Unit 2 : Configuring Disks and Volumes
The system partition and the boot partition
Two important terms you will hear with reference to Windows 2003 server are system
partition and boot partition. Because these terms are used quite often when referring to
the location of specific files and when referring to certain functions, it is important to
discuss the distinction between the terms. The distinction between the system partition
and the boot partition is sometimes purely conceptual. They are spoken of separately to
distinguish their function in the starting and running of Windows 2003. These partitions
can be on separate drives. However, your server generally has only one partition
(usually the C: drive), which is home to both the system and the boot partition
The first thing that happens when your Windows 2003 server starts, is that the
computer's BIOS seeks out the master boot record (MBR). The MBR tells the computer
what to do in order to get an operating system loaded. It is always on the first sector of
the hard disk along with the partition table. The computer's bios is the “basic
input/output system”. It resides on a ROM chip (or sometimes a flash chip) on the
motherboard and contains the code necessary to run things like the keyboard, display,
and disk drives. The BIOS is the first thing to run when a computer is powered up, and
this allows the computer to boot itself.
The MBR identifies the active partition, also known as the system partition, on the hard
drive. This partition can be set from within Windows 2003, but it is usually determined
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before Windows 2003 is even installed. Once your computer identifies the system
partition, it looks there to find out how to boot the operating system.
There is a small amount of boot code that identifies some special files that are used to
start the operating system, including the following:
 boot.ini
 ntdetect.com
 ntldr
When the system partition has been located and the operating system begins to start,
the first file consulted is the boot.ini file. This file specifies the physical location of the
folder containing the operating system files; usually the WINNT folder on the boot
partition. Because the operating systems files are located on the boot partition, Windows
2003 needs it as long as the server is running. However, after the operating system has
started, Windows 2003 no longer needs the files on the system partition
Question: T or F? The boot partition contains boot files such as boot.ini and
ntdetect.com.
Question The Windows 2003 system partition contains a file that is used to
indicate the physical location of the folder that contains the operating system
files. what is the name of this file?
a) ntdetect.com
b) autoexec.bat
c) config.sys
d) boot.ini
Question: Which of the following partitions does a Windows 2003 operating
system need as long as the server is running?
1. the boot partition
2. the system partition
a) 1 only
b) 2 only
c) both 1 and 2
d) neither 1 nor 2
Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) Paths
The boot.ini file (located on the system partition) contains a convention called an ARC
path that points to the Windows 2003 files (on the boot partition). Advanced RISC
computing (ARC) standards are conventions adopted by a variety of vendors that allow a
piece of hardware to be defined by physical characteristics, such as location, instead of
by labels provided in the user interface of an operating system. ARC paths allow
Windows 2003 to locate particular sections of a hard drive based on their physical
location rather than an arbitrary lettering convention. For example, “drive F” might be
the label of a volume, but it does not provide the operating system with a physical
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location. The ARC specification for volumes and partitions (ARC path) defines physical
location based on four parameters: the disk controller, the physical hard drive on
the controller, the partition on the physical hard drive, and the folder on the
partition.
The arc path is organized in a tree. Each controller might have its own hard drives and
each hard drive has its own partition. This means that a unique arc path requires each
of the components (controller, drive, partition, folder) to be defined, not just one piece.
The full syntax for an arc path can consist of one of two sets of parameters, shown
here. the first one is far more common than the second, but you might encounter either
one:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\ospath or
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\ospath
The first parameter defines the controller type. If the controller is either non-SCSI (IDE,
EIDE, and so on) or is SCSI with the BIOS enabled, then multi(z) is used. Most PC-based
controllers fall into this category. If the controller is SCSI with the BIOS disabled, then
scsi(z) is used. This parameter's numbering scheme begins with 0, so the first controller
is either multi(0) or scsi(0).
The second ARC parameter is the number of the hard drive. This consists of two values,
disk(x)rdisk(y). While only one value (either x or y) is significant depending on the
controller type, both must be present. If the controller is multi, then rdisk is significant.
If the controller is scsi, then disk is significant. Like the controller number, disk numbers
begin with 0 because the first disk on a controller is numbered 0.
The third ARC parameter is partition(z). This defines the physical partition number of the
volume that you want the path to point to. Unlike the numbering scheme for the
controller and drive, the numbering for partition begins at 1.
