Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

disks

Synopsis

Overview of disk storage technologies supported by Windows 2000 Server.

Description

Windows 2000 Server supports the older disk technologies of previous versions of Microsoft Windows and also includes some new technologies to increase performance and make disk management easier.

Types of Disk Storage

Windows 2000 Server supports two types of disk storage:

Basic storage

This storage technology is the same as that of earlier versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows NT 4.0 and 3.51, Windows 98, and Windows 95. Basic storage divides disks into a limited number of partitions and logical drives and supports advanced features such as volume sets, strip sets, stripe sets with parity, and mirror sets.

Dynamic storage

This technology is new to Windows 2000 Server and divides disks into an unlimited number of volumes. Dynamic storage supports advanced features such as spanned volumes, striped volumes, RAID-5 volumes, and mirrored volumes.

In addition, Windows 2000 Server supports certain types of removable storage.

Basic Storage

When Windows 2000 Server is installed on a system, all disks use basic storage. A disk that uses basic storage is called a basic disk . Basic disks are similar to disks in Windows NT 4.0 and can consist of either:

• Up to three primary partitions plus one extended partition. The extended partition can have up to 24 logical drives. Each primary partition and logical drive is identified by a unique drive letter from C to Z.

• Up to four primary partitions ...