Disk Administrator Displays Blank Boxes for Drives

• Microsoft Windows NT operating system version 3.1
• Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server version 3.1

Disk Administrator records registry information about the disks attached to the system; this information contains drive letter assignments and fault tolerance data on volume sets (whether striped, mirrored, or striped with parity).

Disk Administrator only displays blank boxes for disks which the system believes to be physically present but which Disk Administrator cannot access. Typically, this means disks that were present when the system started (booted), but have since become inaccessible. A disk may become inaccessible because it was powered off, or because it no longer responds to the hard disk driver.

If a disk is powered off before the system is booted, Disk Administrator does not display a box for it. However, it still retains the registry information for that disk, in case it ever becomes available again. If the user deletes a volume set (created for fault tolerance) that includes partitions on a disk that is not present, Disk Administrator updates the Registry information for that disk to reflect the fact that volume set no longer exists.

If you run Disk Administrator and do not see as many disks as you expect, check to make sure that all your disks are powered on. If it displays a blank box for a disk, that disk has probably become inaccessible since the system booted; if it does not display a box for a disk, the disk was probably not present when the system booted.