Concept of disk partitions and volumes in Windows

What are primary disk partitions, extended disk partitions, and logical drives?

There are three hard disk partitions: Primary disk partitions, extended disk partitions, and logical partitions.
A hard disk can have a primary partition, an extended partition, or only one primary partition can have no extended partition. There are several logical partitions.
The primary partition is the boot partition of the hard disk. It is independent and the first partition of the hard disk. If it is normal, it is the C drive.
After the primary partition is split, the remaining parts can be divided into extended partitions. Generally, the remaining parts are all divided into extended partitions, or the remaining parts are completely divided.
But extended partitions cannot be used directly. They are used in the form of logical partitions. Therefore, extended partitions can be divided into several logical partitions. Their relationships are contained, and all logical partitions are part of the extended partitions.

Volume
The storage area on the hard disk. The drive uses a file system (such as fat or NTFS) to format the volume and assign it a drive letter. Click the corresponding icon in "Windows Resource Manager" or "My Computer" to view the drive content. A hard disk contains many volumes, and one volume can span many disks.

Start volume
A volume that contains the Windows operating system and its supported files. The START volume can be a system volume, but not necessarily a system volume.

Dynamic volume
Volume that resides on a dynamic disk. Windows supports five types of dynamic volumes: simple volumes, cross-zone volumes, with-zone volumes, mirror volumes, and raid-5 volumes. A dynamic volume is formatted (for example, fat or NTFS) by using a file system and has a drive letter assigned to it

_____ 1 strip volume (striped volume) is similar to a cross-zone volume. It is also composed of two or more hard disks, but the contribution of each hard disk must be the same. When a file is stored in a zone volume, the system will distribute the data in the space of the first disk in each hard disk. If you use professional hardware devices and disks (such as array cards and SCSI hard disks ), it can improve file access efficiency and reduce the CPU load.
____ 2 cross-zone volume (spanned volume) can be composed of two or more storage space on the hard disk, each hard disk does not have to provide the same hard disk space. For example, 1st hard disks provide 30 mb space, and 2nd hard disks provide 70 MB space. The combined cross-zone volume has MB space.
____ 3 basic Volume refers to the volume on the basic disk. The basic volume includes the primary partition, the logical drive in the extended partition, and the volume, band, image, or r a I d-5 set created with Windows NT 4.0 or earlier. You cannot create a basic disk on a dynamic disk. Note that you can only create a new fault tolerance set on a computer running Windows 2000 Server, such as an image volume and r a I d-5 volume. Before creating these volumes, you must upgrade the disk to a dynamic disk. However, you can use a computer running Windows 2000 Professional to create an image volume and a raid-5 volume on a remote computer running Windows 2000 Server.
_____ 4 image volumes are dynamic volumes with fault tolerance capabilities. It provides data redundancy by using two copies of the volume or copying the data stored on the volume. All data written to the image volume is written to two images on an independent physical disk.

If one of the physical disks fails, the data on the faulty disks will be unavailable, but the system can continue to operate on unaffected disks. When an image in the mirror volume fails, the mirror volume must be interrupted to make the other image a volume with an independent drive letter. You can then create an image volume in another disk. The available space of the volume should be the same or larger. When creating an image volume, it is best to use disks of the same size, model, and manufacturer.

Because dual-write operations may reduce system performance, many image volumes are configured in duplex mode. In this mode, each disk in the image volume has its own independent disk controller. Duplex image volumes provide optimal data reliability because they replicate the entire input/output (I/O) subsystem. This means that if a disk controller fails, other controllers (and disks on the Controller) will continue to run normally. If the dual controller is not used, the faulty controller will make the two images in the mirror volume inaccessible until the controller is replaced.

System volume
A volume that contains hardware-specified files used to mount Windows on an x86 computer using BIOS. The START volume can be a system volume, but not necessarily a system volume.

Dynamic Disks

I wonder whether you have encountered such a situation: when installing a software, it requires that the software be installed on a certain partition of the disk, and the disk space of this partition is insufficient. What should I do? You will surely think of some software that changes the disk partition size. Using third-party software to solve the problem is a very good method, and the author provides another method, that is, "Dynamic Disk ".

What is "Dynamic Disk "? What is the role of "Dynamic Disk? Disk usage can be divided into two categories: one is "Basic disk ". "Basic disk" is very common. The disk types we usually use are basically "Basic disk ". The "Basic disk" is limited by 26 English letters. That is to say, the disk drive letter can only be one of 26 English letters. Because drive a and drive B are already occupied by the drive, only drive letters C ~ are available on the disk ~ Z 24. In addition, only four primary partitions can be created on the "Basic disk" (primary partition rather than extended partition), and the other disk type is "Dynamic Disk ". "Dynamic Disk" is not limited by 26 English letters. It is named by "volume. The biggest advantage of "Dynamic Disk" is that it can expand the disk capacity to a non-adjacent disk space. This feature helps us solve the problem above.

How do I know what type of disk my disk belongs? The method is very simple. Click "Start> program> Management Tools> Computer Management" (Windows 2000 Server System), find disk management in the "Computer Management" option, and click the left button, you can see from the parameter display on the right.

So what is the relationship between "Basic disk" and "Dynamic Disk? Can they convert each other? If your disk is a "Basic disk", you can upgrade it to a "Dynamic Disk", but note that your disk must have at least 1 MB of unallocated space. The upgrade method is very simple: Right-click the disk drive letter on the right side of the "disk management" interface, and select upgrade to "Dynamic Disk" in the menu. During this process, the computer will be restarted. The number of restarts = the number of Disk Partitions-1 (for example, if the disk is divided into four zones, it needs to be restarted three times ). The upgrade process is automatically completed, and the disk data will not be lost during the upgrade process.