The OS folder, the final parameter, is the name of the folder that houses the operating
system files, shown here as \ospath. It is defined simply by using the name of the folder
as it appears in Windows explorer or my computer.
Question:
Which of the following is used to determine the arc path for parameters such
as the disk controller and the hard drive?
a) the physical location of the hard drive
b) the ip address of the hard drive
c) the file format used by the volume or partition
d) the logical structure of the drive
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Question: In an arc path, which of the following parameters denotes a
controller? (Select two)
a) ctrl
b) scsi
c) disk
d) rdisk
e) multi
Question:
In your boot.ini, you have the arc path, shown here. Which parameter value is
significant in identifying the hard drive? ________________
The number for the controller depends on the physical position in which it is installed in
the computer. The numbers for hard drive are determined by its physical location on the
cable attached to the controller. These two numbering systems are fixed unless you
physically move components around in the computer. The number for the partition is
not fixed, and will need to change if you change the partition your system is booting
from. The system or boot partition for Windows 2003 must have a valid arc path. For
volumes and partitions to have valid arc paths, they have to be created on a basic disk
and cannot be created on a dynamic disk.
The arc path for each bootable partition must be correct in the boot.ini file, shown here,
for Windows 2003 server to start properly. If you to have problems booting, it may be
due to an incorrect arc path. In which case, you can issue a map arc command from
the recovery console to identify the correct arc path. You can then edit the boot.ini file
to include the correct ARC path for the OS
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Question:
In an arc path, which of the following determines the values used to
represent hard drives?
a) their physical location on the cable attached to the controller
b) the physical position of the controller to which they are attached
c) the mac address of the network card
d) the number of primary or logical partitions on the disk
Question:
Which of the following can be used to correct an incorrect arc path?
a) use the ‘export arc’ command to update the boot.ini file
b) boot to safe mode and copy the boot.ini file from the installation
cd
c) boot to the recovery console and use the ‘map arc’ command to
find the correct path and then update the boot.ini file
d) right-click boot.ini in Windows explorer and select update arc
The boot.ini file, in its simplest form, defines the location of a single operating system's
boot files on a computer. More complex versions of boot.ini exist where more than one
operating system is available to boot from. If more than one operating system is
available, you will be presented with a menu that allows you to choose the operating
system you want to use for startup.
[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft
Windows 2003 Server" /fastdetect
Multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”Windows 98”
The line beginning timeout= defines the length of time the system will wait before
booting the default operating system. In the case of a single operating system to boot,
the system will start Windows 2003 server immediately; the 20-second delay will be
invoked only if there is more than one operating system to choose from.
The default= line uses an arc path to define the location of the default operating system
folder. In the case of Windows 2003 server, it is usually the winnt folder.
The entry under the [operating systems] line identifies the operating systems that are
bootable from this boot.ini file. for Windows 2003 servers in production environments, a
single entry is all you should see. The only other option you might see here is a boot to
the recovery console. for Windows 2000 professional or Windows computers in test labs,
you might find numerous operating systems to boot.
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Question:
In the boot.ini file, which of the following is defined in the default= line?
a) the default label of the boot partition
b) the ip address of the server
c) the location of the default operating system folder
d) the location of the default user profiles
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\W2K
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft
Windows 2003 Server" /fastdetect
Multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\W2K=”Windows 2000 Professional”
Question: A section of code from a boot.ini file on your Windows 2003 server
is shown here. Which of the following can you deduce from this code?
a) The system will boot immediately to Windows 2000 Pro.
b) The system will wait 30 seconds before booting Windows 2003 server.
c) The system will prompt you to boot either Windows 2000 Pro or
Windows 2003 server within 30 seconds.
d) The system will display a menu with Windows 2000 Professional and
Microsoft Windows 2003 Server when it reads this file.
Disk Basics
All storage areas on your hard drives are defined as either basic disks or dynamic disks.
The disk structure known as the basic disk is the industry standard for disk
configuration across all PC operating systems. Whether you are working with OS/2,
Windows 9x, or DOS, all support basic disk structures. This means that if you have a
computer on which multiple operating systems are installed, all will be able to read the
partition information.
