Disk Concepts and Troubleshooting

Features of Basic Disk

You can use partitions on a basic disk just as you did with Microsoft® Windows NT® Server version 4.0, but you do not need to commit changes to save them or to restart your computer to make the changes effective. Changes made by Disk Management are implemented immediately. Unless you are making a change that affects existing files on the disk, the system executes your change without confirmation.

You can create up to four partitions in the free space on a physical hard disk; one of these can be an extended partition. You can use the free space in the extended partition to create one or more logical drives. You cannot use basic disk to create any kind of multiple volume sets or FT volumes.

You can perform the following tasks only on a basic disk:

Create and delete primary and extended partitions.
Create and delete logical drives within an extended partition.
Format a partition and mark it as active.
Delete volume, striped, mirror, or stripe sets with parity.
Break a mirror from a mirror set.
Repair failed legacy FT volumes such as mirror sets or stripe sets with parity.

Certain legacy functions are no longer available on basic disks because multiple-disk storage systems need to use dynamic disks. Disk Management supports legacy volumes that exceed a single partition on more than one hard disk, but it does not allow you to create new ones. For example, you cannot create volume, striped, mirror, or RAID-5 sets or extend volumes and volume sets on a basic disk.

While you cannot create new multiple disk sets on basic disks, you can delete them. Be sure to back up all the information on the set before you delete it.

To establish a new spanned, striped, mirror, or RAID-5 set, first upgrade the disk to dynamic disk. To convert an existing volume, striped, mirror, or RAID-5 set, upgrade the physical disks on which the set resides to dynamic disk.