Windows 2000 Disk Management Overview

Disk Management is a common task when using a computer. Windows 2000 Server provides powerful features in disk management. The disk management tasks for Windows 2000 Server are provided to users in the form of a set of disk management utilities located in the Computer Management console, including debuggers, disk defragmenters, defragmenters, and more. These tools have been greatly improved on the basis of Windows NT's corresponding programs, allowing users to use these convenient and powerful disk management tools to perform various operations on local disks. This chapter introduces the disk management aspects of Windows 2000 Server.

In Windows 2000 Server, the system integrates many new features and new features in disk management. Before users can use the disk management program, it is necessary to first understand some basic knowledge about disk management and the new disk management technology used by Windows 2000 Server. Only by knowing the functions and features of the disks in the system can the user manage, set up and maintain the local disks better, so as to ensure the overall performance of the computer is fast, secure and stable. This section introduces some of the basics of disk management.

5.1.1 Disk Management New Features

In Windows 2000 Server, disk management has added many new features and new features to NT 4.0, for example:

? Dynamic storage. With dynamic storage, you can complete management tasks without shutting down the system or interrupting users. For example, you can create, augment, or monitor a volume without rebooting the system. New disks can be added without rebooting. Most configuration changes can take effect almost immediately.

? Local and network drive management. If you are an administrator, you can manage any network computer running Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0.

? Simplify tasks and intuitive user interfaces. Disk management is easy to use. The menu shows the tasks performed on the selected object, and the wizard guides you through creating partitions and volumes and initializing or updating the disk.

? Drive path. You can use Disk Management to connect or pin a local drive to an empty folder on a local NTFS formatted volume.

Windows 2000 Server's disk management supports both basic and dynamic disks. A basic disk is a physical disk that includes a primary partition, an extended partition, or a logical drive. Basic disks also include cross-volume (volume settings), mirrored volumes (mirror settings), tape volumes (with settings), and RAID-5 volumes (band settings with parity detection) created with Windows NT 4.0 or earlier. Basic disks can be accessed using MS-DOS. A dynamic disk is a physical disk that contains dynamic volumes created using disk management. Dynamic disks cannot contain partitions and logical drives, nor can they be accessed using MS-DOS.

Windows 2000 provides basic and dynamic storage on a single disk system. However, volumes containing multiple disks must use the same type of storage. When Windows 2000 is installed, the disk system is initialized for use as basic storage. Use the update wizard to turn it into dynamic.

On dynamic disks, storage is divided into volumes, not partitions. Users can update basic storage to dynamic storage at any time. When updating to dynamic storage, you need to convert your existing partitions to volumes. Table 5-1 shows how users should convert partitions to volumes.