Because it is often useful to divide your disks into distinct logical units, basic disks
support subdivision into two major types. The first type, the primary partition, is one
that can be made bootable and is where the active boot record is stored for an
operating system. As a result, every machine must have a primary partition, and the
operating system is typically installed there. On most machines, this is the C: drive. A
basic disk supports up to four primary partitions. In the history of such disks, having
only four partitions on a hard drive was deemed to be too limiting. So the second
partition type was introduced into the standard — the extended partition. A drive can
have only one extended partition. Coupled with the fact that you can have only four
partitions in total on a hard drive, this means you can combine partitions in only a
limited number of combinations.
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Despite not being bootable, the extended partition has an advantage over the primary
partition because it can be subdivided into endless numbers of logical drives. All these
partition and logical drive types can be seen by all operating systems, and this is the
default structure on a hard drive under Windows 2003.
This table summarizes the characteristics of the partitions on the basic disk
described in this unit.
Primary
Partition
Extended
Partition
Can hold the System
partition
Yes
No
Can hold the Boot partition
Yes
Yes
Fault tolerant
No
No
Space utilization
100%
100%
Drives required
1
1
Formats supported
All
All
Accessible locally by
non-2000 OS if FAT
Yes
Yes
Read performance
Average
Average
Write performance
Average
Average
Characteristic
Question: How many primary partitions are supported in a basic disk
structure?
a) 1
b) 2
c) 4
d) 6
Question: In a basic disk structure, which partition types are bootable?
1. primary partitions
2. extended partitions
a) 1 only
b) 2 only
c) both 1 and 2
d) neither 1 nor 2
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Question: In a basic disk structure, which of the following is an advantage of
an extended partition over a primary partition?
a) it is fault tolerant
b) it allows for multiple operating systems to exist
c) it can be divided into an endless number of logical drives
d) it is used to boot the operating system
If, however, you want to introduce fault tolerance into your disk system (which enables
you to easily recover from disk failure), you will need to consider another disk type: the
dynamic disk.
A dynamic disk consists of a single disk that is identified as dynamic and then subdivided
into volumes. It is a proprietary structure that is readable only by Windows 2003.
Therefore, any data held on a dynamic disk cannot be read by other locally booting
operating systems. While the term dynamic disk was new for Windows 2000, the kinds
of utilities it supports are not and have been available since Windows NT.
The following volume types can be created:
 simple,
 spanned,
 mirrored,
 striped, and
 raid-5.
Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages. It is important that you know how
to manage both basic and dynamic disks. This is because all disks start as basic disks,
but dynamic disks provide more flexibility. As a production server, Windows 2003 server
should not be configured to dual-boot, so you should convert your basic disks to
dynamic disks as soon as you can. Converting a basic disk to a dynamic disk can be
done before or after a basic disk has been subdivided into partitions. The conversion
program merges the existing partitions and creates volumes out of them.
Question: T or F? In Windows 2003 server, a basic disk structure supports
simple, spanned, mirrored, and striped volumes.
Question: In Windows 2003, which disk structure supports fault tolerance?
a) Basic
b) Dynamic
c) Both basic and dynamic
Let's look at the types of volumes that can be created on a dynamic disk.
The simple volume is the most straightforward of the volume types. It is one or more
segments of free space coming from a single hard drive with a letter identifying it. A
simple volume is not fault tolerant because it is only a single entity and has no
redundancy built into it. You can resize a simple volume by converting it to a spanned
volume, but only if it was created originally as a simple volume on a dynamic disk. If it
was originally a partition on a basic disk that was subsequently converted to a simple
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volume on a dynamic disk, it cannot be made part of a spanned volume, and it also
cannot be resized.
A simple volume that was converted from a primary or logical partition on a basic disk
has special properties in that it can house either the system or boot partition (or both).
This is because the primary partition is the only partition type that can be home to the
system or boot partition of a Windows 2003 server implementation. If you create a
simple volume from scratch, it cannot have a valid ARC path (it was never a primary
partition) and, therefore, cannot be used to boot the system.
A spanned volume is one that consists of fragments of free disk space spanning
across 2 to 32 different hard drives. These fragments are treated as a single drive and
have a single letter associated with them. Spanned volumes are not fault-tolerant and if
any of the pieces are removed, all the information is lost. Also, a spanned volume
cannot hold the system or boot partitions.