After the upgrade, you can use it to solve the above problems. The method is as follows: in disk management, click the unallocated space, select to create a new volume, and then proceed step by step as prompted (note: the replacement folder selected during creation must be empty. For example, if you select the ABC folder under the C volume, the ABC folder must be empty ). Return to volume C and you will find that the ABC folder is changed to a "Dynamic Disk" icon. Solve the problem of insufficient disk space. Please install the program now!

Note: The disk data will not change from "Basic disk" to "Dynamic Disk", but will be returned to "Basic disk" from "Dynamic Disk ", all data in the disk will be lost. Therefore, you must use this function with caution.

Dynamic disks can be used to change the volume size at any time. However, dynamic disks cannot be accessed through Win98/XP Home, and cannot be used in the Win2000/WINXP pro dual operating system environment. Pay special attention to this. In addition, once the disk is upgraded to a dynamic disk, it cannot be returned to the original basic disk (unless it is re-partitioned). Therefore, it is best not to upgrade the boot disk to ensure security.

Many gray-class diyer have more than one hard disk in their hands. These hard disks usually have a small capacity. When downloading or installing large software, they often encounter insufficient disk space. Using Win2000/XP's "Dynamic Disk" function, you can use two hard disks as one, reducing a lot of inconvenience. However, this method is not applicable to mobile hard disks.

Dynamic disks can be used to change the volume size at any time. However, dynamic disks cannot be accessed through Win98/XP Home, and cannot be used in the Win2000/WINXP pro dual operating system environment. Pay special attention to this. In addition, once the disk is upgraded to a dynamic disk, it cannot be returned to the original basic disk (unless it is re-partitioned). Therefore, it is best not to upgrade the boot disk to ensure security.

The following describes how to combine two hard disks with the third one. To prevent data corruption caused by Operation failures, we recommend that you back up all the data before starting the operation:

1. Click "my computer-management-Computer Management-storage-disk management ".

2. Right-click the hard disk number to be upgraded to Dynamic Disk and select "upgrade to Dynamic Disk ". When merging multiple hard disks, right-click the previous hard disk and select "upgrade to Dynamic Disk ". In "upgrade basic disks", select all disks to be merged. In this example, we cancel the boot disk (Disk 0) and select Disk 1 and Disk 2.

3. Click "Upgrade" after confirmation. The two disks are upgraded to "dynamic disks", but the merger is not completed yet. Before merging, you must "unallocate" the added hard disk (Disk 2). Therefore, you must delete the volume first. In Disk 2, right-click and select Delete volume ".

4. Right-click Disk 1 and select "extend volume-extend volume wizard-available disk-Disk 2-Add ". Run "my computer-manage" again. If Disk 1 and Disk 2 have the same name, the merge is successful.

Five types of dynamic disk volumes:
1. Simple volume: a volume that constitutes a single physical disk space. It can be composed of a single area on the disk or multiple areas connected to the same disk, and can expand simple volumes within the same disk.

2. Cross-zone volume: A simple volume can also be extended to other physical disks. A volume composed of multiple physical disk spaces is called a cross-zone volume. Simple volumes and cross-zone volumes are not in the raid category.

3. volume with a zone: the volume that stores data on two or more physical disks in the form of a zone. Data on a partition volume is evenly distributed to these disks in the form of a partition. The partition volume provides the best performance for all Windows 2000 available volumes, however, it does not provide fault tolerance. If any disk data on the partition volume is damaged or the disk fails, the data on the entire volume will be lost. A zone volume can be viewed as RAID 0 in a hardware raid.

4. Image volume: copy the fault tolerant volume of data on two physical disks. It provides data redundancy by copying the information in the volume using a copy of the volume (image), and the image is always on another disk. If one of the physical disks fails, the data on the faulty disks will be unavailable, but the system can continue to operate on unaffected disks. The image volume can be viewed as RAID 1 in hardware raid.

5. Raid-5 volume: A Fault-Tolerant volume with data and parity, sometimes distributed on three or more physical disks. parity is used to reconstruct Data after array failure. If a part of the physical disk fails, you can use the remaining data and parity information to recreate the data on the part of the disk that failed to be created. Similar to RAID 5 in hardware raid, RAID 5 is rare in hardware ide raid. It is usually available in SCSI raid cards and high-end ide raid cards, only RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0 + 1 are available for normal ide raid cards.

The smallest unit of Disk File Storage Management in Microsoft Operating Systems (DOS, windows, etc.) is "cluster"

A file is usually stored in one or more clusters, but it must occupy at least one "cluster ". That is to say, two files cannot be stored in the same cluster.

The purpose of a cluster (clust) is "a group" and "a group", that is, a group of slices (a track can be divided into several equal arcs called slices. Because the unit of the slice is too small, it is bundled together to form a larger unit for more convenient and flexible management. Generally, the cluster size can be changed, which is defined by the operating system in the so-called "(advanced) Formatting". Therefore, management is more flexible.

In layman's terms, files are like a family. Data is a person, that is, a family member. A cluster is a number of unit suites. A sector is a number of equal-size rooms that constitute these unit suites.

A family may live in one or more unit houses, but a house cannot be a member of two families at the same time.