70-290: MCSE Guide to Managing

a Microsoft Windows Server 2003

Environment

Chapter 6:
Managing Disks and Data
Storage

Objectives
Understand concepts related to disk management
Manage partitions and volumes on a Windows
Server 2003 system
Understand the purpose of mounted drives and
how to implement them
Understand the fault tolerant disk strategies
natively supported in Windows Server 2003

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Objectives (continued)
Determine disk and volume status information and
import foreign disks
Maintain disks on a Windows Server 2003 system
using a variety of native utilities

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Disk Management Concepts

Windows Server 2003 supports two data storage
types:
Basic disks
Uses traditional disk management techniques
Has primary partitions, extended partitions, logical
drives
Dynamic disks
Does not use traditional disk partitioning
No restriction on number of volumes implemented
on one disk
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Basic Disks
Maximum of four primary partitions or three
primary and one extended partition on a disk
Each primary partition:
Can use FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file system
Has a drive letter

Boot partition
Operating system files reside on boot partition
Can be located on a primary partition or logical drive
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Primary Partitions
A basic drive must contain at least one and no
more than four primary partitions
One partition is the system (or active) partition
Contains files to start operating system
Usually drive C on Windows
Can also be used for traditional data storage

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Extended Partitions and

Logical Drives
An extended partition:
Is created from free hard disk space that is not
partitioned, formatted, or assigned a drive letter
Allows you to extend the four-partition limit
Can be divided into logical drives
Each drive is then formatted and assigned a drive
letter

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Volume Sets and Stripe Sets

Only on Windows NT Server 4.0
Volume set
Two or more partitions combined to look like one
volume with a single drive letter

Stripe set
Two or more disks striped for RAID level 0 or 5

Windows Server 2003 and 2000 provide backward

compatibility
Can use but not create
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Dynamic Disks
Can set up a large number of volumes per disk
Volumes are similar to partitions but with additional
capabilities

Reasons to implement dynamic disks include

Can extend NTFS volumes
Can configure RAID volumes for fault tolerance and
performance
Can reactivate missing or offline disks
Can change disk settings with restarting computer
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Simple Volume and Spanned

Volume
A simple volume:
Dedicated, formatted portion of space on a dynamic
disk
NTFS volumes can be extended (not system or boot)

A spanned volume:
Space in 2 to 32 dynamic disks
Treated as a single volume
Allows you to maximize use of scattered space across
several disks
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Striped Volume
Referred to as RAID level 0
Implemented for performance enhancement,
particularly for storage of large files
Not fault tolerant
Requires from 2 to 32 disks
Data is written in 64 KB blocks across rows in the
volume

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Striped Volume (continued)

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Managing Partitions and

Volumes
Primary tool is Disk Management
Central facility for

Viewing information
Creating partitions and volumes
Deleting partitions and volumes
Converting basic disks to dynamic disks

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Managing Partitions and

Volumes (continued)

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Managing Disk Properties

Disk Management:
Can be added to a custom MMC
Most commonly accessed via Storage section of
Computer Management
Used for the creation, deletion, and management of
disks, partitions, and volumes
Shares some property sheets with Windows Explorer,
Device Manager

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Managing Disk Properties

(continued)

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Activity 6-1: Viewing and

Managing Disk Properties with
Disk Management
Objective: Use Disk Management to view the
properties of a hard disk and partition
From AdminXX account
Start My Computer Manage Expand Storage
Disk Management

Explore information available for partitions, disks,

and volumes as directed
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Activity 6-2: Creating and

Deleting a Primary Partition
Objective: Use Disk Management to create and
delete a new primary partition
Create a new NTFS partition using the New
Partition Wizard
Assign a drive letter
Verify that the new partition was created
Delete the partition

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Activity 6-3: Creating an

Extended Partition
6-3 Objective: To create an extended partition
using the New Partition Wizard
Once an extended partition has been created, you can
create a logical drive