The fragments that are joined together to create a spanned volume do not have to be
the same size. In a spanned volume, the information is written into one piece of free
space at a time. The next segment of the spanned volume is not populated until the
previous segment is full, meaning each piece is filled in turn before the space on the
next is used. Planning is important when you're thinking about spanned volumes. If you
begin with a basic disk structure, you can convert the partitions to simple volumes.
However, once converted, these volumes can never become spanned volumes. In order
to create a spanned volume from a simple volume, you must use a volume created on a
dynamic disk, and never a basic disk partition that was converted to a simple volume.
Question: Assume that during initial configuration of your Windows 2003
server, you created a partition on a basic disk. Later, you converted this
partition to a simple volume on a dynamic disk. Which of the following is
true?
1. this volume can be resized.
2. this volume cannot be used in a spanned volume.
a) 1 only
b) 2 only
c) both 1 and 2
d) neither 1 nor 2
Question: You are using a simple volume that was converted from a primary
partition on a basic disk.
T of F? Your simple volume can house the system and boot partitions.
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Question: Which of the following are true of spanned volumes in Windows
2003? (Select two.)
a) They are fault tolerant they can consist of fragments of up to 64 hard
drives
b) Segments of a spanned volume do not need to be the same size
c) One segment is filled before the next is populated
d) Segments must be initially created as basic partitions
A mirrored volume (sometimes referred to as raid-1) consists of two segments of disk
space on two hard drives. These segments are treated as a single drive and have a
single drive letter associated with them. While both segments need to be the same size,
the two hard drives do not. Also, since the two segments are exact duplicates, the total
amount of storage space is equal to the size of only one segment. This means that there
is only a 50% utilization of available space. The basic function of mirroring is to provide
redundancy and fault tolerance by writing the same information to two separate
locations. One segment of space is used as a dynamic backup of the other. For example,
if the mirrored volume has a drive letter of e, when a user writes to the e drive, two
copies of the information will be written. The redundancy of a mirrored volume ensures
that if either of the hard drives experiences a failure, there is always another copy of all
the data available to recover from. in addition, mirroring also provides improved read
capabilities because either disk may be accessed for information. Also both can be
concurrently accessed for different information, thus improving a disk's read throughput.
Any information can be stored on a mirrored volume, including the boot and system
partitions. However, in order for a mirrored volume to include the boot or system
partition, it must be created from a simple volume that was originally a primary or
logical partition.
One variation of the mirrored volume is referred to as a duplexed mirror. Duplexed
mirroring is hardware based, rather than software based. It is simply a mirrored volume
that consists of disks controlled by different disk controllers. This ensures that if one
controller fails, it will not cause both disks to fail at the same time.
Striped volumes, like spanned volumes, consist of between 2 and 32 chunks of free
space joined together. However, the difference between the two is in the way they fill
up disk space. Spanned volumes fill up one segment before proceeding to the next.
Striped volumes fill 64 kb on one segment, 64 kb on the next segment, and so forth,
until it comes back to the first segment again and then repeats.
Like the spanned volume, the removal of any free space from a striped volume causes
all the data in the volume to be lost. Therefore, this kind of volume is not fault tolerant.
a striped volume is also similar to a spanned volume in that it cannot hold the system or
boot partition of a Windows 2003 system.
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Question: What are the advantages of mirrored volumes? (Select three.)
a) fault tolerance
b) improved read capability
c) uses segments of up to 32 hard drives
d) individual segments can be any size
e) redundant backup
Question: Which of the following volume types can hold the system and boot
partitions?
Question: In a striped volume, data is written in blocks across each segment
of the volume. What is the size of each of these blocks?
a) 16 kb
b) 32 kb
c) 64 kb
d) 128 kb
Raid-5 is a term that originally came from the hardware industry, meaning redundant
array of inexpensive disks. It was originally referred to multiple hard drives that
functioned as one unit. Raid-5 provides fault tolerance in systems where hardware raid
arrays are cost prohibitive or in other ways not desired. This volume type was referred
to as a "striped set with parity" in Windows nt. Raid-5 is the Windows 2003
implementation of a striped set with parity to provide redundancy and recoverability in
the case of a hard disk crash. Parity is a way to check whether data has been lost or
written over. parity information is not redundant data. it is, instead, information that can
be used to reconstruct lost data.
