CREATE AN ADDITIONAL SHARE NAME FOR A FOLDER

10-3Lesson 1 Managing and Troubleshooting Disks and Volumes

Lesson 1: Managing and Troubleshooting Disks and

Volumes

Hard disks are fixed storage devices that are connected to a computer by Integrated

Device Electronics (IDE) or Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) controllers. Porta-

ble hard disks are also available, and they can be connected with universal serial bus

(USB) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1394 (also known as

FireWire) interfaces. Windows typically treats portable hard disks, CD-ROM drives, and

DVDs as removable storage devices. This lesson focuses on configuring and trouble-

shooting hard disks in Windows XP. You should also be able to use the tools that Win-

dows XP provides for managing, maintaining, and troubleshooting hard disks.

After this lesson, you will be able to■

Explain the use of basic and dynamic disks.

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Manage hard disks by using the Disk Management tool.

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Manage hard disks on a remote computer in Computer Management.

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Manage disks from the command line by using the Diskpart command.

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Troubleshoot disks and volumes.

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Work with removable media.

Estimated lesson time: 70 minutes

Overview of Basic and Dynamic Disks

Windows XP Professional supports two types of hard disk storage on desktop com-

puters: basic disks and dynamic disks. (You cannot use dynamic disks on porta-

ble computers.)

Basic Disks

Basic disks are the traditional type of storage that is available in earlier versions of

Microsoft Windows. Basic disks are also the default storage type in Windows XP, so all

hard disks begin as basic disks. Windows XP recognizes all disks as basic by default,

including all new installations and upgrades from previous versions of Windows. To

use a dynamic disk, you must convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk.

On a basic disk, you must create one or more partitions (also called basic volumes).

Partitions were covered in detail in Chapter 2, “Installing Windows XP Professional,”

but a brief review is in order.

You must configure a basic disk with at least one partition. In fact, most computers that

you will encounter have a single hard disk with one partition that takes up all the phys-

ical space on the disk. You can also divide a hard disk into multiple partitions for the

purpose of organizing file storage or supporting multiple operating systems on a single

computer. You can create the following three types of partitions on a basic hard disk:

Primary You can configure up to four primary partitions on a computer running

a Windows operating system (three partitions if you also have an extended parti-

tion on the disk). You can configure any primary partition as the active (or boot-

able) drive, but only one primary partition is active at a time. Other primary drives

are typically hidden from the operating system and are not assigned a drive letter.

Extended An extended partition provides a way to exceed the four primary parti-

tion limit. You cannot format an extended partition with any file system. Rather,

extended partitions serve as a shell in which you can create any number of logical

partitions.

Logical You can create any number of logical partitions inside an extended parti-

tion. Logical partitions are normally used for organizing files. All logical partitions

are visible, no matter which operating system is started.

Windows stores partition information for basic disks in the partition table, which is not

part of any operating system (it is an area of the drive that is accessible by all operating

systems). Other configuration options, such as drive letter assignments, are controlled

by the operating system and are stored in the Windows Registry.

Dynamic Disks

Windows XP Professional supports dynamic disks (except on portable computers).

Dynamic disks offer several advantages over basic disks:

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You can divide a dynamic disk into many volumes. The basic disk concept of pri-

mary and extended partitions does not exist when using dynamic disks.

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Windows stores configuration information for dynamic disks entirely on the disk.

If there are multiple dynamic disks, Windows replicates information to all other

disks so that each disk has a copy of the configuration information. This informa-

tion is stored in the last 1 MB of the disk.

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You can extend dynamic volumes by using contiguous or noncontiguous disk

space. Dynamic volumes can also be made up of areas of disk space on more than

one disk.