Memory
Memory
Memory
The blue area at the beginning of Dynamic Disk is the MBR which saves the information of the Partition Table on the disk. This partition table is not the same as one of Basic Disk. Its main function is to make Windows and Other Disk Manager can know the disk is a dynamic disk instead of an empty disk. The blue at the end of the above is the LDM database.
Resize dynamic disk: extend, shrink, move dynamic partition for first-rank performance Extend dynamic system volume to solve low disk space of C drive on dynamic disk. Software RAID array expansion: Increase mirrored (RAID 1) volume and Expand RAID-5 volume Add drive to RAID to extend software RAID 0, 5 volume without re-creating entire array. Remove drive from RAID to shrink software RAID 0, 5 volume without deleting entire array.
Simple Volume The simple volume only can be created on the single disk as partition of Basic Disk, but its space can be inconsecutive. The screenshot is as follows:
Spanned Volume It is created from free space that is linked together from multiple disks (up to 32 disks). The sequence of writing data for Spanned Volume is that the volume on the first disk is filled full and then turn to fill the next dynamic disk. Spanned Volume can allow the fragmentary free space of multiple disks is recomposed as one volume, so it can fully utilize the resources of multi-disk. However, it can not be fault-tolerant volume and can not improve performance of the disk. The following screenshot is shown.
F: is a Spanned Volume and it utilized the space on Disk 1 and Disk2. Striped Volume It's similar with Spanned Volume, and consists of two and more disks. However, the difference is that it can improve the efficiency and performance of disk, because when operating system writes data to Striped Volume, this data will be separated into many pieces of 64KB, and then concurrent writes a different data block to each disk. A striped volume cannot be mirrored or extended and is not fault-tolerant. The screenshot is below:
E: is a Striped Volume, and the space is the same on the two disks, here is 1023MB. Spanned and Striped Volume shows the different color bar to differentiate them in Windows Disk Management.
Mirrored Volume We can simply understand that Mirrored Volume is a duplicate of Simple Volume. It needs two disks; one stores the data which is being used, and another keep a copy of previous one. When a disk fails, the other one can be used immediately. A Mirrored Volume provides fault-tolerant, and it's also known as RAID-1 as follows:
E: is a Mirrored Volume. The data of the Disk1-E is the absolute same as the Disk2-E.
RAID-5 Volume A RAID-5 requires three disks at least; it not only can enhance the efficiency of the disk but also provide the best fault-tolerant. You could simply consider RAID-5 is a combination of Striped and Mirrored Volume. A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped across an array of three or more disks. Parity (a calculated value that can be used to reconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk array. If a physical disk fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume that was on that failed disk can be recreated from the remaining data and the parity. The following is a screenshot of RAID-5.