Raid-5 volumes have all the features of the striped volume except that they require at
least 3 hard drives (and as many as 32). Like striped volumes, raid-5 volumes cannot be
used to hold the system or boot partition of a Windows 2003 installation. What sets
them apart is that parity information is written as part of each stripe to ensure that if a
single drive is lost, the data on the remaining ones will continue to be available. Even
though a raid-5 volume can recover from the loss of a single drive, it cannot recover
from the loss of multiple drives. If more than one drive is lost, a raid-5 volume must be
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recovered from a backup. Upon loss of a disk from the set in raid-5, the volume will
continue to be available, although performance is greatly reduced because of the
calculations required to rebuild the missing drive from the existing data plus the parity.
However, once repaired, the volume will operate as though no problem ever occurred.
One drawback of the raid-5 volume is the loss of some of the data area to this parity
information. If x represents the total number of hard drives across which the raid-5
volume is implemented, the total amount of usable space can be calculated with the
following formula: (x-1)/x. For example, if you were to create a raid-5 volume from
five 1-gb segments of free space, the usable area is (5-1)/5 or 80% of the total hard
drive space. That would leave you with 4 gb of the original 5 gb because 1 gb would be
used to maintain the fault tolerance. Raid-5 volumes have moderate write performance
(reduced because the parity information must be calculated as the data changes) but
excellent read performance because the data is stored on many hard drives, all of which
can be accessed independently of one another.
Characteristic
Simple
Spanned Mirrored Striped
RAID-5
System partition
Boot partition
Fault tolerant
Space utilization
Drives required
Number of pieces included
Pieces must be on different
drives
Formats supported
Accessible locally by non-2000
OS if FAT
Read performance
Yes
Yes
No
100%
1
1–32
No
No
No
No
100%
2
2–32
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
50%
2
2
Yes
No
No
No
100%
2
2–32
Yes
No
No
Yes
[(n-1)/n]
3
3–32
Yes
All
No
All
No
All
No
All
No
All
No
Average
Average Up
Up
Up
Write performance
Average
Average Down
Up
Down
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Question: You want to configure fault tolerance on your Windows 2003
server. Which of the following volume types gives the best data storage
capacity while ensuring that a single disk failure will not destroy all data?
Question: You want to configure data redundancy on your Windows 2003
server. Which of the following volume types gives the best data storage
capacity while allowing you to make the system/boot partition fault tolerant?
Question: You are considering converting to a fault-tolerant raid-5 volume.
T or F? Converting to a fault-tolerant disk volume will decrease the read
performance of your Windows 2003 server.
Question: You want to implement mirroring on your system, but first you
need to know how this might affect the performance of your Windows 2003
server. Which of the following is a good way to see if the change in
performance will significantly affect your system?
a) implement mirroring on your production system, then run performance
monitor.
b) implement mirroring on a computer, then run performance monitor.
c) set up two identical computers, implement mirroring on one and not
the other, then run performance monitor on both.
d) you don't need to test performance, because implementing mirroring
does not have any significant impact on performance.
Disk Manager
Partitions and volumes are more than theory; you need a tool to be able to create and
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manage them. That tool is the disk manager, and it is a sub-component of the computer
management console.
Question: Which of the computer management trees must you expand to
access the disk manager?
If you need to perform maintenance on your basic disk partitions or your dynamic disk
volumes, you will be able to do so using the disk manager. Partition and volume
maintenance involves the following tasks: creating a new partition or volume, deleting a
partition or volume, formatting a partition or volume, changing the drive letter marking
a primary partition active
Question: You need to create a new partition on a basic disk using disk
manager. which of the following are types of partitions that can be created
with the disk manager? (Select two.)
a) simple
b) primary
c) spanned
d) logical
Question: You have created a partition with the disk manager, but you did
not assign a label to the partition. Which of the following is true of this
partition?
a) The partition is unusable.
b) The partition is hidden.
c) The partition is automatically assigned the next available drive letter.
d) The partition becomes swap space for virtual memory.
