THE BOTTOM LINE
The main disk management tool in Windows Server 2008 is the MMC snap-in called Disk Management, which is also part of the Computer and Management consoles. In addition, you can use a diskpart.exe and the Format command to partition and format a drive, as well as Windows Explorer to format a drive.
Disk Management is a system utility for managing hard disks and the volumes or partitions they contain. With Disk Management, you can initialize disks, create volumes, and format volumes with the FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS file systems. See Figure 3-3.
Figure 3-3
The Disk Management snap-in
Whenever you add a new disk (either a local hard drive or a virtual drive, such as from a SAN) to a Windows Server 2008 system, you need to open Disk Management and initialize the disk.
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If the disk that you want to initialize does not appear, you may need to right-click Disk Management and click Refresh or Rescan Disks. If the disk still does not appear, you need to make sure that it is connected properly and running.
New disks will automatically start as basic disks. To convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, there must be at least 1 MB of unallocated space on the disk. Disk Management automati-cally reserves this space when creating partitions or volumes on a disk.
CONVERT A BASIC DISK TO A DYNAMIC DISK
GET READY. To convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk from the Disk Management console, perform the following steps:
1. Open the Disk Management snap-in.
2. Right-click the basic disk you want to convert to a dynamic disk, and then click Convert to Dynamic Disk. Click the OK button. See Figure 3-5.
When you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, any existing partitions or logical drives on the basic disk become simple volumes on the dynamic disk.
After you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, you cannot change the dynamic volumes back to a basic disk. Instead, you must delete all dynamic volumes on the disk and then use the Convert To Basic Disk command. If you want to keep your data, you must back it up or move it to another volume.
INITIALIZE A NEW DISK GET READY. To initialize new disks:
1. Right-click the disk you want to initialize, and then click Initialize Disk.
2. In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select the disk(s) to initialize. You can select whether to use the Master Boot Record (MBR) or GUID Partition Table (GPT) partition style. See Figure 3-4. Click the OK button.
Figure 3-4 Initializing a disk
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CREATE OR DELETE A PARTITION OR LOGICAL DRIVE
GET READY. To create or delete a partition or logical drive, perform the following steps:
1. Open the Disk Management console.
2. Perform one of the following options:
• Right-click an unallocated region of a basic disk and click New Partition.
• Right-click an area of free space within an extended partition and click New Logical Drive.
• Right-click a partition or logical drive and select Delete Partition to remove that partition or logical drive. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.
3. When you choose to create a new partition or logical drive, the New Partition Wizard appears. Click Next to continue.
4. Specify the size of the volume and click the Next button. See Figure 3-6.
Figure 3-5
Convert a basic disk to dynamic disk
Figure 3-6
Specifying the size of a volume
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Figure 3-7
Assigning a drive letter to a new volume
Figure 3-8
Formatting the volume
5. Assign a drive letter or mount the volume to an empty NTFS folder and click the Next button. See Figure 3-7.
6. Specify the file system, allocation unit size, and volume label. You can also perform a quick format and enable file and folder compression if desired. Click the Next button.
See Figure 3-8.
7. When the wizard is complete, click the Finish button.
For basic disks, you must first create an extended partition before you can create a new logical drive, if no extended partition exists already.
If you choose to delete a partition, all data on the deleted partition or logical drive will be lost unless you previously backed it up. In addition, you cannot delete the system partition, boot partition, or any partition that contains an active paging file. Windows Server 2008 requires that you delete all logical drives and any other partitions that have not been assigned a drive letter within an extended partition before you delete the extended partition itself.
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EXTEND A SIMPLE OR SPANNED VOLUME
GET READY. To extend a simple or a spanned volume, perform the following steps:
1. Open Disk Management.
2. Right-click the simple or spanned volume you want to extend, and then click Extend Volume.
3. Specify the available disk and the size you wish to extend to. Click the Next button.
See Figure 3-9.
Figure 3-9 Extending a volume
4. When the wizard is complete, click the Finish button.
CREATE A NEW EMPTY MIRRORED VOLUME
GET READY. To create a new empty mirrored volume from unallocated space, perform the following steps:
1. Open Disk Management.
2. Right-click an area of unallocated space on a dynamic disk and select New Volume.
3. Click Next for the New Volume Wizard welcome window.
4. Click Mirrored as the volume type option and click Next.
5. Select one of the available dynamic disks and click Add.
6. Enter the amount of storage space to be used (in MB) for this mirrored volume, up to the maximum available space on the first disk you selected, and then click Next.
7. Assign the new volume a drive letter, mount the volume in an empty NTFS folder, or choose not to assign the volume a drive letter or path; then click Next.
8. Choose whether to format the new mirrored volume. If you choose to format the new volume, you must do the following:
• Specify the file system. (NTFS is the only option for dynamic volumes under the Disk Management console.)
• Specify the allocation unit size.
• Specify the volume label.
• Mark the check box for Perform a Quick Format (if desired).
• Mark the check box for Enable File and Folder Compression (if desired).
