dynamic disks on FAT, FAT32  and NTFS  filing system.

• Dynamic disks are only recognized by windows 2000 operating system .

• You can create volumes only on dynamic disks, which allow you to generate simple volumes, spanned volumes, and raid 5 fault tolerant volumes.

Key Topics

Basic Disk Dynamic Disk Simple Volumes Spanned Volumes Dynamic Disk  Fault Tolerance Stripped Volume Stripped Volume and Performance

Stripped Volume and Fault Tolerance Stripped Set with Parity Windows and Fault Tolerance Converting from basic to dynamic disk Conditions of Converting

Basic Disk

• A Hard drive, which contains partitions, is a basic disk

• There are two main partitions in a basic disk ; the primary partition  and extended partition, which contain logical drives.

• Basis disks are ideal for dual booting drives for more than one operating system .

Basic Disk Volumes

• Windows NT  4 supports volume sets, mirrored sets , and stripped sets with parity on basic disks.

• Windows 2000  only supports volumes on basic disk  when it has been upgraded from windows NT4 with pre-set volumes

Dynamic Disk

• A dynamic disk contains dynamic volumes, which increase in size on the fly, and is only supported by windows 2000.

• You can use the Disk management utility to convert  a basic disk  to dynamic disk.

• Dynamic disk cannot contain partitions or logical drives.

Dynamic Disks Volumes

• Dynamic disk can have unlimited number of volumes.

• You cannot use dynamic volumes on portable  computers.

• Windows 2000  server allows us to create fault tolerant volumes including Raid 5 and mirror set.

Dynamic Disk  Types

• There are three main types of windows 2000 volumes: Simple volume , Spanned Volume , Striped Volume.

• Dynamic disks force the volumes used on the disk to belong to that particular installation  of windows 2000

Simple Volume

• Simple volume  contains disk space on a single disk.

• It can be one or more regions on a single disk, which may be linked together.

• Simple volumes can be formatted in FAT, FAT 32, and NTFS .

• Only simple volumes formatted in NTFS  can be extended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spanned Volume

• A single volume extended over multiple drives is a spanned volume.

• The Spanned volume cannot include the system or boot volume.

• Spanned volumes formatted in NTFS  can be dynamically extended.

Dynamic Disk  Spanned Volumes

• Spanned volumes can be as small as 2 disks and as large as 32 dynamic disks.

• You can only use dynamic disks to create spanned volumes in Windows 2000 .

Spanned Volumes Fault Tolerance  

• Spanned volumes are not fault tolerant which means they cannot be mirrored striped.

• If one of the disks in a spanned volume fails the whole volume is lost.

Stripe Volume

• Stripe set volumes can extend from two disks to 32 disks.

• Data is written to the stripe set volumes distributed evenly in 64KB sizes.

Striped Volumes And Performance

• Stripe volumes yield the best performance  of all volumes because all the disks in the volume act collectively as a single disk improving read  and write  performance.

• The performance  of a striped volume increases with the number of disks used in the volume

Striped Volumes And Fault Tolerance

• Striped volumes offer no fault tolerance on their own which means if one disk is lost, the whole volume is lost.

Stripe Set With Parity

• Striped Set With Parity  or Raid Level 5  offer fault tolerance by duplicating every piece of data and distributing the information  among all the drives in an organized  pattern..

• If a drive fails within the stripe set, the information  within it can be recovered from the rest of the drives within the stripe set.

• There is the requirement of a minimum of three hard drives within the Stripe set with parity.

 

Windows And Fault Tolerance

• Windows NT  and Windows 2000  both offer fault tolerance using raid level 1 (Mirror Set) and raid Level 5 (Stripe Set with Parity ).

• Window NT offers fault tolerance on volumes on a basic disk .

Windows 2000  And Fault Tolerance

• Windows 2000  supports previously setup fault tolerant volumes of Windows NT  systems upgraded to windows 2000.

• Windows 2000  only supports fault tolerance on dynamic drives on a clean installation  of windows 2000.

Who Can Convert From A Basic To Dynamic Disk

• The user must be an administrator  or be part of the administrative group  and have the correct policy settings set in order to be able to convert

Converting From Basic To Dynamic Disk

• You can only convert  from a basic disk  to dynamic disk without losing data.

• In order to go back to basic disk  from dynamic disk, you must delete all the volumes and then choose Revert to Basic Disk in the disk management utility

Conditions Of Converting

• There must be at lease 1 MB  of unallocated space on the hard drive

• You cannot convert  basic disks to dynamic disks on portable  systems.

 

Questions

1.      What are the features of a basic disk  in windows 2000? (Choose all that apply)

a.       Contains volumes

b.      Contains partitions

c.       Contains a primary partition

d.      Can contain logical drives

e.       Cannot be converted  to a dynamic disk

2.      What are the features of a dynamic disk? (Choose all that apply)

a.       Cannot be converted  to basic disk  without data loss

b.      Can be converted  to basic disk  without data loss

c.       Can contain partitions

d.      Can contain volumes

e.       Can only contain volumes

3.      What are the features of a dynamic disk? (Choose all that apply)

a.       Cannot only contain volumes

b.      Can contained spanned volumes

c.       Can contained stripped volumes

d.      Can contain a stripped set with parity

4.      What are the features of a dynamic disk? (Choose all that apply)

a.       Requires a minimum of 1 MB  of unallocated space

b.      Cannot be used on notebook  computers

c.       Cannot be used on servers

d.      Can support 32 disk

e.       We can use the dynamic disk on another computer if the original fails

Answers

 

1.      B,C,D

2.      A,D,E

3.      A,B,D

4.      A,B,D