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Activity 6-4: Creating a Logical

Drive
6-4 Objective: To create a logical drive within the
new partition using the New Partition Wizard

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Activity 6-5: Converting a

Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk
Objective: To convert a basic disk to a dynamic
disk using Disk Management
Convert and verify according to exercise
If necessary to convert from dynamic to basic
Must be empty, backup first

Once a dynamic disk is available

Can create different types of volumes on the disk
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Activity 6-6: Creating a Simple

Volume
Objective: To create a simple volume on a
dynamic disk
Create using New Volume Wizard
Format in NTFS file system
Assign a drive letter

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Extending Volumes
Volume can be extended unless
Functioning as boot or system volume

Possible tools
Disk Management
DISKPART command-line utility

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Activity 6-7: Extending a

Volume Using DISKPART
Objective: To extend a volume using the
DISKPART command
Open the command line and enter the DISKPART
command
Select the simple volume and extend the size by
50 MB
Verify that the size of the volume has been
increased
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Mounted Drives
Mounting a drive is an alternative to assigning it a
drive letter
A mounted drive is represented as a folder with a
normal path
To mount a drive:
Must be on an NTFS volume
Must be an empty folder

Reasons:
26 drive letter limit
Path access is convenient
Backups
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Activity 6-8: Mounting an

NTFS Volume
Objective: To mount an NTFS volume
Create an empty folder
Use Disk Management to mount a drive to the
folder
Test by creating a test folder on the drive and
viewing it from the mounted folder

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Fault Tolerant Disk Strategies

Fault tolerance
The ability to recover gracefully from hardware or
software failure

Hard disks do fail periodically

Software RAID provides various levels of fault
tolerance
A combination of RAID and backup can minimize
disruption and loss of data
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RAID Levels
Redundant Array of Independent Disk strategies
Set of standards for:
Lengthening disk life
Preventing data loss
Enabling uninterrupted access to data

Windows Server 2003 supports level 0, 1, and 5

RAID level 0
Striping with no other redundancy features

RAID level 1
Disk mirroring (duplicating data from main disk to
backup disk)

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RAID Levels (continued)

RAID level 2
Disk striping, error correction across all disks

RAID level 3
Disk striping, error correction on 1 disk

RAID level 4
Disk striping, error correction across all disks,
checksum on 1 disk

RAID level 5
Disk striping, error correction across all disks,
checksum across all disks
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RAID Levels (continued)

Supported on FAT and NTFS
Either RAID level 1 or 5 is usually recommended
Considerations:

Placement of boot and system files

Number of disks required or supported
Cost (per megabyte of storage)
Amount of memory required
Read and write access speed
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Striped Volume (RAID 0)

Reasons to use:
Reduce wear on disk drives by equalizing load
Increase disk performance

No specific fault tolerance support

Can be created using New Volume Wizard

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Mirrored Volume (RAID 1)

Creates a copy of data on a backup disk
Requires 2 disks
Highly effective fault tolerance since a complete
copy of data is available
Disk read performance is equal to non-mirrored
Disk write time is doubled
Created through New Volume Wizard
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Mirrored Volume (continued)

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RAID-5 Volume

Requires a minimum of 3 disks

Provides good fault tolerance
Parity information distributed across all drives
Performance slower than with a striped volume
(parity information must be computed and stored)

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RAID-5 Volume (continued)

Read access is equal to striped volume
Storage requirement for parity information is 1/n
with n the number of disks
Created through New Volume Wizard

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RAID-5 Volume (continued)

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Software RAID and Hardware

RAID
Software RAID uses existing hardware and
implements particular software strategies
Hardware RAID requires specialized hardware
(more expensive) but lessens the burden on the OS
Often implemented on the adapter for disk drives
Often includes a battery backup
Advantages include: faster read and write, mixed
RAID levels, failed disk hot-swap, better setup
options
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Monitoring Disk Health and