If you need to convert an existing FAT or FAT32 partition to NTFS, Windows 2003
provides a utility called convert.exe. There is no utility for directly converting an
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NTFS’s partition to FAT. To change an NTFS partition to FAT/FAT32, you must back up
all files on the partition, reformat the partition, and then restore the files to the
reformatted partition. The following table shows a comparison in features between FAT,
FAT32, and NTFS5:
Feature
Maximum filename length
8.3 filename compatibility
Maximum file size
Maximum partition size
Recommended volume size
FAT
255
Yes
4 GB
4 GB
<500 MB
NTFS5
255
Yes
16 EB
16 EB
>500 MB
Linked list
FAT32
255
Yes
2 TB
2 TB
512 MB –
32 GB
Linked list
Directory structure
Intrinsic local security
Intrinsic local encryption
Intrinsic compression
Supports disk quotas
Transaction tracking
Hot fixing
Overhead
Locally accessible MS-DOS
Locally accessible Win 95 OSR2
Locally accessible Win 98
Locally accessible OS/2
Locally accessible Windows 2000
Locally accessible Windows NT 4.0
Locally accessible Windows NT 3.5x
Case-sensitive filenames
Case-preserving filenames
Fragmentation level
Used on floppy disk
No
No
No
No
No
No
1 MB
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
High
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
1 MB
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
High
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
4.5-10 MB
No
No
No
No
Yes
Limited
No
POSIX only
Yes
Low
No
B-tree
Question: Which of the following file systems can be used to format a
partition used by Windows 2003 server?
a) FAT
b) FAT32
c) NTFS4
d) NTFS5
e) ufs
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Question: Windows 2003 comes with a utility called convert.exe. What does
this utility accomplish?
1. converts FAT and FAT32 partitions to NTFS5
2. converts NTFS5 partitions to FAT
a) 1 only
b) 2 only
c) both 1 and 2
d) neither 1 nor 2
In Windows 2003, drive letters are not fixed to specific partitions. Rather, they can be
changed at any time. The only exceptions are the system and boot partitions; you
cannot change the drive letters of either of those special partitions. The problem with
changing drive letters is that some programs record their positions in the registry using
the drive letter they were installed on. If you change the drive letter of a partition, the
references to it will not be updated, and many programs will no longer run. Therefore,
you need to exercise caution when changing drive letters, and you should do it as soon
as possible after you create the partition.
There may be times when you want to mark a partition as active. However, you need to
be careful when doing this because the active partition is the one your computer's
bios will try to boot from. Therefore, changing the active partition could cause you to
be unable to boot.
Question: The disk manager in Windows 2003 allows you to change the drive
letter of a partition. However, changing the drive letter of a partition may
cause a problem with the system. Which of the following are likely to occur if
you change a drive letter?
a) the bios will not know which partition to boot
b) some programs will not run
c) the partition becomes unusable
d) the partition becomes hidden
Question: Which of the following statements is true about the partition
known as the active partition?
a) It is always assigned the drive letter c.
b) It is the largest partition on the system.
c) It is the most heavily used partition.
d) It is the partition the bios will try to boot from.
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Managing dynamic disk volumes involves many of the same tasks and procedures as
managing basic disk partitions.
At server installation, all disks are basic. To take advantage of any of the features of
dynamic disks, you have to upgrade the disk from a basic disk to a dynamic disk. Once
upgraded, a dynamic disk cannot contain partitions or logical drives and cannot be
accessed by MS-DOS or Windows operating systems other than Windows 2003. When a
basic disk has been converted to a dynamic disk, all existing partitions become simple
dynamic volumes, with the exception of specific partition types, such as spanned
partitions, created under Windows NT. These types of partitions become the equivalent
types of volumes. Keep in mind that a volume cannot be converted back to a partition.
In order to revert a dynamic disk to a basic disk, all volumes must be removed.
Any striped, mirrored, spanned, or raid-5 partition created under Windows NT remains
unchanged if Windows NT is upgraded to Windows 2003. Windows 2003 will continue to
use these partitions. However, Windows 2003 cannot create striped, mirrored, spanned,
or raid-5 partitions on a basic disk. When a basic disk is converted to dynamic, any
partitions created in Windows 2003 are converted to simple dynamic volumes.
