Managing Disks and Drives

Chapter 13

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Chapter Objectives

Explain disk related terminologies

Format disks

Create disk volumes

Change drive letter and volume label

Map a volume to an NTFS folder

Manage disks and volumes

Use DiskPart command

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Recall

Shadow copies are copies of the original files created by Windows automatically, which can be restored if the original files get deleted or damaged

Taking backup of data is essential in case the original data get lost or corrupted due to hardware failure or virus attack

System Restore is a method that uses the computer’s previous configuration for recovering from system failure

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Disk Related Terminology

Volume Mounted drive Format File System Basic disk and dynamic disk Simple volume Spanned volume Striped volume Mirrored and RAID-5 volumes Active partition, boot partition and system

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Question for group discussion – What is the difference between Basic Disk and Dynamic Disk? (2 min)

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File System

A file system determines the method used by the computer for storing and organizing data in a particular volume

FAT file system does not support a partition that exceeds 4 GB

FAT32 file system does not support a partition that exceeds 32 GB

NTFS supports all the basic features of FAT32 and FAT file system including supports for larger partition

Types ofFile

system

FAT(FAT16)

FAT32 NTFS

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Question for group discussion – What is the file system? (2 min)

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Advantages of NTFS

NTFS permissions for securing files

File encryption support

Ability to recover from file system errors

Support for large volumes

Expandability of existing volumes

Optimized storage of small files

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Question for group discussion – What are the features of NTFS? (2 min)

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Formatting Disks

A disk added to the computer for the first time has to be formatted before it can be used

A volume containing data can also be formatted to erase all its contents

The system volume and the volumes that are currently in use cannot be formatted

Disks, volumes and partitions are formatted using the Disk Management utility

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to format a disk drive.(15 min)

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Choosing the Right UDF version for Optical Media Windows Vista provides different versions of Universal Disk

Format (UDF) for formatting optical media such as CDs and DVDs

Different versions of UDF are UDF 1.50, UDF 2.00, UDF 2.01 and UDF 2.50

UDF is the successor to CDFS (CD-ROM file system)

CDFS is a file system for Linux operating system that provides access to data and audio tracks on CDs

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Converting FAT or FAT32 Disk to NTFS A FAT or FAT32 disk can be converted to a NTFS disk using the

Convert utility at the command prompt

To convert a FAT or FAT32 disk to NTFS disk, type: convert x: /fs:ntfs (where x is the drive letter of the volume to be converted)

Converting a FAT or FAT32 disk to NTFS disk does not erase the data in the disk

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate the method of converting FAT or FAT32 disk to NTFS disk using the Convert utility. (10 min)

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Creating a partition

Partitions are of two types, namely, primary and extended partition

A primary partition is used for starting an operating system

In Windows, a maximum of only three primary partitions can be created, thus, the fourth partition can be created as an extended partition

An extended partition is like a container that contains one or more logical drives

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to create a primary partition (simple volume). (8 min)

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Assigning or Changing Drive Letter and Volume Label A drive letter helps the user as well as the programs installed

in the system to identify one volume from the other and keeps them in an organized way

A volume name is just a label for your volume to imply the overall description of its contents

Drive letters and volume labels are optional

They can also be assigned or changed anytime

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to assign a drive letter. Demonstrate a procedure to change a drive letter. (10 min)

Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to change a volume label. (8 min)

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Creating Volumes

The Disk Management utility allows you to create three types of new volumes namely, simple volume, spanned volume and striped volume

For creating any of these volumes, you will require some unallocated space in the hard disk

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate the process of converting Basic disk to Dynamic disk. (4 min)

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Converting a Basic disk to Dynamic disk Windows Vista supports two types of disk for storage namely,

basic and dynamic disk

A basic disk uses partition-oriented disks for storage

A dynamic disk uses volume-oriented disks for storage

When a basic disk is converted to a dynamic disk, the existing partitions on the basic disk are converted into simple volumes on the dynamic disk

Local access to a dynamic disk is limited to Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 and Windows Vista