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9. Click Next to continue.
10. Click Finish to complete the New Volume Wizard.
CREATE A MIRRORED VOLUME FROM A BOOT OR SYSTEM VOLUME
GET READY. To create a mirrored volume from a boot or system volume, or to create a mirrored volume from an existing volume that already contains data, perform the following steps:
1. Open Disk Management.
2. Right-click an existing dynamic volume and select Add Mirror.
3. Select one of the available dynamic disks on which to create the redundant volume and click Add Mirror.
You can stop mirroring a volume by either breaking or removing the mirror. When you break a mirrored volume, each volume that makes up the mirror becomes an independent simple volume, and they are no longer fault tolerant. When you remove a mirrored volume, the removed volume becomes unallocated space on its disk, whereas the remaining mirrored volume becomes a simple volume that is no longer fault tolerant. All data that was stored on the removed mirrored volume is erased.
BREAK A MIRRORED VOLUME
GET READY. To break a mirrored volume, perform the following steps:
1. Open Disk Management.
2. Right-click one of the mirrored volumes that you want to break and select Break Mirrored Volume.
3. Click Yes in the Break Mirrored Volume message box.
If you want to completely destroy one of the mirrored volumes and leave just one of the volumes intact, you need to perform a removal procedure instead of simply breaking the mirrored volume.
REMOVE A MIRRORED VOLUME
GET READY. To remove a mirrored volume, perform the following steps:
1. Open Disk Management.
2. Right-click a mirrored volume and then select Remove Mirror.
3. In the Remove Mirror dialog box, select the disk from which you want to completely erase the mirrored volume and turn it into unallocated space. The remaining volume will stay, with all of its data intact as a simple volume.
4. Click the Remove Mirror button.
5. Click Yes to confirm the removal action in the Disk Management message box that appears.
CREATE A STRIPED VOLUME
GET READY. To create a striped volume from unallocated space, perform the following steps:
1. Right-click an area of unallocated space and select New Striped Volume.
2. When the Welcome screen appears, click the Next button.
3. Select the remaining disk and click the Add button. Then, click the Next button.
4. Assign the F drive and click the Next button.
5. When asked whether to format the volume, click the Next button.
6. When the wizard is complete, click the Finish button.
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CREATE A RAID-5 VOLUME
GET READY. To create a RAID-5 volume using Disk Management, perform the following steps:
1. Open Disk Management. Be sure the computer has three or more dynamic disks, each with unallocated space.
2. Right-click an area of unallocated space on one of the dynamic disks that you want to use for the RAID-5 volume, then select New Volume.
3. Click Next for the Welcome to the New Volume Wizard window.
4. Select the RAID-5 option button and click Next.
5. Select each available disk that you want to use as part of the RAID-5 volume from within the Available list box and click Add for each of them. You must select at least three disks and no more than 32.
6. Select any disks that you do not want to use as part of the RAID-5 volume within the Selected list box and click Remove.
7. Enter your desired storage capacity for the RAID-5 volume in the Select the Amount of Space in MB box, then click Next to continue.
8. Choose to assign the volume a drive letter, to mount the volume in an empty NTFS folder, or to not assign a drive letter or path to the new RAID-5 volume and click Next.
9. Choose whether to format the new RAID-5 volume. If you choose to format the volume, you must do the following:
• Specify the file system. (NTFS is the only option for dynamic volumes under the Disk Management console.)
• Specify the allocation unit size.
• Specify the volume label.
• Mark the check box for Perform a Quick Format (if desired).
• Mark the check box for Enable File and Folder Compression (if desired).
10. Click Next to continue.
11. Click Finish to complete the New Volume Wizard.
If one disk within a RAID-5 volume is intermittently failing, you can attempt to reactivate it by right-clicking the disk and selecting Reactivate Disk. In addition, if one disk within a RAID-5 volume appears to have permanently failed, you can replace the failed disk with another dynamic disk attached to the computer, or you can install a new disk. To regenerate the RAID-5 volume, right-click the RAID-5 volume on the failed disk and select Repair Volume. The replacement disk must contain at least as much unallocated space as that used by the failed disk for the RAID-5 volume.
To format a disk, you can right-click the volume in Disk Management and select Format. You can also right-click the drive in Windows Explorer and select Format. You can then specify the volume label, the file system, and the allocation unit size (the smallest space allocated to a file). You can also perform a quick format, which only empties the FAT table, and you can enable file and folder compression.
When you prepare a volume in Windows, you can assign a drive letter to the new volume, or you can create a mount point for the new volume as an empty NTFS folder. The available drive letters range from drive C through drive Z (i.e., there are 24 different drive letters).
Drives A and B are reserved for floppy disk drives. To assign or change a drive letter for a volume, right-click the volume in the Disk Management console and select Change drive letters and path. Then click either the Add or Change button.
By using volume mount points, you can graft or mount a target partition into a folder on another drive. The mounting is handled transparently to the user and applications. With the NTFS volume mount points feature, you can surpass the 26-drive-letter limitation.