Question: Which of the following is true of dynamic disks?
1. They cannot contain partitions or logical drives.
2. They can only be accessed by Windows NT and Windows 2003.
a) 1 only
b) 2 only
c) both 1 and 2
d) neither 1 nor 2
Question: You upgrade a basic disk that contains a mirrored partition to a
dynamic disk. What happens to the mirrored partition?
a) It becomes a simple volume and mirroring is lost.
b) It becomes an empty volume.
c) It becomes a mirrored volume.
d) You cannot upgrade a disk containing a mirrored partition.
Mounting and Troubleshooting
A new feature in Windows 2000 was the ability to mount volumes and partitions in
NTFS5 folders. Mounting is the process of making a storage device available to the
system. In Windows 2003, this feature allows you to access a partition or volume by
navigating to a folder, rather than to the actual partition or volume. For example, as
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an example of mounting a volume to a folder, you could create a folder called data on
the c drive and then mount a 10-gb simple volume into that folder. This means that the
new volume is accessed through the folder c:\data, even though it is an entirely
separate drive. This would effectively increase the size of the c drive and would make all
the space from the newly mounted drive available in the path c:\data.
In addition, mounting can be used to increase space in commonly used folders without
having to reformat drives and reinstall applications. For example, suppose you installed
Windows 2003 server on a 2-gb hard drive, and you have been installing all your
applications into the folder c:\program files. Now you have only 10 MB of disk space
available on your c drive.
New hard drive? To solve the problem, you can replace the existing hard drive, but you
will have to do a lot of juggling to move everything over, and it will take a lot of time to
do it. a better solution is to install an additional hard drive and create a new volume on
it (let's say 2 GB). Copy all the contents of the program files folder into this new volume.
Then mount the volume into the c:\program files folder.
Your applications have no idea that anything has changed because the mounting is
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transparent to all processes. All applications can still be accessed through c:\program
files, and only you need know that there is another volume interacting in the process.
Question: Which of the following is the result of mounting a volume or
partition on your Windows 2003 server?
a) increased disk speed
b) primary partitions are extended
c) the disk's free space is increased
d) simple volumes are mirrored
Question: T or F? When you mount a volume into a folder, all applications
accessing that folder have to be reinstalled.
A mount point is a folder on one drive that can be used to access another drive. In order
to mount a volume or partition to a mount point, you must first make sure that the drive
containing the mount point is formatted with NTFS5. You can use convert.exe or the
disk manager to convert the drive to NTFS5. Create a folder on the volume where you
want the mount point located, create a new folder. This folder must be empty or the
mount will fail. In this example, the new folder is named applications.
Open the disk manager and right-click the volume or partition you want to mount into
the new folder. Choose change drive letter and path from the shortcut menu. Add
mount path in the change drive letter and paths dialog box, click the add button to add
a new mount
path to this volume. Enter the path in the mount in this NTFS5 folder field, either type
the path to the mount point or use the browse button to locate or create the folder.
Then click ok to finish the process.
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Question: You create two primary partitions and one extended partition on a
basic disk of a computer running Windows 2003 server. The disk has 10 MB of
unallocated space. You create three logical drives in the extended partition.
You format one of the logical drives (drive g) as NTFS and use it for the home
directories of users. You determine that you need additional space allocated
to this logical drive. You have 3 GB of unallocated space available on a second
disk drive on that computer. Which of the following can you do to increase
the amount of storage available in that logical drive?
a) Create a new partition or volume on the second disk drive. Create a
new folder on drive g. mount the new partition or volume to that
folder.
b) Extend drive g by creating a volume set using the logical drive and
unallocated space from the second disk drive.
c) Convert both disk drives to dynamic disks. Extend the simple volume
that was the original logical drive by using that volume and
unallocated space from the second disk drive.
d) Create a new partition or volume on the second disk drive and mount it
to the folder in which home directories reside.
Question: You are the network administrator for a company with two
member servers and 100 users on a single LAN. Each of your servers has
three volumes: one that stores the system/boot partitions, one that stores
program files, and a third that stores user data. They are 2 GB, 5 GB, and 20
GB, respectively, and formatted with NTFS. An alert has just popped up on
your computer telling you that the free space on one of your server's drives
has fallen below 10%. Upon closer examination, you see that certain users
have been copying a tremendous amount of personal files onto the server to
make space on their personal hard drives. Now you want to cap the amount
of storage each of the users has on the data volume of each server at 100 MB.