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Creating a New Simple Volume A simple volume is a volume located entirely inside a physical

device

It can consist of a single area or multiple areas on the same disk

It can exist on basic as well as dynamic disk

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Creating a New Spanned Volume A spanned volume is a volume created by joining free spaces

located on different disks while making it work as just a single volume

It can exist only on a dynamic disk

The risk involved in creating a spanned volume is, if one of the disks used by the spanned volume fails, then data on the other partitions using the spanned volume will also be lost

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to create a new spanned volume. (10 min)

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Creating a New Striped Volume A striped volume is a volume created using stripes of free disk

spaces from two or more dynamic disks

The data is allocated alternately and evenly across the disks by dividing them into chunks of 64 KB by the operating system

The primary disadvantage of striped volumes is that they are not fault tolerant

Like spanned volume, if a disk failure occurs in one of the disks used by the striped volume, then data on other partitions used by it will also be lost

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Question for group discussion – What are the difference between Spanned and Striped volumes? (2 min)

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Mapping a Volume to an NTFS Folder The process of assigning a path to a volume using an empty

NTFS folder is called mapping or mounting a volume

Mounted volumes are used for extending the storage capacity of a volume

You can also have several mounted volumes for a volume

Mounted volumes are also called mounted drives, mapped volumes or drive paths

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to create a mounted volume. (10 min)

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Managing Disks and Volumes The disk management utility enables you to:

Extend a volume - Extending a volume increases the size of the volume using unallocated space in the hard disk

Shrink a volume - Shrinking a volume reduces the size of the volume to make some space for another volume that is running out of space

Delete a volume - Deleting a volume erases all the contents of the volume and converts it to an unallocated space

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to extend a volume. (10 min)

Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to shrink a volume. (6 min)

Practical Activity: Demonstrate a procedure to delete a volume. (6 min)

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Checking the Status and Properties of Disks and Volumes - I The Disk Management utility lists the status and properties of

all the disks and volumes

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Question for group discussion – What does it mean if the status of hard disk is Missing? (2 min)

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Checking the Status and Properties of Disks and Volumes - II The various status messages of a disk are:

Online

Online (Errors)

Offline

Foreign

Unreadable

Missing

Not Initialized

No Media

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Checking the Status and Properties of Disks and Volumes III The various status messages of a volume are:

Healthy

Healthy (At Risk)

Healthy (Unknown Partition)

Initializing

Failed

Unknown

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Question for group discussion – What does it mean if the status of volume is Initializing? (2 min)

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Using DiskPart Command - I The DiskPart utility is a command prompt utility for managing

the disks, volumes and partitions of the system

It can be used to create partitions, delete partitions, repartition a volume, assign and change drive letters, and extend and shrink volumes

To perform a particular task:

List the objects (disks, volumes and partitions)

Select the appropriate object

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Using DiskPart Command - II To list all the disks, type list disk and press ENTER

To list all the volumes, type list volume and press ENTER

To list all the partitions, type list partition and press ENTER

To select an object, type select object id

where, object = disk, volume or partition

id = number or drive letter if it is a volume or partition, only number if it is a disk

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Summary - I

A volume is referred to a disk drive or a subdivision of a disk, which has been formatted and is available for storing data

A mounted drive is a volume, which is linked to an empty folder on a drive formatted in NTFS file system

Windows Vista supports two types of disk for storage namely, basic disk and dynamic disk

File systems supported by Windows Vista are FAT (File Allocation Table), NTFS (NT File System), CDFS (Compact Disk File System) and UDF (Universal Disk Format)

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Practical Activity: Demonstrate the Diskpart command to perform the disk management. (10 min)

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Summary - II

A simple volume is located inside a physical device

A spanned volume joins the spaces from different disks and making it operate as if it is a single storage medium

A striped volume is created using stripes of free disk spaces from two or more dynamic disks

The Disk Management utility is used for managing the disks, volumes and partitions of your system from the GUI whereas the DiskPart utility allows you to perform the same tasks from command prompt

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