Importing Foreign Disks
Disk Management provides status information on
disks and volumes
Number of different status descriptions

Windows Server 2003 provides the ability to

import disks from other servers if necessary
(foreign disks)

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Disk and Volume Status

Descriptions
Optimal descriptions:
Disk should be ONLINE
Volume should be HEALTHY

Common volume messages include:

Failed, failed redundancy, formatting, healthy,
regenerating, resyncing, unknown

Common disk messages include:

Audio CD, foreign, initializing, missing, no media, not
initialized, online, online (errors), offline, unreadable
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Importing Foreign Disks

Used when a server fails
Disks from the server can be moved to another server

When first connected, the disk status will be

foreign and it will not be accessible
Use the Import Foreign Disks option on the disk
If multiple disks are imported
Each disk is imported individually
Default is that disk will use its original drive letter but
an available letter is chosen if there is a conflict
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Other Disk Maintenance and

Management Utilities
Introduces disk-related utilities other than Disk
Management
Some provide extra features or functions
Some are similar but are accessible from the command
line

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Check Disk
Allows you to scan a disk for bad sectors and file
system errors
Disk cant be in use during scan
Two start options:
Automatically fix file system errors
Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors

CHKDSK command-line utility has similar

functionality
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CONVERT
CONVERT is a command-line utility
Converts existing FAT and FAT32 partitions or
volumes to NTFS
Leaves existing data intact

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Disk Cleanup
Allows an administrator to determine where disk
space is being used and could potentially be freed
Files that can be removed include:

Temporary internet files

Downloaded program files
Files in recycle bin
Windows temporary files
No longer used Windows components and programs

Can also compress files

Command-line version is CLEANMGR
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Disk Defragmenter
Free disk space eventually become fragmented as
files are created and removed
Results in slower access and higher disk wear
Defragmentation attempts to place files in
contiguous areas
Defragmentation should be done periodically

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Activity 6-9: Using the Disk

Defragmenter Utility
Objective: to analyze and defragment a volume
using the Disk Defragmenter utility
The utility graphically displays the fragmentation
status of the disk before and after defragmentation
Command-line version of command is DEFRAG
Can be used to schedule defragmentation when used
with a batch file and Task Scheduler
Get complete syntax and options with DEFRAG /?
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DISKPART
Command-line utility for managing disks,
volumes, partitions
Uses include:
Configuring active partition, assigning drive letters,
implementing fault tolerance schemes, etc.

Can manage disks from within scripts

Get the complete syntax and options with
DISKPART /?
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FORMAT
Used to implement a file system on an existing
partition
Also used on MS-DOS and Windows 9X
Has a variety of advanced settings
Setting allocation unit (cluster) size

Command-line version can be run from scripts

Get the complete syntax and options with
FORMAT /?
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FSUTIL
Used with FAT, FAT32, and NTFS file systems
Includes many advanced features, requires
experienced user
Information available includes:
Listings of drives, volume information, NTFS-specific
data

Tasks include:
Managing disk quotas, displaying free space

Get complete information in Help and Support

Center
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MOUNTVOL
Used to create, delete, or list volume mount points
from command line
VolumeName parameter is difficult to use
Complicates adding new mount point
Doesnt affect removing mount points

Get complete syntax and options with

MOUNTVOL /?

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Summary
Windows Server 2003 supports data storage types:
Basic disk
Divided into 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and 1
extended partition with logical drives
Dynamic disk
Can be divided into a number of volumes on 1 disk
A number of disks can be configured in 1 volume
Support simple, spanned, striped, mirrored, RAID-5
volumes

Primary tool for disk management:

Disk Management

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Summary (continued)
Fault tolerance implemented through RAID
strategies
Most highly recommended are:
RAID level 1 (mirrored volumes)
RAID level 5 (striped, distributed parity info)

Hardware RAID very effective but more costly

A number of command-line tools and other
utilities are available for disk management and
cleanup
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