At this point, you would be satisfied just to be able to accomplish this task;
you don't mind if the process takes a long time. In addition, you would like to
be able to configure the cap for certain users to exceed 100 MB and for others
to be less than 100 MB, and you want these caps to be easily configurable
after they have been established.
Required result: Cap each user's disk space usage to 100 MB on each server.
Optional desired results: Achieve the required result in as efficient a way
possible. Allow for flexibility in the amount of storage space assigned to each
user.
Proposed solution: Back up all the data onto tape. Create 100 simple volumes
of 100 MB each from the 20GB drive. Mount each simple volume into a folder
in a 101st volume that is named for the user who is to access it. Secure the
folder to allow access for that user only. Expand the simple volumes into free
space as the need arises.
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Which of the following result(s) does the proposed solution produce?
a) This solution produces the required result as well as both optional
desired results.
b) This solution produces the required result and one of the optional
desired results.
c) This solution produces the required result but does not produce either
of the optional desired results.
d) This solution does not produce the required result.
Outside of the problems that arise when disks fail, you should not see very many
problems with disks. This section contains some of the problems that may arise with
disks and how you can remedy them.
Problem 1 When booting to another operating system, in a dual-boot configuration
with Windows 2003, the hard drive is not available. Probable cause: this problem can
occur for a couple of reasons. Either the file format being used on a Windows 2003
volume is not readable by the other operating system, or a dynamic volume is being
used in Windows 2003, and it cannot be read by the other operating system. Solution:
there really is no resolution to this problem short of re-creating the volume and/or
formatting it with FAT or FAT32 (depending on the operating system). This is generally
not a good solution, so this problem needs to be anticipated before disk formatting is
done.
Problem 2 When booting, the system partition cannot be located (this generally
becomes evident when a message appears at boot indicating that the boot disk cannot
be located). Probable cause: this problem usually indicates that your boot.ini has been
modified to point to a partition that does not exist. Solution: you can repair this problem
(and problems with other files in the system partition) by booting to the recovery
console and replacing the boot.ini file or by booting from a boot disk with a correct arc
path. This problem can also occur with some SCSI adapters when you add or remove a
disk or tape drive; it can affect the order in which the OS numbers the available disks,
making the boot.ini incorrect.
Problem 3 Data access to a raid-5 volume is unusually slow. Probable cause: this
generally indicates that one of the partitions in the volume is no longer functioning.
Solution: this problem can be repaired by replacing the faulty drive with a new one.
Once the faulty drive has been replaced, you can restart your server and start the disk
manager. From there, you must reactivate the volume to make it accessible. Next, repair
the volume using free space in the replaced drive. Finally, remove the failed drive from
the disk manager.
Problem 4 inability to install an additional copy of Windows 2003 on a dynamic disk.
Probable cause: this usually results from one of two conditions: the dynamic disk type
you are trying to install on cannot hold the boot partition of Windows 2003 or the
dynamic disk is not accessible via an arc path.
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There are enforced prohibitions against installing Windows 2003 on spanned, striped, or
(software-based) raid-5 volumes. As a result, these will not show up in the list of
available partitions in the text-mode of Windows 2003 installation.
The second condition is more abstract in its cause and is a result of a limitation of arc
paths as they relate to dynamic disks. In order to boot to a copy of Windows 2003 on
your hard drive, the boot.ini file must be able to point to the partition on which Windows
2003 is installed. The problem is that only partitions created on basic disks are listed in
the partition table on the hard drive; dynamic disks are not. Therefore, dynamic disks do
not technically have arc numbers. You will not be able to see dynamic volumes in the
text-mode of the installation program unless those volumes were present before the disk
was upgraded. For example, if a disk contained one partition and free space before it
was upgraded to a dynamic disk, you would be able to install Windows 2003 on the
volume resulting from the upgrade. You would also have the option of creating a new
volume in the free space. However, if you create a new volume in the free space, you
will not be able to install Windows 2003 on it because it does not really have an arc
path. Therefore, the boot process will not be able to find it to boot to it
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