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ASSIGN A MOUNT-POINT FOLDER PATH
GET READY. To assign a mount-point folder path to a drive using the Windows interface, perform the following steps:
1. In Disk Management, right-click the partition or volume where you want to assign the mount-point folder path, then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
2. To assign a mount-point folder path, click Add. Click Mount in the following empty NTFS folder, type the path to an empty folder on an NTFS volume, or click Browse to locate the folder.
S K I L L S U M M A R Y
INTHIS LESSONYOULEARNED:
• Today’s drives are either IDE drives (mostly found on consumer computers) or SCSI drives (mostly found in servers).
• A redundant array of independent disks (RAID) uses two or more drives in combination to create a fault-tolerant system that protects against physical hard drive failure and increase hard drive performance.
• With striping (RAID 0), all available hard drives are combined into a single large virtual file system, with the file system’s blocks arrayed so that they are spread evenly across all the drives. Unfortunately, striping offers no fault tolerance.
• Disk mirroring (RAID 1) copies a disk or partition onto a second hard drive. Then, as informa-tion is written, it is written to both hard drives simultaneously.
• RAID 5 is similar to striping except that one of the hard drives is used for parity (error correction) to provide fault tolerance.
• RAID 1"0 is a mirrored dataset (RAID 1), which is then striped (RAID 0).
• When a drive fails, some systems use hot spares so that the system will automatically replace the failed drive and rebuild or restore the missing data.
• Network attached storage (NAS) is a file-level data storage device that is connected to a computer network to provide shared drives or folders, usually using SMB.
• A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture used for disk arrays, tape libraries, and opti-cal jukeboxes to appear as loopti-cally attached drives on a server.
• A host adapter, sometimes referred to as host bus adapter (HBA), connects a host system such as a computer to a network or storage devices.
• Logical unit numbers (usually referred to as LUNs) allow a SAN to break its storage into manageable pieces, which are then assigned to one or more servers in the SAN.
• Fibre Channel and iSCSI are gigabit-speed technologies primarily used for storage networking.
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 includes two iSCSI Initiator software interfaces (iSCSI Initiator and iSCSICLI command interface) to connect an iSCSI storage array or volume of a storage array to a server and mount the array or volume as a local volume.
• Windows Server 2008 includes Storage Explorer and Storage Manager for SANs to manage Fibre Channel, iSCSI fabrics, and LUNs.
• Partitioning is defining and dividing a physical or virtual disk into logical volumes called partitions.
Each partition functions as if it were a separate disk drive that can be assigned a drive letter.
• Formatting a disk prepares the disk’s file system.
• Windows Server 2008 supports two types of disk partitioning styles: Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT).
• In Windows Server 2008, a basic disk is the same type of disk found in earlier versions of Windows.
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• When using MBR, basic disks gave you either four primary partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition.
• Dynamic disks offer increased flexibility, including up to 2,000 volumes and the ability to extend or shrink a disk without requiring a reboot.
• Dynamic disks support five types of volumes: simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes.
• A file system is a method of storing and organizing computer files and the data they con-tain to make it easy to find and access this information. A file system also maincon-tains the physical location of the files so you can find and access the files in the future.
• Currently, NTFS is the preferred file system, in part because it supports much larger hard disks (up to 16 exabytes) and long filenames.
• NTFS is a journaling file system that makes sure a disk transaction is written properly before it is recognized.
• NTFS offers better security through permissions and encryption.
• The main tool used to manage disks in Windows Server 2008 is the MMC snap-in called Disk Management, which is also part of the Computer and Management consoles.
• When you prepare a volume in Windows, you can assign a drive letter to the new volume, or you can create a mount point to the new volume as an empty NTFS folder.
Fill in the Blank
Complete the following sentences by writing the correct word or words in the blanks provided.
1. uses two or more drives used in combination to create a fault-tolerant system.
2. is a commonly used RAID technology that does not provide fault tolerance.
3. A(n) is an extra drive that can be automatically swapped when a drive fails.
4. A(n) is an architecture used for disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes based on networking technology.
5. The sends SCSI commands to a SAN over a TCP/IP network.
6. The is a Windows Server 2008 feature that allows you to create and manage logical unit numbers (LUNs) on both Fibre Channel and iSCSI disk storage subsystems that support VDS.
7. A(n) is a method of storing and organizing computer files so that you can eas-ily find them and access them.
8. NTFS can support up to of storage space for each volume.
9. The program is the command interface to partition drives.
10. A(n) uses volumes stored on two separate physical disks to write data onto both disks simultaneously and redundantly.
Multiple Choice
Circle the letter that corresponds to the best answer.
1. Which type of drives offer faster performance and are usually found on servers?
a. SCSI b. IDE
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Knowledge Assessment
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c. RLL d. MFM
2. Which common form of RAID uses three or more disks to provide fault tolerance?
a. RAID 0
4. Which type of RAID uses a striped dataset that is mirrored with RAID 1?
4. Which type of RAID uses a striped dataset that is mirrored with RAID 1?