Overview
Basic and dynamic disks are the two types of disks that can be created using the Disk Management utility in Microsoft Windows. Both disk types allow the end user to store, delete, and manage data. The purpose of this lab is for students to configure basic and dynamic Disks on Windows Server using Disk Management.
outcomes
In this lab, you will learn to:
- Work with basic disks in Microsoft Windows
- Work with dynamic disks in Microsoft Windows
Courses
Key terms and descriptions
Dynamic Disk
Dynamic disks are less common in Windows, especially in client operating systems like Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7. The most commonplace to see dynamic disks is in Windows Server operating systems. With dynamic disks, you can have fault tolerance, which means if a disk goes bad, you will be able to recover the data from the duplicate copy on the disk within the RAID volume (with RAID 1 or higher).
Basic Disk
Basic disks are very common in Windows, especially in client operating system like Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7. But you will also see basic disks in Windows Server operating systems as well. With basic disks, you cannot use features like RAID (redundant array of independent disks). Basic disks can have primary and extended partitions as well as logical drives within the extended partition.
NTFS
The acronym NTFS stands for New Technology File System. The NTFS was originally introduced with the Windows NT. NTFS is a journaling file system which means it keeps a log of changes being written to the disk. If a computer is shut down improperly, it will have a better chance of recovery if it has a journaling file system. Files and folder access can be restricted with the security feature of NTFS. Starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft included the Encrypted File System, or EFS, as an NTFS feature. EFS allows users to encrypt files to protect against unauthorized access.
FAT32
The acronym FAT stands for file allocation table. The FAT holds information about where files are stored on a volume. When a file is deleted from the disk, the entry or entries for those files are removed from the table and the space is marked as available. However, the file, or parts of the file, will remain on the disk until overwritten by information from new files.
RAID (redundant array of independent disks)
RAID allows for fault tolerance on disks. If a disk goes bad in a RAID, you will be able to recover the data from the duplicate copy on the disk within the RAID volume (other than RAID 0). RAID 1 is referred to as Mirroring and RAID 5 is referred to as Striping with Parity.